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[StrikaAmaru]

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Part 16: Winter - Moonstone & Opal

5th Moonstone. The siege has been lifted, and it is time to finish a tower, a depot entrance, and to clean up the surface. Not one at a time, more like all at once.

For the trade depot, some progress has been made, and I changed my mind about one thing: the lever to seal it. It was now moved into a much more drab location, and the old room has been turned into an office for our manager, Minkot. Her old office consisted of a single chair in the hospital, and now no longer exists.

The room for the trade depot has been sealed from the rest of the fort, smoothed out, and a new Trade Depot is being constructed, out of gold. I told you I will.


In due time, the rest of the room will be filled with stockpiles with trade goods. But please remember to keep crowns out, for as long as our doctor is mayor.
 
Above, on level 144, the hospital is being extended; all beds have been removed in preparation for excavations, and for constructing separator walls between future hospital beds. Like with most things, work will cease until we finish our big 3 priorities.


19th Moonstone. Oh dear. I had no record of this. Seems someone has promised a temple, then hasn’t built it… was this the Sanctum of Owls that I couldn’t find in any way? I guess it was.


22nd Moonstone: Our chief medical dwarf, of all people, has acquired the aspect of the fey:


25th Moonstone.


1st of Opal. Two of three projects are nearly complete.

The tower has been roofed over entirely, except a few tiles. Secure access is done by a hatch airlock. Dwarves may complain about having to go up just to go down just to go up, but considering such architecture is effectively everything-proof, they will have to deal with it.




The airlock for the trade depot has likewise been completed; all that’s left is to link the bridge, then pull it up.



Surface cleanup is likely the hardest to estimate, but at least the cages have been moved indoors, above the Temple of Armok.

11th Opal Some migrants have arrived; their arrival was almost drowned out by all the requests for citizenship that I’m being inundated with. I can only guess that suffering a siege with zero casualties has upped confidence in SmithSoldier, even if all we did was raise the drawbridge and ignore them.

Somewhat amusingly, most of them were goblins themselves. Who could have guessed, having a culture which exalts evil and cruelty is actually pretty terrible!

Sarcasm aside,  I’m reasonably sure I need to dig more bedrooms. We now number 101 dwarves, of which 7 are children, 12 goblins, and 14 humans. I won’t bore you with the full list of citizenship requests, it can be found in the fort’s annals.

(ooc: by which I mean most, but not all, have been screenshotted and uploaded in imgur)

We are beginning to have idlers; let’s prepare the sacrifices to the Temple of Armok! Firstly, the old dump zone in the crafting level has been disabled, and a new one defined right next to the temple. Then all items worn or carried by invaders have been marked to be dumped into it:

 
(ooc: if you don’t know, that’s an area-wide designation; d-b-c to claim, d-b-d to dump, them go to the stocks and un-mark all your cages:


That will let dorfs move all items in cages, including things like corpses, armor & weapons from invaders, and seeds for plants fed to caged animals; if you bother with taming, that is).

13th Opal. The airlock bridge has been raised, which makes the depot sealed from the surface; this means I can tear down the last strip of natural wall sectioning it from the entrance.


17th. Our dear doctor has finally started her work; I was getting worried about the unusually large delay, but turns out it was a combination of many items selected, and an older injury: she has suffered a broken lower back, and has lost the ability to stand.


18th. Something marvelous has happened: a lost dwarf has returned to us:


Sodel, one of three missing members of The Towers of Wind, is back in SmithSoldier. I presume he was in the last migrant wave, and he did not see fit to announce his arrival with more… aplomb? The dwarf seems to be fine, and is currently spinning thread.

Also on the 18th: A roc has come!


The bridge is pulled up immediately, and the hatch to the roof is locked; I am not delaying, the prick can fly, so it’s extremely likely he’s going to avoid our traps entirely:


.. Come to think of it, we should keep the thing locked at all times; unless we need to haul fired arrows or something, there’s no point to ever unlocking it.

22nd: The doctor has finished her work; she named it after herself, despite not having any other link to the figurine:


I now think slightly less of her.

------------
Edit: due to save date confusion, the actual 'canon' play stops here. I had made a save, which I could have sworn is on the 11th, but was actually on the 2nd; I presume I wanted to make another save after I get the army in place, but forgot.
------------

9th Obsidian. All dumping has completed. While internal alterations to the tower progress, might as well test the pit.

I am not going in this cold cocked, of course. The Ochre Youths are stationed below, in the specially-made corridor, and the Future Girders are stationed above in the cage room. If any prisoners manage to give a hauler the slip, they will not go far. All that is left now is to wait a few days, for the squads to get in place...


------------------------
The ensuing 'fight' was a complete disaster. I will write a post on it, for !!SCIENCE!!, but I don't want to keep it. It's just embarrassing...

Salmeuk, I think I can turn over to you either tomorrow, or in two days.

[EDIT] Addendum to the summary:

14. Dumping. So much stone dumping.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8131514#msg8131514
15 Food hauling. So much food hauling
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8131531#msg8131531
16 (This) Completing projects (mine and others')
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8131580#msg8131580

The way things are shaping up, I'll have a Part 17 - Apocrypha & then Part 18 where my turn is actually going to end.

[Salmeuk]

Huh, I'm curious why so many goblins decided to move in. I'll have to check if any of them are particularly interesting. Are they full citizens that perform labors, or just here to fight?

Rocs are such pushovers, though I wish that weren't the case. When I hear 'big bird' I want to see a giant death eagle, not Sesame Street. .

[StrikaAmaru]

Huh, I'm curious why so many goblins decided to move in. I'll have to check if any of them are particularly interesting. Are they full citizens that perform labors, or just here to fight?

Rocs are such pushovers, though I wish that weren't the case. When I hear 'big bird' I want to see a giant death eagle, not Sesame Street.

I'm guessing they were among the performers in the tavern; that's how most our recruiting is done. They're full citizens, fully controllable, and act like 'proper' dwarves in all ways.

The roc is still trampling around the outside; he's mostly one-bite killing all the wildlife, which at this point is wild boars. it might be a pushover, but we have practically no archers, and that's how I would do the deed. Not risking melee squads against a very large critter who can fly.

I'm angling for a cage trap, myself. But that's for the actual, real turn; right now, I'm doing !!Temple Science!!

[StrikaAmaru]

Part 17 - Apocrypha: the Many Deaths of Goblins (and Others)

This covers my non-canon attempts of using the Temple of Armok for the purpose it was intended - dumping hostiles on iron spikes so they bleed to death for the glory of Khorne Armok, and our own amusement.

It should go without saying that in all 3 4 scenarios I have attempted, that exact part has not happened.

In all cases, the military was involved; the melee squad, The Future Girders, has been stationed in the cage room, while the (woefully untrained) marksdwarves, The Ochre Youth, are mostly sitting outside the fortification walls of the Temple itself, in theory waiting to finish off any survivors of the spikes.

Before we start, this was the happiness status across the fort.


Version 1: Military Only.

In this (and first) version, only the military has been tasked to deal with the invaders.

After (most of) the squads assembled, the doors to the cage room are locked, the Future Girders are both released from orders, and switched to inactive (by which I mean: s-{select squad, in this case d}-t), so they and only they can begin mass pitting all invaders.

It.. does not go well.

I begin the pitting with 4 beak dogs. Nothing complicated, amirite?


Practically immediately, I get interruption spam. The first beak dog to be removed from a cage didn’t make it to the basement, and is running around in the room, scaring the ever-loving piss and shit out of the FG, who all run around like headless chicken. And being equally scared itself, not that anybody cares.


I re-enable the FG’s active status, again with s-d-t, and they very quickly murder the shit out of the loose beak dog.
Then they begin training. Cause that’s what active-duty dorfs do, I guess.


I re-disable active status. This time 2 beak dogs are removed from cages. One is successfully pitted, suffers no damage from the fall or spike, and is slowly shot by The Ochre N00bs (yes, I know I made that joke before).


The other one repeats the story from beak dog #1. It gets resolved in the same manner, too.
 
By this point it has turned the 17th. I am sufficiently frustrated that I order the doors unlocked, the FG squad stationed in the cage room, and all the recent invaders pitted. I expect this will fail miserably.

22nd. It does. Interruptions run rampant, dwarves and others run around like headless chicken, and the only goblin I have seen in the pit is a corpse. The invaders have been, in their majority, killed by The Future Girders, in glorious melee combat. Only 4 beak dogs have made it in the pit; the rest of the invaders were released, and killed, up in the cage room


At least the bolt collection is working. Too bad not many bolts will ever go there, eh?


Now only the cleanup has remained. There is one lone goblin still caged; he was part of a different sege, and so wasn’t marked for pitting.

The real casualty of this exercise was the happiness of our dorfs.


Version 2: Everybody and Their Pet Dog (Who Died).

In this version, I still station the Ochre Youth in the basement corridor, and the Future Girders in the cage room, but I don’t bother with any subtlety. Everybody gets to pit!

Also in this version, I find out that my latest save wasn’t on the 9th of Obsidian, as I thought. It was on the 2nd, so I need to re-do the hatch designations, and the military orders.

Anyway. Back to experimenting.

For one GLORIOUS moment, this seems to be working!


Then everything goes to shit. I hesitate to say it went to hell, since that has a different meaning in Dwarf Fortress, where it is possible to go to hell (and make it yours).


Once again, the FutureGirders get the bulk of the kills. What’s really interesting is that the pit now only contains a few beak dogs:


(also, a bit of water; apparently, between the late hour and my butter fingers, I had marked the pit as pond, and through the whole mess, some dwarf had dutifully started dumping water in it).


The cleanup then proceeds; in the pic above, you can see they started with the corpses in the cage room; perhaps because those were first to get killed?


You can also see the titular dead dog; I wasn’t joking about it. It was really a pet, too; I saw the name and announcement when it got gibbed, but at that time I didn’t think it was important.


For some weird ass reason, I haven’t screenshotted the happiness levels here. It was even worse than the first run; 2 guys had dropped all the way to miserable, and 17 were very unhappy!

Version 3: One Lone Pitter.

This one is the most involved; I allow only one poor sod to pit the invaders. If goblins and trolls really do climb the spikes back up into the room, we are definitely going to find out.

The victim du jour is picked from our sad sacks: Ingish RumorLabored, serial tantrummer, who is currently reading:


On a side-note: Salmeuk, your is, bar none, the happies dorf in the fort:


This hits a snag, because Ingish is part of the Ochre Noobs, and is stationed below. So I picked the next in line: another dwarfette, marked for the military life, but not drafted anywhere. This is GearMazes, who's been tantrumming so many times over the year.


… she then goes to get a drink. Ugggh.

Fuck it. I pick the next in line who’s currently idle; it happens to be a pump operator with no other skills. She gets to work, and is immediately interrupted by the very troll she has pitted:


However, some success: the troll has been tossed down the pit!



When checking the combat log, I can at least confirm the troll has suffered exactly zero damage from the upright spike; all the attacks upon her were from the marksdwarves:


The combat log also shows a second troll, this one named Aslot, who was attempted to be pitted after Ozud. The operation was cancelled - she was interrupted by a troll. Aslot has  then immediately attacked the dwarfette, and was then piled on by the military:



The dwarfette has fled out of the room. Presumably, she’ll return to pit the others?

The dwarfette does return, to haul away an empty cage. I suppose that makes sense, she’s the only one in the fort who can do that.

Next on the list is a beak dog. She is immediately interrupted by a beak dog, so at least I have an inkling that the cause of the failures are the very animals people are hauling.


The beak dog is chopped up by the military, nearly instantaneously; I don’t even have time to see it. All I can find is four chunks of it, already marked for hauling.


The troll in the pit has made no moves to climb up. I’m still trying to find out if goblins and trolls can climb the spikes back up.

So for this purpose, I have a slightly evil idea: when our pump operator returns, I’ll lock the door behind her. She will have no jobs, besides pitting invaders; and I will focus on the basement itself. The cage room will have to manage itself.

Unfortunately, we are delayed. Our designated target is in the hospital, resting and unconscious:


Oh well, next on the chopping block.

Mamzel GearMazes has finished her drink, and went back to reading; hey, would you like to do something more exciting?

She picks a troll; this one too escapes, and is also killed off by the melee squad, almost instantaneously:


The troll below has been shot to death, by the way. After it gave Armok some ideas about how to shape an adamantine vein:


Another!


The military insta-gibs this one, too. I’m tempted to remove them from duty, just to see what happens:


They let loose a beak dog, who’s running around the room and nobody’s killing it. But it gives me a chance to play around with GifCam:


With the military disabled, and me putzing around with recording software, the beak dog gets to do some damage.


Happiness-wise, we aren't doing so bad; but then again, we only killed what, 5 invaders?


Personally, I consider this experiment quite done. Pitting invaders is a pain and a half, and if I had to do it, I’d just station the military on top of the cage stockpile and let them loose.

… That sound like a great idea for experiment #4!

Version 4: Screw the Pit, we’re Using the Army!

For this run, I’m ordering both squads in the cage room, and only a limited number of citizens allowed for animal hauling. Given the swarming mess that happened in version 2, I think this for the best; I do want the option to lock those doors, at some point…

I take away animal hauling from everybody; after the military assembles, I’ll hand it to the idlers.

5th. Assembled enough, I suppose.


There are 12 idlers in the fort now; of them 4 or 5 make it to the room before I lock the doors. Then they… proceed to rapidly pit most invaders, through locked hatches, with no incident? Goodness gracious, was this the missing key ingredient of the pit?


None of the pitted invaders take a lick of damage from the spikes, though. The combat log is as untouched as freshly-driven snow. The only fighting is from the roc, biting the head off another wild boar.

Hum. I unlock doors, set animal hauling back to everyone, and alter military orders: the Ochre Youth go back to the shooting gallery, while the Future Girders are free to do as they please.

8th. The cages are empty, the basement is full of unharmed goblins, and the marksdwarves have yet to haul ass to the shooting gallery:



12th. I’m sorry, what?


The location of the announcement is in the bolt collection pit; it would seem the fortification teleport bug has made another appearance.

In the absence of better ideas, i station the Future Girders on top of the empty cage and animal stockpile:


14th. With one more instance happening, it finally dawns on me that no goblins have teleported through the wall. What is happening instead is that dwarves are coming to pick up arrows from the pit and getting interrupted by seeing goblins above. I solve the matter by locking the access door.

15th Excuse me, what the fuck?



Back on the 13th, Olonised, aka GearMazes, has thrown a tantrum, and then proceeded to punch a good half the tavern. Two pages of her kicking, punching, and twisting limbs on various people. This spilled over into the enormous mess above.

GearMazes’ latest thoughts are just insult to injury:


Oh noes, poor baby, how dare the consequences of your actions come back to bite you in the ass!

While this stupidity is unfolding, our 8 markdswarves are reliably plinking at goblins. They often move away to replenish bolts, though.


I also find out upright spikes can be destroyed by trolls; why, though? They are traps, not buildings; or maybe they do count as buildings, but are built from the trap menu because of historical reasons, or such? I don’t know...


------------------------- ---oOo--- --------------------------

That’s all the obvious scenarios I could think of.

What conclusions can I draw from it?

Firstly: locking hatches is a must. That part sincerely surprised me; I’m used to dorfs ignoring locked doors and hatches, so when they started pitching invaders through locked hatches, it was entirely unexpected.

On a good note, generalized mass pitting can be used, all at once, ‘cause that actually worked pretty well. Still recommend a melee squad stationed in the cage room, though.

Secondly: the temple basement needs revamping. The spikes are definitely not working. Either they need to be connected to some form of power to get retracted and extended (dwarf-powered lever, or minecart repeater - for which there is a convenient unused space west of the temple...). Or just replace them with good old-fashioned weapon traps; I’m pretty sure you can even reuse the spikes...

One more suggestion, that I’m personally not so keen on, is to expand the Temple one level below; that was mostly caused by the incident in Version 2, where goblins & trolls were successfully pitted only to go back up. I wouldn’t do it, because locking hatches is enough to prevent them from it, as shown in Version 4. If you do decide to make the temple deeper, though, also reduce some of the area to the West, so it doesn’t intersect with the poultry room.

GifCam - http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/#download - Introduced to me by RoomCarnage, but I only ‘installed‘ it before Version3. I put ‘installed’ in quotes, because it doesn’t need installation - just unzip & run.

For the actual play-though, I am going to ignore the Temple entirely. As far as I’m concerned, I had my shot and missed it.

[Salmeuk]

(also, a bit of water; apparently, between the late hour and my butter fingers, I had marked the pit as pond, and through the whole mess, some dwarf had dutifully started dumping water in it).

I guarantee that dwarf has second thoughts about living in Smithsoldier after that.

Cog was minding his own business in the inn when the tavernkeep threw a bucket at his head. In his fright, Cog fell from the barstool and in doing so narrowly dodged the bucket.

"Boss says youse gots to dump some wahter down below."

Cog looked around the room, Boss nowhere to be seen.

"What the hell, man?! Can't you just hand it to me?"

"If youse wernt so slow I'd give it to ya soft-like, soft like a purring maggot hahahaha! I'm working, ya know? No time for chumps like you."

The keep set down the glass he had been polishing, and poured himself a drink.

Cog knew better than to argue, so he rose to his feet and collected the bucket from underneath the table where it had fallen.

"Thanks for nothing," he said as he left.

Cog took the bucket to the well, filled it to the brim, then recounted the directions to the new pond. 'Down two flights, across the way, turn left at the second doorway, up the stairs and when you smell something awful you'll know you're close,' bosses handwritten directions had said. Cog thought, 'this will put me right near the new temple installation. Strange place for a pond if you ask me.' Still, orders were orders, and Cog kind of liked having something to do.

As he neared the location, however, something was amiss, and it wasn't just the smell. There was screaming, too, and the sounds of general mayhem and death. 'Was that the Wilhelm scream I just heard?,' Cog wondered to himself. He pushed on to the door, the one with all the screaming. As he approached he stepped in a seeping pool of unidentifiable liquid oozing from underneath the doorway. 'Hmm, someone else must be filling the pond as well!'

Poor, poor Cog.

He opened the door to Hell. Inside, general cacophony and slaughter awaited him. They were so drenched in blood that he barely recognized our Veteran squad. Blue and red, the blood swirled and splashed beneath the fighting dwarves. What were they fighting? Ah, right, the naked and defenseless prisoners of war we had detained for well past the Geneva conventions laws on "Limits to the Extended Imprisonment of Political Prisoners".

One of our laborours would walk over to a cage and unhinge the swinging door, roughly grabbing the tiny goblins and thrusting them into the gauntlet of sharpened steel blades. Sometimes, two dwarves would open a larger cage and release a gigantic Troll, which was quite terrifying at first but you soon realized these beasts are mere children when it comes to our kind warfare, and one could feel only sympathy as the creature babbled in pain while our dwarves cut flesh from bone.

Cog stood dumbfounded, wanting to escape, then remembered that he had one task. Dump the water. He had no real intention of standing in between the crazed blood-dwarves and the helpless sacrifices, so he drop-kicked the bucket into the fray and sprinted away crying and screaming.

Cog never recovered his sanity, and would later wander into the dark wilderness never to be seen again.

The troll below has been shot to death, by the way. After it gave Armok some ideas about how to shape an adamantine vein:

Troll blood is wonderful stuff - I always feel like I murdered some horrific alien creature after they bleed all over the halls.

GifCam - http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/#download - Introduced to me by RoomCarnage, but I only ‘installed‘ it before Version3. I put ‘installed’ in quotes, because it doesn’t need installation - just unzip & run.

Do yourself a favor and check out Screentogif instead. While it's slightly more complex to use, it possesses a strong editing interface with the ability to adjust capture rate and later edit frame delay. So for DF, where fps doesn't matter, I capture at around 12fps and adjust frame delay accordingly. If you also install the Gifski encoder (which is super easy, the link is directly in Screentogif's interface) you can create super-sharp gifs, which can be important when recording ASCII.

[StrikaAmaru]

Part 18 Winter, Obsidian.

Last week, on SmithSoldier:

----------------

Sodel, one of three missing members of The Towers of Wind, is back in SmithSoldier. I presume he was in the last migrant wave, and he did not see fit to announce his arrival with more… aplomb? The dwarf seems to be fine, and is currently spinning thread.
Also on the 18th: A roc has come!

The bridge is pulled up immediately, and the hatch to the roof is locked; I am not delaying, the prick can fly, so it’s extremely likely he’s going to avoid our traps entirely.

.. Come to think of it, we should keep the thing locked at all times; unless we need to haul fired arrows or something, there’s no point to ever unlocking it.

22nd: the doctor has finished her artifact; she named it after herself, despite not having any other link to the figurine:

I now think slightly less of her.

-----------------

The return of Sodel, and the arrival of the roc, have done a great deal to crystallize my priorities for the last month of my reign. I must focus on defense, and let other grandiose ideas by the wayside. I particularly regret not touching the temple situation, but I hold hope my successor will do something about it. Especially since we have a marble layer completely mined out, and ready to be built in carved blocks of marble, and bars of gold…

As defense stands, there are three issues that I must approach: the squads, the tower, and the roc. The last may well be the easiest - for all their fierce size, rocs are still animals, and thus can be caged. I now deeply regret not building a cage trap into the roof hatch access; if I had, I could have unlocked it briefly, and let the flier crawl straight into it. But, if wishes were fishes…

Regardless. Right next to the Temple of Armok, lies an abandoned tunnel. It’s walled off on our end, and closed with a locked door at the other; five cage traps are interposed, between door and masonry plug. This particular structure will be rebuilt into our tentative roc trap.


I order the furthest trap deconstructed; a cage trap will replace it. The other weapon traps will remain in place, just in case. And also just in case, several more cage traps will be built in continuation.

Next on my list, the tower’s interior needs constructing, and in some cases, deconstructing. The entry to the fort, which I’ve come to think of as the basement of the tower, will be left alone; likewise, the ground floor where the outdoor farms now stand. It’s the next two levels which I intend to modify for the benefit of our military.

The first floor is primarily intended for melee squads training, as well as a shooting gallery covering the north wall, towards the fort’s entrance.


For this purpose, I built an internal curtain wall, and carved the north wall into fortifications. Three melee squads can train in the remaining space, and the Future Girders have already been assigned the space closest to the door - where most of the floor was already built.

(ooc: i now see the center weapon rack was placed off by one - it should have been a tile to the west, dammit! This. This is why I use floor patterns. And, unrelated to the above, I could have carved up the west wall too...)

When the marksdwarves must use the gallery, it’s best to lock the door towards the melee squads, and station the marksdwarves in the corridor; this will prevent dwarves from getting confused and sitting on the wrong side of the curtain wall.

(ooc: as far as I know, stationed dorfs mill about in a 5-tile radius of the tile on which they’re stationed; so locking that door is pretty important about any of them getting in a shooting position; ditto for locking the door after them. Maybe assign a small bolt pile inside the corridor? Like, two-three tiles?)


The floor above houses primarily archer squads; the western-most space was already handed to The Ochre Youth. I have yet to make up my mind about the center space, but the eastern-most room will be another marksdwarf training squad for certain.

This leaves one more floor in the tower that is completely unused for now. Well, except for the stairway to the roof, but that one is technically ‘outside’ the tower; it shouldn’t count.

While deconstructions, constructions, and stone chiselling take place, I turn my attention towards our own people, and sift those with even a lick of military skill. And since those are depressingly few in number (and since gathering skill must begin somewhere after all), I draw a second pile of names, for unskilled or barely-skilled citizens.

The Ochre Youths get completed; two humans have joined them. Both were adequate marksdwarves, which doesn’t sound like much, but in SmithSoldier, this puts them in the top five most competent archers. The state of our military is quite sad…

Zon has been removed from The Future Girders; as one of the few citizens with leadership experience, she is again the leader of her own melee squad. Her replacement is a butcher who is both a talented spear user, and an unstable individual.

And lastly, four new squads have been assembled - one of marksdwarves (for varying values of both marks and dwarf), and the other three are melee. Here, I’d draw special attention to The Amber Trades, a squad drawn entirely from our goblin population.





Not counting children, this means almost half the population has been drafted. Perhaps a bit extreme, but our military situation is, in a word, pathetic. And the Pit still exists.


Our human squaddies have no armor whatsoever; I ask Salmeuk to craft full suites of steel armor, fit for a large size. A lesser armorsmith might have been uneasy, but Salmeuk is legendary in his skill, and then some. He nods, and moves to craft large masterworks.

As progress in construction has been made, the new squads can be appointed in the tower. The first floor sees its two remaining barracks assigned to The Portals of Lulling and The Natural Fences; while the second floor has had its center room ear-marked for The Amber Trades, and the eastern-most room should be given to the Nations of Barricading. As soon as the fortifications are complete, and the targets are built.



(ooc: Salmeuk, I think i fucked up a bit here - I should have built the archery targets AFTER the fortifications were carved. I remembered during editing that fortifications, much like statues, are impassable; the background wall can’t be reached to be carved).

28th of Obsidian. On the last day of winter, the roc trap is complete. I endeavour to crack open the door, hoping against all reason for a caged semi-megabeast to serve as capstone to my rule. But the creature is randomly flitting about to the north, unknowing or uncaring of the newly opened way into the fortress.

An insidious thought worms its way into my mind - let the door open. A small way in, unknown to my successor unless he or she is really paying attention. But this is a thoroughly foolish, even suicidal, thought. What has come over me? I fucking live here. If the fort is breached, I’ll be killed too, if not worse. I lock the door tightly, and go see who will be the next ruler.

It is Salmeuk, who was also a candidate last year, and I only narrowly won against. In hindsight, I should have seen this coming. As the crowd of well-wishers thin in the evening, I go to greet him, congratulate him myself, and hand the metaphorical keys to the fortress.

[StrikaAmaru]

OOC Epilogue

The save will be posted after I’ll run a test with a separate, vanilla-only DF copy - tonight, in a few hours if I have time, or else tomorrow evening. I think I sanitized it of any left-over tileset gunk, but I’ve also seen some dfhack log files. I want to make sure they’re not causing any trouble.

On to the fort:

The Temple of Armok. You all know.

The hospital is still unfinished; I set it to smooth, and built the most distant two pods (they were smoothed out while constructing walls). It may or may not have been assigned as an area; I don’t think I did, but I'm not sure. One trick I can recommend for hospitals: set Thread to zero, and make a dump tile in which you periodically dump all hair in the fort. I won’t pretend to understand all the arcane logic that medi-dorfs use to pick thread for sutures, but placing some otherwise-useless hair in their way ups the chances of that one getting picked.

Oh yeah; in the crafting level, I made a fat & lye stockpile, with inbuilt kitchen + ashery + soap maker’s workshop. I made 18 ash & gave orders for them to be turned into lye; once that’s done, please line up some soap.

And speaking of crafting level and dump zones, the ‘general’ dump zone for stone and all the stuff in the tower is here; pretty sure it’s still active too, because I designated some cleanup on the tower floor:


All bedrooms are occupied; more definitely need to be appointed, and likely dug out too. And there’s another detail I saw: most/all rooms have containers built in them, not cabinets (d-h instead of d-f). This is why there are so many clothes strewn all over the floor - dorfs don’t use containers to store any personal items.


Ideally, these containers would get deconstructed and replaced with cabinets. The containers can then be reused in the hospital and all the locations (tavern, library and temples), all of which DO use containers, and don’t use cabinets. To check: do guild halls use containers? Do any of the locations use cabinets at all?

The temple/guild-hall situation is dire. As a mega-project, though one on the small side, they can be moved into rooms in the marble layers. You can even construct the walls of gold and marble blocks! (and haul the shitty mica that I haven’t done anything with). Actually, mica is magma-safe; maybe cut it into blocks and a few (dozen) mechanisms? Magma-safe stuff always comes in handy. Always!

Speaking of locations: the library needs some tables, chairs, and containers (or was it cabinets?). I carved around 60 bookcases out of marble (and one stray chunk of granite), and built them already, but ran out of chairs and tables. Containers, well, see the bedroom section .

The surface still belongs to the roc. It’s been slaughtering everything that moves between the trees - mostly wild boar, but also the occasional visitor. I perversely hope there’s a goblin siege this spring; that’s going to end poorly for both parties, and hilariously for us, no?

But if there isn’t a siege, please unlock the trap corridor I made. We already have an ettin in our inventory (likely in the flooded cave basement), might as well have a roc too! I can only hope pathing will find the door; when it comes to fliers, there are… outstanding issues.

I really wish I’d have thought to build a cage trap in the access stairs on the roof. Then I could have nabbed the stupid featherbrain already.

In the cavern, everything is ready for launch! I recommend a mass-forbid before you start, then reclaiming only the nearby sections. That’s to keep some poor idiot running off to retrieve a random corpse from the map edge, trampling the precious webs in the way, and possibly running into whatever made that corpse.

Also, as the web collecting clears floor space, the trees can be marked to be cut down. We’re not lacking for wood (understatement of the century), but cavern trees look different.

Also also, I’m pretty sure the east of the cave, beyond the water, is completely inaccessible by land; which tells ya nothing, because dorfs are exactly stupid enough to try and swim over. Mass-forbid is your friend.

Draining the cave basement rooms. The job has been made a bit easier by the loose goblins getting murdered by cavern critters. Good luck dropping the plugs. And, I completely forgot to make any pump components, but I can tell you there are 3 excellent pump operators in the fort right now. Oh, and if possible, see if you can make the pump bits out of green glass & steel - never know when you need to go pump magma. I… think we have some sand bags around? If not, we may be in trouble; there’s no sand we can gather, from what I remember.

Clothing is becoming critical for humans, but is still non-critical for dwarves. At this point, dorfs are reusing goblin clothes, and that’s fine, except for the sort of clothes which goblins don’t bring. Humans, however, are outta luck (same as with armor). If the cavern gamble pays off we’ll also have a lot of silk; please weave some, and order some large clothes into the clothier’s workshop.

Speaking of large anything: is there a way of creating large clothes from the manager menu? I couldn’t find one; the workshop {d}etails menu might be the only way… but if it isn’t, I dearly want to know.

Plus, caged GCS. No, clothing isn’t a danger, but it can become one if ignored.

Artifacts are another aspect I neglected completely; haven’t even made pedestals or anything.

On the animal front, we have male and female dogs as pets to various people. These pet dogs have been breeding quite enthusiastically, and now number about half of all tame animals. It’s up to you if you want to train them for war, or turn them into leather and meat cuts. I regret the absence of more interesting wildlife; can’t we get a grizzly bear, a cave dragon, or something else we can tame and train for war? Then the goblins will see. They will ALL see.

The doors to the chicken coop have been locked in Obsidian; I wanted to do that earlier, but didn’t, and now all hen eggs have been collected. We need widdle baby chickens far more than we need eggs.

Happiness is becoming an issue; overall mood is dropping slowly but surely, and that’s after 2 of the most unhappy people in the fort have either killed themselves, or been callously murdered by me.

I really wished to give dorfs some time off. I expect revamping the temples is going to help, but at some point in the year, maybe it would help if Dwarf Therapist removes all the jobs, from all the dwarves, for a month, and lets them just loiter? At some point the risk of tantruming due to social networking is becoming far less than the risk of tantruming anyway.

Military: needs backpacks for food, and waterskins for booze; that will crater our leather stocks… but luckily, we have puppies!

I should mention explicitly: the squads were created on a pattern of Marks / Melee / Melee, x2. If you need a quick mnemonic about whether the Portals of Lulling or the Nations of Barricading are marks or melee, just note that the Portals are third, and the Nations are fourth - so melee and marks, respectively. The first two squads don’t count, for reasons we all know.

Armor-wise. Due to interface issues I’ve already gotten into, I left the human-sized armor on an infinite loop; your very own dwarf is crafting them right now. Ideally, I’d have built like 10 sets of human-sized armor, and called it a day, but that’s not possible. On the dwarf side of things, we have a shortage of steel armor (50+ dwarves and goblins; of course there’s a shortage), but not of armor in general; again, dorfs can and do reuse goblin crap. In the short term, that’s acceptable; they’ll all spend the next few months training anyway.

Another thing about dwarf-sized armor: there’s a definite and abnormal shortage of breastplates. I don’t know why, they were made at the same time as everything else, but most dwarves have complete armor, except for breastplate.
Weapons-wise: I made some more weaponry; silver for bashing, steel for cutting. We have some slack. Made steel crossbows too, ‘cause you know the tits will bash enemies instead of shooting them.

Another change I made and haven’t mentioned: military schedule. I used the same I’ve been using since DF2012: 2 months training, with 5 people minimum, followed by 1 month break. Staggered this pattern across multiple squads; at any point, in our fort there will be 4 training squads and 2 on break. The two ‘honorary’ squads are permanently off-duty, and disabled in the {s}quads menu.

It’s possible you’ll have problems with dropped and rotting food; that happened a lot in DF2012, when military dorfs are getting out of ‘shift’ and drop their rations… but they still have ownership, and nobody can move the food. So it just rots wherever. I’m hoping this bug was fixed, and I’m also hoping that if it wasn’t, backpacks are going to change this behavior. If this won’t fix anything, I’m afraid the only solution is to ban food from military squads.

BTW: that all-goblin squad? A bit of a dick move there… they’ve all come here to entertain, not fight. And dangerous in another way, too: all goblins have some kind of mental issue in their description - usually prone to violence, but I’ve seen a coupla melancholics too. Lastly, I kinda screwed up the list: there are two legendary dancers drafted, while two mostly-unimportant goblins have been left out. Because that’s what happens when you just filter by the proverbial scarlet letter - in this case, G.

About dwarf management, I removed all my helper labels. The only dwarves with nicknames are the ones who’ve been claimed by RL people:


We still have a ton of caught fish, which has yet to be cleaned; I disabled all fish cleaning skills, for some reason connected to too many shells being produced; likely, when I dismantled the crafting in the cavern to make looms.

The fort has no jail, and no jailer. You know, speaking of crafting in the cavern, where I rebuilt workshops multiple times because tantrumming idiots kept toppling them. My own go-to solution for dwarven justice is to build ropes on the floor, 2 tiles apart; then I make a booze stockpile and a prepared meals stockpile (no barrels) so they'd have food & drink. This very neatly works around all the "died of thirst/starvation" problems that crop up with imprisoned dorfs.

In the grazer’s pasture, there are 2 farmer’s workshops; I’ve gotten in the habit that, at the start of each season, I’m ordering milking + cheese making in one, and shearing + spinning in the other. I seriously wish this were automated, somehow (lua script? DFHack command) but so far there aren’t any ways I know of. Then again I don’t really dig deeply into the utilities...

And the absolute last thing: I accidentally stole a few seconds of your turn; the cleanup in Dwarf Therapist and the military schedule changes were both done after Spring rolled over, and at the end I hit space by muscle memory. The year began with critters dying of old age:


That’s about all I can think of.

===================================================
Summary
17 - Part 17 - Apocrypha: the Many Deaths of Goblins (and Others)
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8132631#msg8132631
17b - Salmeuk did a ‘slice of life’ thing.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8132657#msg8132657
18 Winter Part 2 - Obsidian
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8133248#msg8133248
19 OOC Epilogue (this)
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175780.msg8133284#msg8133284

EDIT: The save was tested, it works fine. HERE IT IS.
Why do people play like this, again? I mean seriously. Ow my eyeballs.

[Glloyd]

Sign me up for a turn! I've got a lot of free time coming up, and I've been playing a lot of DF again lately

[Quantum Drop]

Sign me up for a turn! I've got a lot of free time coming up, and I've been playing a lot of DF again lately

You've been added to the list.

StrikaAmaru, brilliant work on the fortress. Not much I think I can really say beyond that - your actions speak for themselves, I would think.

[StrikaAmaru]

StrikaAmaru, brilliant work on the fortress. Not much I think I can really say beyond that - your actions speak for themselves, I would think.

Why thank you for your kind words, Quantum! it was a blast and a half, and I'm sure it would not have been possible without the Easter at the start. Almost half of it was written in those 2 days. I'm pretty sure I'll never write anything quite like this.

I just took the original Google Docs draft through some statistics. It has 20,500 words; and the posted version has a bit more, because I always add some snippet or two. So say, 21,000 - 21,500 words? That's a quarter of a novel, at least. I have yet to figure out what to think of this.

[Salmeuk]

My god! That's ridiculous (and a tough act to follow. . )!

Well, I'll get started today, see if I can decipher all the changes to the crafting setups. That last OOC post will be a godsend, so thank you for taking the time to make the transition easier I have some ideas for that entirely-gobbo squad.

Why do people play like this, again? I mean seriously. Ow my eyeballs.

I take everything back! you heathen! you dirty swine! you gar·ru·lous goblin! ASCII or Death, so Armok said!

[StrikaAmaru]

Why do people play like this, again? I mean seriously. Ow my eyeballs.

I take everything back! you heathen! you dirty swine! you gar·ru·lous goblin! ASCII or Death, so Armok said!

Well then I'm willing to bet Armok isn't playing

My god! That's ridiculous (and a tough act to follow. . )!

Well, I'll get started today, see if I can decipher all the changes to the crafting setups. That last OOC post will be a godsend, so thank you for taking the time to make the transition easier I have some ideas for that entirely-gobbo squad.

Ey, it's not a contest, just have fun. Leaving aside DF's tagline, if playing a game isn't fun why would you even bother playing?

Speaking of: I have, of course, continued playing the save on my own. And holy ☼iron spiked balls☼, so many things I mentioned for flavor just happened:

- I got a goblin siege in spring. The roc had just pitiful performance; it barely killed 4 of them, before getting rekt. It also engaged on the ground, the absolute idiot; if it would have flown, it would have probably handled itself much better.


- I then abandoned the surface, and went for the cavern. There is. A. FUCKLOAD. of webs to be picked. All spaces got some loom built, except the area where the old crafts shops got built (that one's still full of various crafts, and it's not worth the delay of moving them). Then everybody got weaving, web auto-collect got switched on, and the selective unforbidding got done. they went at it until early summer, and they barely cleaned up some 60 tiles near the entrance. Zero interruptions, too.

- the cloth area was a bit fucked up after all:

  * that top workshop? It's not a clothier's as it should be; it's a fishery  in my defense, k and h are kinda close, and when I did that level it was late at night.
  * the lower stockpiles should have been for thread; they're not, I made them for cloth just like the above ones; didn't figure it out until mid-summer, after caravan, when I was puzzled why everybody was idle, and silk thread was still piling in the cavern.

- a dragon showed up:

I mentioned a dragon might come, but I didn't really think one would; dragons are ridiculously rare, I think this is the third or fourth I ever got, across thousands of hours of gameplay. I saved immediately, and went a-savescumming, 3 times:
  * first time, it snuck between cage traps, and nearly got over the bridge before I killed DF. So lesson learned: staggering traps in a checkerboard pattern looks really nice, but it does allow a lucky camper to just walk between traps . Bare minimum, plonk some next to the bridge.
  * second time, I closed the bridge, and the bastard started burning up the forest; it didn't even attack anything, just random fireballing. Prick. Reopening the bridge got him caged, but the fire also advanced over the cage, set it on fire, and released the dragon, again. That ended badly. BTW: I'm pretty sure the corridor I geared up to catch the roc isn't working at all; dragons do fly, and this one didn't react at all to the open way into the fort. I don't think pathing sees that corridor at all...
  * third time, I got lucky, and it stepped on a cage without setting anything on fire. Phew.

I still haven't made up my mind what to do with it, either I'll tame him and send him in invasions as a pet to some soldier (very dangerous, given that tamed animals don't get caged and wild-and-tamed animals have their taming expire), or I'll try to make him into a turret. The first is awesome but extremely unlikely to succeed, the second will work for certain but is immobile, prone to death by the first archer, and honestly kinda dull.

... Speaking of taming: if you want to use the GCS for webs, DON'T TAME IT. you'll then have a pain of a time getting it to fire webs.

And one more thing: I did drain the cavern basement; we already have corkscrews, only pipes are missing. We also have zero sand, and zero sand bags. I'd strongly recommend buying some from traders.

(While checking the sand situation with the help of DFHack, reveal all and prospect, I've come across a spoiler, regarding the standard spoiler. It's not bad, it's very, very good; I'll only say this just might have pushed SmithSoldier at the top of the best embarks I ever ran into).

--------------

Edit: Oh yeah! Happiness. So firstly, the serially sad sacks are not going to be a problem for very long. By the end of summer all of the very unhappy people got themselves killed in one way or another, and for once I had nothing to do with it; they either started fights they couldn't finish, or went terminally melancholic. The only dorf who's very unhappy now is DwarvenLord - at long last the happiness dropped as expected from her condition.

Secondly, I am now sure the mental issues are acquired. Dwarves in the military, that I only enlisted because they had no problems, are now prone to melancholy or tantrums. Even my own dwarfette, who I have photographic evidence had no issues at the start of 180, is now "more likely to stumble obliviously and go stark raving mad". Really, really, really need to tackle happiness.

[Glloyd]

How's it going so far Salmuek?

[Salmeuk]

I've been busy so far, sitting down today to play. Plans are to address the bedrooms and deploy the web gatherers. Expect. . something.

Also, good advice about the mood. That's an issue that will only cause future overseers even more trouble, if not dealt with immediately. Our dwarves need a damn break! And better QoL in general. I might have to switch gears from my usual authoritarian style and try to spruce the place up. Of course, that means not accomplishing as much, but that's really OK since the fortress seems largely self sufficient.

[Salmeuk]

Diary of Salmeuk, Early Spring of Year 181

After many years of toil and trouble in the burning forges I have once again been elected Overseer. Am I surprised? No. The dwarves are unhappy. They wanted change. And that's what I've always promised!

These past years have brought immense changes to the structure of Smithsoldiers. With the sharp eyes and fearsome analytical abilities of our leaders, our masons and smiths have raised huge structures, and dug the deepest of tunnels. Our engineers set complex traps, and our craftsdwarves have churned out many a fine figurine.

Yet, throughout all this, one simple thing has been neglected time and time again: Our happiness! What use is a steel battleaxe to a dwarf who is too depressed to fight? What use are the hundreds of raw marble boulders if our masons can't find inspiration to carve? Or the thousands of wooden logs we cut so many years ago, when our carpenters are busy drinking away the pain?

Our clothes are so ragged people would rather go naked, as seen by the piles of dirty rags littering our farms:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A dwarven attempt at fertilizer

So, it must be I who brings the change, yet again. So be it. I took a long walk around the corridors appraising the state of our people.

The bedrooms are spacious, but it takes far to long to reach them if a dwarf is coming from the workshop levels. Also the mudstone smells like mildew.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I feel for the dwarf with the last room on the left.

Our catacomb is nothing more than a mass grave.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Please ignore the fact that I was the one who started building coffins in this mined out vein.

At some point, somebody had the great idea to let goblins start working here. Mind you, I'm not against other races mingling with us, since Goblins can be quite friendly if they aren't trying to kill you. The issue is that these goblins make up a huge portion of our population.



They help out, but all too often I catch them just wandering around. Looking at things a little too closely, like our levers and traps. Is it that strange to imagine a few might be spies? Remember, Smithsoldiers was formed as a military outpost first and foremost. It seems we have lost our way.

I took a census of our entire workforce, the results of which you can see below. We are pushing 150 accountable citizens!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

======================

Things aren't all bad. In fact, this place is one of the most efficient forts I've had the pleasure to command:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They are like little ants. Ants with drinking problems.

Much work has been put into the defenses of our fortresses, as seen below.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some kind of unfinished trap hallway

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The surface keep, top to bottom.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The new trade entrance, quite lovely indeed! Though where is the lever to open the gate?

And holy hell, the potential for cloth is astounding! Years of unfettered growth have led to the largest web growth I have ever seen.



Let's see what I can do!

====================
OOC:

I only have one question right now, why does this single lever have two pages of attached mechanisms?? I am so afraid.