Part 1 (220 - 224).
The initial priorities were to continue magma floods, to improve happiness for the seven unhappy dorfs, and to train the army as much as possible. After Aban was sacrificed, two more goals were added: increase population (and then army), and fight the goblins. For now, the population cap was left at 75.
Edge obsidianizing has continued; even before Aban’s end, there had been progress on this project. I too had some zombie issues; apparently, they somehow manage to traverse one tile
on the roof of the cavern, monkey bars style, to reach the stairway. The squad of skilled hammerers was kept stationed in the channel, which really paid dividends when Quula’s corpse has followed the same path:
Despite these complications, the fortifications and floodgates were eventually built, and magma was pumped as desired. Flooding the western edge with magma has dropped the number of undead to around 100, a number that has kept steady since then.
Then, after Aban’s sacrifice, the pumping was started again to annihilate a new batch of zombie spawns, and, uh, left on for longer than intended, resulting in a much bigger obsidian patch and the inner lake being completely sealed off from the edge. Interestingly, the caps for giant mushroom trees in the water have started burning too. This was not the case when flooding the northern edge, despite having near-identical conditions.
End result:
Not all water sources have been destroyed; there are two very small ones on the western edge, and to the south, the lake connects to the edge underneath large overhangs of natural stone. That one can’t be sealed, we’ll have to put up with it.
For the unhappy chaps, great progress has been made. Well sort of; two of them got killed by the dwarven justice system, but the rest are either happy, or nearly so. One of those deaths was kinda my fault: the fort had no captain of the guard when I got it, so I appointed AvolitionBrit. Except AvolitionBrit is a miner, so at the first tantrum poor Zutthan got his brains picked in a very literal way. Don’t feel too bad for ol’ Zutthan, he was making an awful mess in the library:
Then I replaced AvolitionBrit with the mayor (since he already had rooms assigned), and found out that the mayor cannot serve as a justice officer:
Makes ya wonder why he can even be appointed in the first place.
Another Forgotten Beast emerged in the first cavern’s airlock. It stepped on a webbed cage, and got trapped. There are 3 more such traps waiting for customers, and I’m not opening the airlock until they’re filled. Those cages are an irreplaceable resource.
Plus, the corpse of the web-spitting FB that made the super-traps in the first place is still there; crossbow-dwarves occasionally get stationed in the fortifications corridor to snipe at it. That zombie is the best crossbow training tool you could hope for.
In the background to all this, adamantine processing has picked up. I’ve dug as much as I dared, and built a new section near the smithy to keep the newly-made adamantine threads away from doctors:
That last bit… didn’t work, actually. I need to remember that dwarves can climb walls nowadays, especially when they get up to do something they shouldn’t do.
From the extracted adamantine, I made all the rigid armor pieces -- breastplates, helms, gauntlets, greaves, and high boots. I’ve read at some point that the best protective combo is adamantine breastplate with copper mail shirt, so that’s what people get.
Also, a dumbass metalsmith wasted 2 adamantine wafers to make a ring. He’s lucky we have so much addie, otherwise I’d have locked him in the forge and left him to die. And no, forbidding the addie was not an option -- dude would not settle for any other kind of bar:
We did get a legendary +2
metalcrafter out of it, so we can have some masterwork gold furniture, at least.
Back in the second cavern, beasts have started moving. Amas the Tin Monster has gotten in a fight with Tharumi, a FB composed of flames. None of them died, but the strip of land to the east has been thoroughly incinerated. Amas then moved away towards the west, but Flame Boi stuck around; in a single spot, actually. So I took the risk, and built fortifications near it:
Great success!
Amas went on to kill another FB composed of mud. Besides Amas itself, there are no more living FBs in the second cave; three zombie ones still exist, one under water and two stuck under trees, but that’s it.
With Tharumi dead and Amas elsewhere, the fort’s military dwarves were called to build the remainder of the east wall -- the one that was interrupted in late 219 by Amas wandering in that general direction. This time, there were no interruptions, and the Eastern edge was finally sealed.
By this point, it’s the winter of 221. The first hammer squad is almost entirely legendary; the other two progress far slower (as expected), and it’s time to look at our neighbors.
The dominant goblin civilization, the one shaped like a scorpion, is named The Nightmare of Coasts; it’s the one with 25,000 members. Their civilization is not yet visible to our fort, but Legends already ratted them out as being at war with our parent civ, and everybody else in this world.
There is a second goblin civ, the Ghoul of Grips, intertwined with the holdings of our mountain home; they number barely 900 goblins, and we've been at peace with them since 190. Let’s ask them for trade, you can always use more idiots to haul away your garbage and bring you iron for the privilege.
So, in the autumn of 221, three axe-dwarves peacefully visited HatredSabres to negotiate a trade agreement. I’m not even being facetious, they really did come in peace. They’ve been snubbed and ignored, and returned empty-handed days later.
The next two seasons pass with general fortress cleanup for civilians and hammer training for the military. The airlock to the third cavern has been opened a few times, and brought in a cave dragon and three jabberers. I have not yet trained any of them, because I’m waiting for the trainers to level up some more. They can do that by practicing on the near-endless tide of crundles and bugbats that’s also pouring from the airlock.
In the summer of 222, we are under siege! By five extremely pathetic goblins.
Really, it’s not even worth calling the army for this. Instead, I just activate the Underground burrow, and open the door. Four of the five are trapped, the last one flees. The prisoners were killed later by the least experienced squad.
This also makes another project into a necessity: surface defense can no longer be ignored. Problem is, I’m not sure how to handle it. Walls? Traps? Dwarven power? Strategic zombie deployment? All of the above?
For the time being, I’ll just build the two cages with eerie mist zombies on the surface, and connect them to levers. All cage traps outside have been dismantled, too; I don't want the uber-zombies getting themselves trapped before they’re done slaughtering my enemies.
In retaliation, our legendary hammer-dwarves are ordered to raze CleanedWraiths, the nearest dark pit belonging to The Nightmare of Coasts. In hindsight, I should have checked if the siege was indeed from the Nightmare, or if the Ghouls have gotten uppity. Either way, the Civilizations screen tells me we are now at war with both goblin civilizations.
The hammer-dwarves have brought CleanedWraith’s population from ~110 goblins to about 20. No treasures were looted from it, and no dwarves were lost, or even injured for that matter.
This misadventure has massively upended armor for all squads; all five, not just the squad that left, have dropped gear and refused to either pick it back up, or get replacements. This is a known issue with raids, and likely a side-effect of reusing migrant code to bring the squads back in the fort. At least they hauled the dropped armor back inside this time; it’s a lot worse when they completely, physically, drop their armor and other gear on the map’s edge. Since the issue didn’t fix itself during autumn, I eventually disbanded all squads, and reformed them after about a month. This finally solved any equipment glitches.
When trading with the dwarven caravan (as if any other caravan visits us) I managed to ditch the mayor’s increasingly large collection of figurines. He had just issued a mandate for two more of the stupid things, so I promptly sold the
four bins of existing figurines, and delayed completing the mandate. Without a trade ban in place, we got away with it scot-free. Then crafted two figurines, after the caravan left.
At the beginning of 223, we get a halfway-decent siege!
Still not big enough to deploy Mistem the uber-dwarf, but we can use the ettin. Even unarmed, he quickly slaughters the entire siege, then is caged back without incident. Most of the goblin corpses rise as normal zombies, but that’s to be expected.
Hilariously, one of the goblins was unarmed; instead, he carried a book with him, and managed to kill a zombie wombat with it. I’m disproportionately happy to get some new reading material, our entire civilization literally has a single book, and I’m beyond sick of “DellReigned and the Universe”.
In summer, more good news: our human allies have finally sent us a caravan. Only two wagons, and fairly sparse, it was nonetheless traded with at over 300% profit, and
bribed gifted with even more valuables, to rapidly increase their bad opinion of us.
In autumn, the dwarven caravan followed. It occurs to me that now that we have caravans, we don’t really need them anymore; the fort is well armed, well armored, well dressed, and has food to spare. The only thing that caravans can bring is even more iron… which we can now ‘extract’ from goblins.
Speaking of goblins… it’s time to beat on them some more. All four squads are sent to a dark pit each:
They return in the same month; all pits were fairly close after all. None of them has fallen yet, and CleanedWraiths has managed to go from 20 to 30 inhabitants, despite the slaughter. On the other hand, armor problems were nowhere near as bad this time. While all 40 dwarves did find themselves technically unarmored, they still retained armor in their inventory, and hauled it back inside the fort. There was another slight glitch where all squaddies besides the leader were regarded as civilians; this one goes away fast if the game is saved and reloaded (and I mean from Dwarf Fortress’ normal interface, not with quicksave).
Goblins retaliate very quickly; in winter, we are sieged. Still not a large siege, about on par with the previous one:
At first, they’re ignored; 40-odd dwarves need to go dress themselves, and there’s a strange mood going on too. This ends up being in our favor, because the goblins find, fight and kill yet another were-chameleon:
Then the ettin comes out to play once more. He does, of course, make short work of the invaders, but he ain’t doing too hot either: syndrome zombie or not, all these battles are taking their toll on the semi-megabeast:
Heck, you can even see his guts trailing after him:
Back into the fort: after a month and a half, the army is still not putting on all armor, despite being removed from all jobs. So, I resort to the tried and true method: disband squads, let dwarves walk around for an in-game week or so, then recreate the squads.
And that’s how winter ends: with more than half the fort getting dressed, and a surface in dire need of cleanup.
This was the turn until Sunday/yesterday. I’ll continue playing today & tomorrow, then post the second part and the save on Wednesday at the latest.
The failed trading request to the Ghouls was a gamble that didn't pan out. I sent the axe-dwarves to 'demand tribute', the only way to contact an invisible civilization without starting an outright war; Dwarf Fortress chose to start a war regardless. Oh well. There's about 900 of them, they'll get slaughtered.
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Topic: The Fortress Of Friendlytreason | OVERSEERS WE NEED YOU (Read 39357 times)