Well, I wanted to avoid double-posting, but I don't feel like waiting anymore... there wasn't much to comment on anyway, I suppose.
First, the farmers' guild comes around begging for a fancier guildhall as their membership has expanded, so I, following the best Goldsilver tradition I am pretty sure I started, put more artifacts and a couple fancy instruments into their otherwise empty room. Then the Denominations of Dust, a church worshipping my own god, Nokor the Dead Glands, asks for a temple; obviously, I kill two birds with one stone and declare the farmer's guildhall to be their temple. I then appoint Quantum Drop as the church's sacred tomb, as the only follower I actually know. She's very religious so I'm sure she will be good at the job and, you know, sacrifice lots of things or whatever. Speaking of sacrifices, all but a handful of the adult animals have finally been gelded; there's still plenty more to get to, but they should at least stop making MORE for a while.
Another one of those goblin performance art installations is trapped outside, but they haven't met the elves yet. Meanwhile, a pack of rabid children tear apart a giant bug on the roof of the ground-floor complex - which is already littered with corpses from the flying attacks earlier in the year. Also on the roof is a visiting dwarven dancer.
A brewer throws a tantrum and tries to wrassle the wildlife, but calms down after I threaten to make him fight the elves. Winter continues to drag on painfully like a forced metaphor. Most of the corpses trapped outside have yielded up ghosts, luckily all harmless so far. I put in orders for memorials and have them built in an inconspicuous spot. I notice that my orders to dye cloth are not being fulfilled, which results in noticing that we do not actually have a dyer's shop. So I have one of those built. It turns out there's plenty of dyed cloth lying around, though, so I don't know what the clothiers are complaining about. Probably too many people trying to use one bin. There are too many bins in this fort. Oh, never mind, I see, some bright star put a cloth stockpile in the hospital and now almost all our cloth and thread is there, forbidden to be used for anything but bandaging and suturing, which aren't taking place because nobody's getting hurt because they're locked inside and anyone who does get hurt (because of being punched by someone else who's having a bad day) just sort of dies of exploded body parts anyway. I just delete the stockpile, but I don't actually know if anyone will reclaim the goods, so probably someone should check that later.
Even with all the adult male mammals gelded (gelt?), a certain backlog of births continues. Gelding all the animals is becoming my
thing, the core project I'm most interested in completing before the end of the year. I'm also considering deconstructing all the nestboxes, but I probably won't bother. Something for my successor to do, though: there are enough poultry in the world already.
Fourteen geldings left. No, sixteen, some new cavies just appeared. One month and a week left to do them in. Can we make it in time? What's funniest to me is that the animals often attack the gelder afterward. I mean, I would too. Reg, one of the threshers, is inspired by all the gelding and claims a craftsdwarf's workshop. He gets going pretty fast, might actually finish before my term is up. One of the slowest, most crippled dwarves crosses half the fort to geld an alpaca. I let him have his moment and then remove him from all labors because nobody has time for that. He's our best wood burner, but it's not like that's impressive, so I invite/coerce a bunch of other dwarves to take up wood burning as a hobby. At some point while I'm watching him crawl through the pasture, the last ghost is memorialized too, but there will definitely be more later. Outstanding geldings down to nine.
For unclear reasons, a pack of dogs savages two human visitors. I assume they deserved it. I am pleased to observe that the dogs involved are gelded.
I will definitely take the name as a compliment. I was pretty amazed too. That was a lot of geldings! Only five left, provided nothing decides to give birth on me. Reg is officially inducted as a stonecrafter, which, at the moment, means that his job will be to get back to gelding things.
The brewer from before gets stroppy again and murders a war dog. He lives outside with the elves now. Four geldings left. Plenty of time. Oh, he's done living with the elves now. That's fine too. I think life under siege has affected me for the better, despite claims I've heard whispered around to the contrary. That's right, I hear you whispering.
Unrelatedly, I kind of feel like whoever put the original farmer's workshops so far away from both the animal pasture and the original farms should be fired.
Animals are still giving birth. This is offensive. Only females so far, though. I mean only female babies. Obviously only females are giving birth. I wouldn't have thought that was worth noting. Oh, now there's a male, but it's an alpaca, so it's fine. I did geld a few alpacas, but not all of them, since they're theoretically more useful. We have more males than actually necessary to keep the population up, but I figured someone with more patience might want to selectively breed them. So there's only one gelding left to do, and Rovod the hunter is on it. I suggest letting the elves in to celebrate when we're done, but fatcat says no.
A bunch of dogs keep climbing the tower near where the elves are and getting shot at. One of them just tanked like eight arrows. This is irritating, and appears to be making more elves show up.
The last cavy is gelt. I have three more weeks in my term and no idea how to spend them. My purpose in life has been served, truly. Cog the suturer throws a tantrum and tries to beat up a dancer, but only gets his own ass kicked. He will not be forced to fight the elves.
Did you know that Yung Boujee's husband is the single happiest dwarf in all Goldsilver? There's a lesson for us all in that. Get you a woman who turns into a raving bloodthirsty monster every month and has to be locked in a dungeon to save the rest of us. Wait, no.
Honestly, Boujee's doing much better after I installed the werelock - the enclosed area by which she can receive food and drink - and gave her a temple. Reflecting on this reminds me that the werelock is currently open on our side and she'd probably like to have it switched. Hopefully, future overseers will remember to provide for our secluded sister. I can hear her complaining about being naked in there, in fact. You'd think she has bigger problems.
Wait. Wait! NO!
Come on, there's still time, come on! You can do it, Rimtar!
Shut up, Lucky, I don't have
time for this right now!
Almost theeeeeeeeere...
YES!
That's it for me. I'm retiring for a while. Democracy is just too stressful sometimes!
Then a cavy gave birth at the last minute and ruined everything.
All told, I'm not sure that this was a very productive year, but at least the animal problem is under control going forward, and very few dwarves have murdered anyone and are still alive to talk about it! I also think there might be a problem somewhere, because I haven't had FPS this low since a fort where a bunch of demons were trapped in a stairway constantly looking for new paths. There are an
awful lot of animals, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some more serious pathing issue somewhere. I don't
think it's the main gates because the situation did not really improve while they were open, but they may be contributing.
I feel like there was something else I wanted to mention for the future, but I don't remember what it was. I bet it wasn't anything that's going to destroy the fortress or anything.
Save.