Year 4 (303)Usually in community forts, I’d play a season and then post the results; this tends to result in mammoth posts, because I get really verbose. So now I’m trying to limit myself to some 3 pages of draft text, or about 5 minutes of reading time.
Rules in effect:
Hedgerow -- “I also made a mandate for all major entrances to be made of peach tree wood. That goes for bridges and gates, but also doors”. May have been an in-game statement, but consistency isn’t going to hurt. And while the game proper doesn’t care about wood color, StoneSense does.
Also Hedgerow: strong recommendation, but not obligation, to use an ASCII-like tileset. No quote because the original post got purged when Hedgerow gave up on the project.
EuchreJack's Rule: If anything happens to the Tame Hedgehog, you have to report on it. I don't care if you butcher and eat it*, keep it as a pet, put it in a tomb with Coordinator Hedgerow then drop the ceiling on them both, or anything else, you have to tell us what happens to it. You should also prioritize acquiring more.
* No worries, that’s not actually possible.
Most overseers have reasons to aim for the position, and I’m no exception. Some have a project that won’t leave their thoughts. Others have a grievance with their fort, and aim to correct the perceived error. Others just want power and don’t have any kind of specific goal. And some don’t choose at all, being forced into the position by their peers.
Me, I guess I’m a mix of 1 and 2. To cut a long story short, we’re sitting ducks, and somebody needs to fix that; since nobody else took any significant steps, might as well be me.
There are multiple were-cursed around, with several different were-curses; they’re probably going to attack us. There are multiple towers around; they’re probably going to attack us. There are some goblins in weird positions -- maybe independent, maybe taken over by the towers; either way, they’re probably going to attack us.
If you’re expecting this work to be a masterwork of philosophy or rhetoric, you’ll be disappointed. I’m here to do a job, and to tell you how and why I did it. If you’re looking for some spectacular epic filled with gripping combat where champions face each other in honorable combat, you’ll also be disappointed; I’m of the firm belief the point of a fight is to win it, not win honorably by fighting ‘fair’, whatever that is supposed to mean.
This might be judged rude, and maybe not without reason. But try to see this from my own perspective: in all likelihood, you and I will never meet, and your opinion isn’t going to ever reach me. Do you know what will reach me? Burying my own. Half my extended family is here, if anyone thinks I’m going to sit around and get killed by undead abominations, they’re out of their mind.
So at the start of spring, here I am as overseer, poring over official documents.
The surface can be sealed from all enemies that don’t climb or fly. I question the wisdom of making a giant pit as the nexus of our fortress, but that’s for later. For now, I’d like to lay down a few cages. We have exactly 4 mechanisms, so a plan emerges -- I’ll build four emergency traps in the entry corridor. This means we’ll definitely need to move the trade depot by summer, but that’s all the way in summer.
The big project for my year is, of course, the military.
Luckily for us, we have a spectacularly large number of citizens with military skill; in a fort of 83 adults, there are exactly 13 who
don’t know how to wield a weapon (funnily, two of them are enlisted in the current military squad, the Iron Fists). Here are the unfiltered numbers, with overlapping skills (meaning, if one citizen has skill with hammer, mace and sword, then s/he was counted 3 times):
Axe: 7 (3 overlaps)
Hammer: 7 (4 overlaps)
Mace: 9 (8 overlaps)
Spear: 19 (10 overlaps)
Swords: 29 (13 overlaps)
Bows: 19 (19 overlaps)
Crossbows: 20 (10 overlaps)
Right now, we are held back by the availability of weapons, not soldiers.
And weapons in turn are held back by the availability of metals. So far, the fort has only located galena and tetrahedrite as weapons-grade metals. There is doubtlessly some adamantine in the bowels of the earth, but no sane fort relies on it for all defensive needs.
At least for swords we can rely on obsidian; none was found ready-made, but it is surprisingly easy to create from magma and water, and geography makes things very easy for us too:
Level -6, the bottom of the third cavern:
Magma shouldn’t be much further down either; a staircase has previously stopped at level -10, due to finding hot stone underneath. A few exploratory tunnels later, and the magma sea is found. Its highest point is on level -11:
The obsidian farm itself will be made in the simplest way possible: a two-level room on levels -10 and -11, allowing it to be filled with both water and magma by sheer gravity. The only thing I really need to be careful with is to close the magma sea with a magma-safe grate, and two magma-safe mechanisms. The rest can be whatever.
(ooc: this is the point where I more or less went FUCK IT and changed back to Phoebus… I do NOT get along with ASCII tilesets, they make my eyes hurt. I tried, it didn’t work, I’m glad it was not mandatory).
Above on the surface, some sort of protective structures have to be made. At minimum, I’d want a palisade to surround our above ground buildings and farms. They’ll come in handy when goblins or towers pay us a visit.
Lastly, there’s all the minor issues inherent in running a fort: clothing is starting to wear out and should probably be handled better, drink stocks need to be replenished, two people are unhappy, we have three guild requests to honor, and so on.
The last one at least can be handled easily; not only do we have some statues ordered by my predecessor, but we also started accumulating artifacts; it would be simplicity itself to throw down a pedestal in each guild and display one of the fort’s treasures in it. In fact, I should do that right away.
303-01-12 Two new arrivals have ‘graced’ us today: the elven caravan and a mountain titan in the vague shape of a snail.
Surprisingly, the latter did not attack the former; instead, it picked on a muskox that was closer and started lobbing spitballs at it. Reasonably lethal spitballs, to be fair. The elves, who had front-row seats for the spectacle, did the sensible thing and fled.
This whole silliness allowed us dwarves enough time to rush indoors, and raise the bridge. The Iron Fists were allowed three days to assemble in front of the closed bridge; then the bridge was lowered back down, and our brave unarmored soldiers were ordered to intercept the beast on a bend, where hopefully its ranged attack would not be as devastating.
We won immediately. I should have had more trust.
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Topic: The Colorless Home: Seaside Nightmare - Successor Thread (Read 23578 times)