On the second day of Spring, when the blaring warhorns of the dwarven siege echoed down the unguarded entrance ramp, we knew this would be a bloody fight. Our own kind, come to kill us and take our wealth. Our two squads were summoned to the surface, led by Ustuth.
It was a complete victory over the traitorous dwarves, with only minor sustained injuries. The suddenness of this attack was concerning.
===
The fighters were only just returning to the common hall when shouts came from the cavern food stocks: a web-slinging forgotten beast! Some kind of mud quadraped, given the horrifying name "Egngun Juiceskull the Gutter-Froth of Gills."
"Juiceskull" obliterated three skilled fighters before we locked the doors and tried to wall it in... webs are extremely dangerous no matter how weak the beast. This was successful, but we were forced to write off the newly constructed brewing complex and a fair amount of stockpiled food.
It appears the beast infiltrated the fortress through some exposed mineshafts near the 2nd cavern layer. At least I hope so - there is some confusion with the lack of a main staircase to orient around.
===
The fortress itself could be described in three parts: buried just beneath the rock cliffs of the surface and just above the first cavern layer you will find our bedrooms, dining hall, throne room, temples, workshops and moderate storage.
Around elevation 10, just below, we find the walled-off cavern layer where our animals graze in security. This is quite a splendid area but underdeveloped.
20 z-levels below, the magma forges fueled by artificial lava pits constructed by the previous overseer. A feat of engineering saves us the grueling walk to the core.
Below this sits muddied stone rooms full of farms and seed storage, as well as a specialized room for pressing oil from nuts. Nearby - our old distillery and food courrt, now the new home of Egngun Juiceskull the web-shooting forgotten beast.
New tombs are under construction . . .
do you think we'll need them?Finally, the magma sea, with a still-functional pump should any overseer wish to experiment with "Armok's water."
===
Overall, the main focus of the fortresses 200+ population is hauling bars of metal from one stockpile to another. While I do think that stocking metal is good, and generally want things organized . . . there is simply too much metal to have this hauling be the priority of the dwarves. As well, it appears that we have two main furnace and forge locations. I dismantled the surface forges as we have these nice, new magma smelters to work with. But the bars remain orphaned...
A second timesink was the corpse processing station located in the forested valley south of the fortress gates. The walk to and from this pile of refuse took a great deal of time, and many dwarves found themselves needlessly rained upon. New refuse piles were built underground, near the surface entrace, to better serve the inner fortress as well as handle and siege leftovers. A corpse-smasher was also created and began operation.
Then, late in summer.... massive drama with Avuz. Apparently a large number of export-banned items were shipped out to the humans, turning what was already a punishable act into something utterly disgusting. Over 10 of us, including near every previous overseer (and myself) were chained up in the jail. I wondered why exactly we had built such a large prison; now I knew.. Avuz was a bit of a totalitarian.
Most of us had 30 days in the slammer, and rough days those were, with inactive orderlies some of us struggled to even get a drink. We could at least talk amongst one another, mostly gossip, and occasionally plans of revenge and rebellion. But nothing much came of it.
Occasionally one of the axefighters would wander through on guard duty, and sneer at us and say, "Stepped on Avuz's toes, have you?"
===
Autumn brought another siege, but many of our fighters were chained up in prison! It was here that we noticed our pet giant bat had been chained in front of our doorway like some kind of living bait. Defend the bat at all costs!
"more legible than ASCII"
The remaining fighters rushed up to the surface. And prevailed - with few injuries. Two squads or so of goblins were not a problem for these fighters.
But, tragedy - the giant bat took three copper bolts, unable to escape as it was chained... would the creature survive?
Yes, yes it would! The bat was moved to the main floor where it can safely flap about with it's fuzzy bat wings and cute lil ears.
Work was taken to dump and crush a large amount of the excess rock salt from our previous excavations. More space was created for furniture storage, as we had piled up quite a bit. This left the original storage area for the finer goods.
===
Winter brought... another forgotten beast. A flying, web-sligning theropod. Greatful was I to see it confined to the third caverns, and it made no immediate move for us. I went through the various strange and twisting pathways, looking for places to sneak in, locking the doors as I went, finally feeling satisfied there were no gaps in the stone, and saw fit to let the dwarves continue business as usual.
This was a huge mistake. It took only a few days for the beast to creep about and discover a path inside. By the time I heard the alert, it was too late, and the flying beast was inside our farms. Then, killing all dwarves present, began to move up the central staircase. It was too late, no time to wall it in, and we would lose our farms.. Both squads were ordered downstairs.
They arrived to a grisly scene, with Whipaxes sitting atop a pile of corpses, clawing and tearing at all those nearby, who were dodging in and out of reach trying to rescue the still-living children trapped underneath the dinosaur's mass. Engaging the monster from distance with spears, while others dove into the fray. Some lost limbs as the huge jaws of the beast rended arm from body.
In the end, no single dwarf killed the creature, but instead it bled out, dying from a thousand separate wounds inflicted by fighter and citizen alike.
Thankfully so, as the death count surpassed 20. Even the Baron Consort Bomrek was killed by the thing.
That night, the third beast attacked. Yet another quadraped, this time constructed from beryl, a yellow creature that leaked poison into the air. But it could not find a way inside, and merely bellowed with great hostility underneath our floor hatches.
===
The year ended in a flurry of work, hauling excess stone, organizing furniture, smelting steel and swords for our newly-organized military uniforms (all wield swords for simplicity's sake, however a following overseer should reassign as needed). Instead of the paltry copper and bronze, the new steel gear will greatly enhance weapon master and unskilled recruit alike.
Our food sits comfortably at ~4k beer units, ~2k food units, and meats and fishes galore. All the metal bars were organized near the new forges, and I am happy to say fps has improved by about 10... though this may be due to the sorrowful news that over the year we lost 30 dwarves altogether, bringing our population to 170.
As far as labor goes, it's somewhat of a free-for all, but most of the dwarves are idle, excluding the usual managerial tasks - leaving it up to the next in line to put 170 free hands to a good use.
As atonement for my failures as overseer, I will step down from the role, and take up one of the fresh-forged short swords, leading the squad, "The Crystalline Souls," to great victory! Huzzah!save here:
https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16333Thanks for reading... after some cleaning up the fortress is promising.
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Topic: Irritan Anam - Steam Release Succession Fort! (Read 20466 times)