Some updates, my mystery fort is
Ulosothro (Entrancegrape), the castle-capital of Omon Obin since Señamatem's fall and until Jas' rise. And it was... not fun; it was work. The castle has several issues, including that at least 3 levels are buried in the hill. This forced me to raise the courtyard two levels above the usual pedestal building. I might be exaggerating, but the courtyard is about one third of a 3x3 map, which is... a lot. I've finally completed the courtyard around Monday and made a few buildings out of marble. I've also had to make some small walls around so the "basement" isn't seen by adventurers, but I didn't check how it looks from an adventurer level. On the other hand, I've seen the hummies use the up-down ramps, so hopefully adventurers can too; at least one entrance is accessible; I've remade the
really plain entrance of two simple ancient wood double doors. Speaking of ramps, they break (become "unusuable") in real finicky ways, including as a result of a roof. I had to keep the tiles above the ramps open to the sky.
My plan to replace the entire castle in either granite or marble has died a painful death. Not only did it take me a few days just to make the courtyard, but only a few buildings besides and I had to leave the "basement" in that Minecraft covered-up way. And I
loath seeing that in others' build; as much as I respect people's work on projects, it just breaks my immersion seeing grass for miles under the foundation.
I've counted a whooping 16 thralls that came to Ulosothro's outskirts as migrants with a soft cap of 50 migrants, so that does not bode well for Omon Obin
at all. Not having a bookkeeper or broker were annoying too, but what put the lid on it was the lag, FPS falling to 50. In hindsight, it was probably the animals running around the castle being blocked by all the doors, but at that point, I felt I'd burn out, so just as I finished the courtyard, I retired.
On that note, is rutile useful for anything other than walls or crafts? I wanted to make a "purple room" from rutile, but was one wall short (which I replaced with marble) as I didn't turn it into blocks in case I needed it for something else.
After all that trouble, I thought to check out Ilrallenod... and surprisingly, I actually had fun with it. There was only one thrall in the NPC buildings above the lava lake, which I promptly exterminated. Somehow, the capital even has less necros + undead than Eskôn received from migrants alone. And, again somehow, I'm at 100 colonists with 100 FPS. I think it's that I either kill any non-fur non-milk giving animal or that I pastured them outside and out of the way. The elves are being uppity as usual, but they give me wood and gem pedestals, so it's fine. Wood is actually a problem, since there's nothing on the surface and I emptied out the caves. I am serious, any tree in the caves that's not under water has been chopped. I'm observing also a variety in comparison with Eskôn, where there are a LOT of blood thorn in comparison to other types. There were the usual bugs, the dwarves (and a human I suspect died of old age) refused to get about anything done in the first year, but I hope I fixed it now. Now the capital has actual stairs, though there are "redundant" stairs as a few of the nobles were teleported on reclaim in the cave and dehydrated around there while next to the lake. Nobles.
And that's another thing, or a series of things: there's only one or maybe two water sources
waaaaay in the third cavern layer. The layer that wasn't discovered in nearly a millennium and was a wall away from being so. The layer between where the NPC bedrooms and the other layer of caverns are located. Also, the Low Roads run EXACTLY over the bedrooms. That's some shoddy design. I'm surprised they didn't just build over the lava directly and opened a few holes to smoke the fumes too. I've also rebuilt some of the Low Roads, they still go where they were supposed to, but I blocked a part of it both from the adjacent caverns and the (no longer) open ceiling. All in ominous slate, because by the time I found some good chunks of granite, this had become a style.
I'm also one year from playing over 10 years in fort mod in Orid Xem, which I hope I'll manage by tomorrow, then I'll put the save up.