I come here to tell you the sordid tale of Kerlig Odkish, "The Shell of Ferns".
It is a tale of frustration and woe, and pig-headed determination to see a mood through to success.
You see, Zefon Tobulzuz, my esteemed Manager, felt he needed to get out and do something more dwarfly than add numbers all day. Besides, he had already acheived Legendary status in Record-Keeping, and I wanted to have someone else fill the post.
So I replaced him, and sent him off with a chisel to smooth some stone in a safe part of the fortress.
No sooner had he chipped his first bit of felsite than he was taken by a Mood - possession, of course. Nothing in this mood was to be easy. "Mood?" thought I, "... but he has no craft! Except..." And with dawning dread, I realized that my Ultra-Mighty, Superdwarvenly Tough bookeeper was a dabbling engraver.
Sure enough, he headed right for the Craftsdwarf workshop and booted out the hapless toy-maker there.
I thought about walling him in then and there, but I sort of liked my bookeeper. So I watched with bated breath as he grabbed a stone... and another stone... please, a simple artifact? And then he stopped in the workshop and pouted. Something was missing.
Glass.
I immediately sent orders to my magma glass furnace. "Green glass! Please, please, have it be green..." Ah, but I had never collected sand. No worries! My surface-most floor had plenty of good, white sand. So I order a sand collection.
No bags.
All right, I cleared all the jobs from my two fastest dwarves, and sent them racing to make cloth and leather bags.
That done, I re-issued the sand order. Eventually, I get green glass. No joy: the grim Zefon deepened his beardy pout. Clear glass, then. Oh, crap, an ashery.
I go to build an ashery. Stone *block*?!? who makes anything out of stone BLOCK! Fine, fine, clear the door orders from my busy mason's shop, and set up a few block orders. After three separate dwarves START the task, only to wander off to sleep or eat or drink, one eventually settles in. But she's taking... forever.
Meanwhile, I check my pouty protege, and realize that he also wants leather... and shell... and bars. Uh-oh... shell? I need to start fishing! I had never bothered, given my successful farms and kitchens. Fortunately, the King had seen fit to send me a doughty fisherdwarf, and minutes later she was angling in the swamps, where I'd seen turtles before. She begins hauling in turtles, and I set up a fishery. Soon we have turtle food in the barrels. Next, feeling clever, I go to the kitchen and give the cook and her wee baby orders to only make meals with turtle and camel milk. Eyeing me suspiciously, she complies, and shortly turns out a deliecious meal with turtle. I check the stocks... no shell? Oh right... meal preparation consumes seeds; why not shells, too? Crunchy soup, I guess. I countermand the cooking orders while I think of something else... I've got over 500 Lavish meals prepared. No one but the most staunchly turtle-loving dwarf would turn down one of those.
I go back to check on the block job... still nothing? This is taking FOREVER! Oh... a red [CLT] tells me the bad news - I hadn't kept up with furniture storage, and things are dire. I have no free space for another stockpile indoors, and my miners are so proficient that EVERY stone gets left intact. So outdoors we go, set up some flags and get everydwarf in the fortress hauling all the statues and coffins and tables and chairs and mechanisms and bins and bags and you name it that had piled up out into the rain. Huge dwarf yard sale from hell.
Fortunately, this does the trick and soon it's down to a gray [CLT] - good enough! back to the kitchens! I build a second fishery outdoors, set up a tiny food stockpile beside it, set up a turtle-preparation task, and wait for my legendary miner (my fastest dwarf) to run grab a turtle. And then *BOOM* I lock every door to the food stockpiles. He fillets the turtle, carefully leaving the shell intact, and leaves it in the stockpile.
23 dwarves eye the turtle uneasily. (Zefon is glaring at the cat from the shop he's barricaded into, and two dwarves were trapped inside with all the food and booze, and were forced to make do. Oh, and my mason is busy on the block, still.) Finally with a stoic shrug, my planter steps forward and deigns to eat the reptile. No sooner does he drop the shell at his feet when my carpenter grabs the shell, rushes over to the refuse pile and drops it in. Successs! I unlock the doors. With much grumbling and rusty boots, the dwarves shuffle back into the comforting darkness.
And the block! It's finally done! I charge downstairs and try to set up the ashery. No luck... someone's moving the block. Wait wait wait... ok there we go.. Oaken barrel, birchen bucket... ADAMATINE BLOCK?!?!? What the... The. Idiot. Mason. Carved. The. Block. Out. Of. Adaminatine. What the devil did she think the blue stuff was? Troll dental floss?!? No wonder it took so bloody long!
Never mind! Nothing can stop me now! A set up a job converting the wood ash into potash. After some arguing about what sort of task this was, and where the ash went, and whether the miner needed a drink RIGHT THEN, the potash was made.
Pearlash. Right! To the kiln! I set up a pearlash task, and the furnace operator helpfully cancels the task. The potash is on the move. Then the porter drops it in search of cow roast. Finally, I set up the task and.... the furnace operator, now bored, has wandered off to fill the manager's order for 29 galena ore smeltings. I give the substitute manager a suspicious look. Job security? And get some rookie to cook the potash.
Okay pearlash... now, wait for it to reach the bar/block stash. Clear glass. Grr, the glassblower is asleep. Okay, the fisherdwarf can do it, it's only raw glass!
The glass is done. And from above comes the stomping of Zefon's boots! He collects the glass, the shell, some tin, and hippo leather I bought off some human merchant types. He retreats into the workshop.
A week later, he emerges with Kerlig Odkish, "The Shell of Ferns". He's very proud of it, even though he remembers nothing of his possession. It's a felsite ring. On it are images of a dwarf fishing. I've banished him back to his office and his managerial role. I'm slowly putting the fortress back to rights, setting labour properly again. We lost some furniture to the kobolds, but we can build more.
And I have an adamantine ashery, Pride of the Kingdom. Just what every fortress needs.
I'm spent.
[ November 13, 2007: Message edited by: Doctor Lucky ]
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Topic: Fey moods (Read 2283 times)