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[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Galena. (late summer, year 21)
Elfbane and Emperor are working together to carve out the area where the booze is actually going to be put. Those two are manics when it comes to reducing walls to dust. MAN.


Shoruke's Log. 22nd of Galena. (late summer, year 21)
With the exception of Monk's Turret, the arena is complete. The miners really need to get their butts in gear when it comes to channelling. Anyway, I've cancelled the expansion to Monk's Turret for now, and stationed Monk in it. As soon as Rick's done his nap, then he'll head on over to his new station (the inside of the arena), and the fight can begin.

Shoruke's Log. 25th of Galena. (late summer, year 21)
On the first day of autumn, the lever will be pulled, and the first ever (spectated) arena match of The Red Sands of Doom will commence! (I don't want to start 6 days before the season change, JUST IN CASE I want to savescum). Everyone who is either on break or has nothing to do (there's not many of the latter) is going to watch. One of the stonecrafters even threw a party in the 'statue garden' in the arena foyer.

Shoruke's Log. 1st of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
Frick. Monk can't fight with only two bolts in his quiver. I had the bridge reopened, had him expelled from the army (oh he was PISSED about that), and let him rejoin. He went off to get a different crossbow and different bolts. Hopefully he comes back with a full stack this time.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
Nope. Following his usual pattern, instead of being on task when he's needed for combat, Monk is off doing something else... in this case, napping. I think I need a talk with that guy.

In other news, everyone loves the statue gardens; or rather, they love the masterwork clear glass windows within the statue gardens.


Shoruke's Log. 5th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
Apparently warthogs love turtle. Now those two warthogs are perfectly tame.
I think.
I hope.
Maybe?

Anyway, Monk is slowly going berserk. I think what happened was, he was assigned a war dog, who was recently a) trained from stray dog to war dog, and b) assigned to be butchered. So his pet was butchered, and apparently being reduced to chunks counts as 'decaying', so he was forced to endure the death and decay of a pet. He's quite unhappy. Hopefully blowing goblins to bits will cheer him up.

Shoruke's Log. 8th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
Monk has a brand new iron crossbow, a new cat leather quiver, and 25 +iron bolts+. He's now on his way to blow some goblins to pieces. Wait, where's Rick? *checks the booze stockpile*. Damn you, Rick.

Shoruke's Log. 10th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
So Rick and Monk were both in position and geared up to begin the fight. The order to pull the lever was issued... and then Rick ran off to refill his backpack with rations. The fight is never going to happen at all at this rate.

And the Count Consort issued a ban on exporting tables. Why?!? Okay I know why, it's because he likes tables to an unhealthy extent, but why?!? It's not like anyone was going to export any tables anyway... we're doing fine just exporting goblin/elven  clothes.

Shoruke's Log. 12th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
That fight was epic. I unfortunately was unable to attend, because I had a job interview with one of the mechanics, so I had Rick and Monk both chronicle their fight, and used their collective data to create a fairly accurate simulation of the action.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-910-rickmonkvsthegobbies

As expected, the dwarves won soundly. And Monk was indeed cheered up. I have two issues, however...1) Apparently these fight are too... intense for the common dwarf to watch, and 2) three of the goblins (with their stuff, some of which was iron and all of which was valuable) were lost into the aquifer. Gah! I shall solve these two issues by constructing a wall of clear glass on the inside permiter of the arena; the spectators won't be in danger from building destroyers, of course.

Also, we seem to have found some hematite. It was right beside the volcano all along! Garr! And yay at the same time!

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 14th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
A vile force of darkness has arrived! The goblins again. I wonder if it's coincidence that they appear only two days after we slaughter their kinsmen in the arena. I hate their timing! Rick and Monk need to run around getting geared up before they can join the combat! Argh... oh well. Until they are ready, the rest of our force should be enough to repel the goblin menace, despite that three army dwarves are injured and several others are novice at best.


Anyway, tactical report. All dwarves are to stay inside the fortress. Sir Geo, being the only captain near the gate, will be captain of the dwarven uber squad, which will consist of every dwarf in the military. I would have chosen Flint, since he is both kinda nearby and a swordsmaster, but he's sleeping and cannot help defend the fortress. Sakzul the elite marksdwarf would have been my next choice... but he's off to get a drink. As with the arena, everyday needs slow us down in our constant struggle against the goblins. Rick is of course the next best candidate, being our hero and all, but as previously stated, he needs to suit back up.

The Tower wall is not a full circle yet, even on ground level. However, it is completed to the point that the goblins will have to go through traps if they come from any direction but east.

From the goblins' point of view, they have three squads plus one loner.

-One squad to the northwest, led by a legendary elite bowgoblin, squad consists of 7 pikemen and one wrestler; I see no need to fear them, they have to pass through the cage traps. I expect to have at least 6 captive goblins by the end of this conflict.
-One squad from the northeast,led by a goblin guard with a pike, squad consists of 2 pikemen and 5 wrestlers. What a wussy squad. And, depending on whether or not they go around the volcano to the north or the east, they might have to go through a bunch of stonefall traps.
-One squad to the southwest, led by a pikeman (nothing special), squad consists of 3 lashers and 4 wrestlers. This squad is even wussier than the last one; and they'll have to go through either the rest of the cage traps or a bunch of stonefall traps. Maybe they're dumb enough that they'll split up and get owned by both.
-One single goblin crossbowman to the southeast corner. Hmm... I doubt she'll be much of a problem. (how do I know it's a she from such a large distance, without even going outside? I'm just that awesome).

The most logical thing for the goblins to do would be to mob us from every direction, and send all of their troops into the hallway simultaneously. Knowing goblins, the only smart being in their entire civilization is their tactician, who is presumably not present, and the rest of them will just run like hell to get here as fast as they can, one at a time, get owned, and try to retreat. This should be easy.
Kinda.
In theory.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
Apparently the loner goblin DOES have a squad, they're just going to be idiots and enter the fortress boundaries one at a time. What a bunch of dumb schists.

Shoruke's Log. 15th of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21) (even though anyone reading this probably knows what year it is by now)
Apparently the squads were bigger than they initially seemed. Oh, and we struck stibnite.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
Now that the goblins have all rushed onto the fortress boundaries, they seem lost. They're all standing around in their squads instead of rushing. Again, goblins prove their idiocy; rushing fast and giving us dwarves as little time as possible to mount our defense would be logical, so of course the goblins are doing just the opposite.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary Squared.
Sir Geo just had her (why is a 'her' a 'sir'?) second child. Hopefully the birth and carrying the kid around won't slow Sir Geo down much. By the way, the kid is kinda... kinky... she likes chains. Don't ask how I know that.

Shoruke's Log. 16th of Limestone. (take a hint)
The squads from the southeast and northwest (both of the squads led by a ranged combatant) are advancing, the southwest squad is slowly meandering in a kinduva thisway-ish direction, and the northeast squad still seems lost.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
So the southeast squad... their leader is charging! And he's at the wall! And he runs through the gaping hole that we haven't finished yet! And he charges for the gate! *splat* and he dies in a stonefall trap. Typical goblin; send the crossbow-goblin, the squad leader, in to be the first one to get killed. By a trap. The rest of his squad milled around the hole in the wall; then most of them turned and fled, while one decided he would try and rush the gate on his own. *splat* ooh... he's not gonna run quickly with those injuries.

The next squad to get here was led by the legendary elite bowman. Of course, he's the fastest one in his squad, so he gets past the wall fastest. Feeling pretty good about his odds since he's past the wall and everything (normally, when sieging, being inside the wall means you're winning), he carelessly charged into the cage traps. The rest of his squad, instead of fleeing like they REALLY should have, just slowed down and pondered their options. Their captain yelled at them to advance from his cage. Three caged and one dead goblin later, the rest of the goblins are using all of their three watts of brain power to think, 'gee, maybe we should like, leave', and are milling about the cage traps looking even stupider than usual.

Shoruke's Log. 17th of Limestone.
The northwest goblin squad eventually decided to charge. Two more goblins were captured, another one was gruesomely injured by a stonefall trap, and the rest are beyond the traps. One ramp and a really long hallway are all that stand between the goblins and our fortress.

This is gonna be eeeeeeeasy.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
One of the wrestlers from the northwest goblin squad just got sent flying and died. I'm not sure how. All I saw was a flying goblin who died when he hit the ground. No dwarves were near him, and no traps were set off. Oh well, he's dead, who cares.

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Limestone. (I went a whole day without writing in my journal! During a siege! How odd of me.)
The northwest goblin squad got to the gate JUST before the southwest one did; the result was that our military had to deal with a squad and a half all at once. We lost one hammerdwarf named Mestthos, but other than that our forces are untouched. The northeast squad seems to have fled just because of Flint, who was chasing down fleeing goblins from the southwest squad.

Anyway, siege status has been lifted from our fortress and we can now begin the 'dump everything we can't melt and melt everything we can' phase. I'm going to give the senior military dwarves some well-needed time off; some of them are becoming stressed due to being attacked and losing pet war dogs and such.

Oh... and I seem to have left Monk locked up in his turret. I got distracted by the siege and forgot to let him out. Yet somehow he has earned some extra names now. He is now known as '"Monk" Elbowmanor the Punch of Races, Marksdwarf'. I think he earned the names during the arena match, what with his excellent covering fire for Rick.

Hmm... covering fire... maybe that should be one of the tower features, a way for the marksdwarves to move around the entire map three levels above ground, to give covering fire anywhere it's needed? Might be kinda handy.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary. (wow my journal is going to be the buffest journal anywhere, with all these supplements)
Oops, another leftover I forgot about the arena... I forgot to dump the goblins' clothes from the arena. With that done, as well as the dumping of the CURRENT invaders' stuff, our fortress now has enough store/melt/dump jobs to keep us busy for a while... even with 123 dwarves in residence.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 22nd of Limestone. (early autumn, year 21)
What with everyone rushing out to claim the piles upon piles of goblin loot, the outside of the fortress and the first three steps within the gate are covered in blood, gore, random body parts, goblin clothes, and now vomit too. What a mess. some of the sand is dyed green by dwarf puke, some is dyed a deeper red by goblin blood... some spots are brown because they mix. At least the food around here is still good. Damn but I love my *turtle roast*.

Shoruke's Log. 2nd of Sandstone. (mid autumn, year 21)
I fear that the dwarven caravan will not come at all this year, due to the recent siege. By the way, all the goblin squad leaders had jewelry on them. Oddly enough, out of the three goblin leaders' corpses we recovered, the legendary bowman had the least jewelry, and the crossbowman had the most, by FAAAAAAAAR. He had like 20 each of bracelets, earrings, and amulets. Not to mention his loincloth was decorated.

Oh, and the camels are back. Once again they are living as opposed to undead.
This development worries me; I think it means the elves are focusing on war preparations, either that or their apprentice druids have completed their training. Neither bodes well for us. Then again, the skeletal camels were about the worst thing the elves could really do to us; we dwarves can easily withstand a barrage of wooden arrows, especially when wearing armor. And REALLY especially when wearing steel armor. That means you, Rick and Monk.

And the migrants were once again too nervous to make the journey this season. I suppose it makes sense; I would be afraid to come here to The Red Sands of Doom, too. The only reason I did at all in the first place was because I thought I'd be in the desert for only three days.

Shoruke's Log. 8th of Sandstone. (mid autumn, year 21)
The hauling is not nearly done. Not by a long shot. But I just had an idea. When The Tower's base level is finished, the only  way into it will be over one bridge linked to a lever somewhere for if we ever need to box ourselves in. Anyway, I think it would be effective to place cage traps all around the outside of the bridge. And maybe a crapload of weapon traps just inside the bridge, in case there's just that many attackers at some point. Hmmmmm... I think it'll work.

Shoruke's Log. 14th of Sandstone. (mid autumn, year 21)
Despite the amount of hauling to be done, someone was still working on production (towards The Tower, which is cool) and they've run us flat out of wood logs (which is not cool but it does mean we have schistloads of ashes which is cool). In retaliation to our lack of wood, I have designated every suitably sized tree within the fortress boundaries to be cut down. Boy was Glack happy. He requested permission to capitalize as much as he could and be excused from hauling for a couple weeks. I said sure. Elfbane was grinning after hearing the announcement too, and started muttering something about hippies and their faces.

Shoruke's Log. 26th of Sandstone. (mid autumn, year 21)
OH MY GOD A SURPRISE ATTACK OF GOBLIN PIKEMEN oh wait those are gazelles. Whewf. There go my nerves... Anyway this is what I saw, I'll draw it.



Shoruke's Log. 10th of Timber. (late autumn, year 21)
Construction on The Tower still advances. Yay.

Trapping of the bridge to enter The Tower is also advancing; Lambskin and Domas the mechanic are doing most of it, with help from one trapper who is labor-confused.

And man, the outside of the fortress is a mess.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And the indoor 'outdoor crops'? We covered them with green glass... it was actually hard for me to find it because of all the puke. (dwarf vomit is the same color as green glass)

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 20th of Timber. (late autumn, year 21)
The weather gets colder as winter approaches... but then why are the glass walls warm??? I think we're having a heat wave, increasing the heat rating from 'blisteringly hot' to 'fricking HOT'. The glass walls are as warm as the natural layers of obsidian surrounding the volcano.

Shoruke's Log. 14th of Moonstone. (early winter, year 21)
It's been pretty quiet around here for the past three weeks, especially right after all that commotion in early autumn. All the dwarves were calmly working: some on randomly hauling stuff around, some on the new quarry (we're making an obsidian quarrey... we're also hoping to find metal and gems), some on The Tower, some on food... until suddenly, the engraver/mechanic, Lokum, who was setting up a cage trap, was ambushed by a kobold thief! He was drafted into the military on the spot, and, being such a buff guy (he's a master engraver, and novice in most conversational skills), beat the kobold up. One of his blows knocked the kobold unconscious, causing it to fall onto one of the cage traps and be caught in it. Then Lokum the engraver went back to building his other cage trap.

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Moonstone. (early winter, year 21)
The skeletal two-humped camels are back... and some of the dwarves are too nervous to work on the walls because of them. Sakzul the elite marksdwarf just refilled his quiver, and he's taking three of the recruits out to deal with them.

Shoruke's Log. 26th of Moonstone. (two conflicts later)
Sakzul and his hammerdwarf got their butts handed to them (broken), but they won... and the skeletal camels were replaced by skeletal camels. Oh damn. A planter was killed, but other than that the camels were defeated by our traps. One is currently in a cage. I wonder if the goblins would care about it if it was involved in the arena match.

7 goblins vs. 1 kobold vs. 1 skamel vs. Monk in his turret

I think Monk would win.

Oh yes, and one stonecrafter got a fey mood. He took over the craftsdwarves shop he was already in at the time, and started running around collecting rhyolite, obsidian, turtle shell, two rough resin opals, a tanzanite, a black zircon, and 2 pieces of cat leather. This is going to be interesting.

I discovered something odd. We apparently have a bar of soap. I knew we had an alchemist's workshop (having given the order to have it set up myself), and I knew I had given the order to make one bar of soap, but I assumed it had been cancelled due to lack of lye. Apparently it wasn't; we now have one bar of cat tallow soap.

Shoruke's Log. 1st of Opal. (mid winter, year 21)
The fey stonecrafter finished his artifact. It's another useless one; an earring. However, it does serve one purpose: it's worth a lot and might attract some more migrants. This thing is our tenth artifact, and it's worth the second most out of any of them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I like how the dwarves keep making pictures of that artifact, even on other artifacts.

Since Rick is satisfied that he's had enough time off now, I'm putting him back onto massacre the animals duty. He's running off to kill lions, gazelles, and whatever else decides there might be food in The Red Sands of Doom.

And just how froaking long is it going to take to finish melting all the goblin equipment? It's taking FOREVER.

[Shoruke]

I've exhausted the 22kb file.

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Opal. (mid winter, not that it's very cool or anything, year 21)
Rick has run to every corner of the map hunting down two consecutive squads of living camels; of course he killed off every single one of them. Just after he killed the last camel, a lion appeared not far away from him. He went to kill it, but his dog (who was trying and failing to catch up with him the whole time) got there first and pushed the lion into the volcano. The lion was instantly turned into a mid-magma cloud of smoke. If I was a decent composer, that might make a good song...

"Smooooooooke on the maaaagmaa
Fire in the skyyy"

Anyway, the lion was replaced by skeletal camels. Rick is now off to go deal with them.

Oh yes! Monk is now an elite Marksdwarf. He achieved this level of greatness in the archery range today. Grats Monk.

Shoruke's Log. 1st of Obsidian. (late winter, year 21)
Guess I'm gonna have to start saying year 22 pretty soon. Better psyche myself up for it now.

Rick killed a whole bunch of stuff... the most notable kill was a giant leopard. He broke it's leg, then broke another one (and it's ear), then mangled both legs, then whacked it right into the middle of the volcano. It fell straight from surface level to the bottom of the world, then exploded into body parts and smoke simultaneously.

Now there's skeletal camels again. Go Rick go.

[GoldPanda]

This is a masterful engraving of a dog and a lion. The dog is laughing. The lion is burning. This engraving depicts an event in year 21, when the dog pushed the lion into a friggin' volcano.

[Axe27]

Man...When Rick dies, what the hell are you going to do?

I think Rick's kill list is 99% of his page.

[sonerohi]

Man...When Rick dies, what the hell are you going to do?

I think Rick's kill list is 99% of his page.

When Rick dies, the game will have to divide by zero.

[Shoruke]

Bah my computer is dead... I'm posting this using my dad's computer, which has neither Dwarf Fortress.exe nor my save file. The computer that has Angcuggan Okbod is SO boned, you cannot possibly have any idea. It can't even run in safe mode. It has a startup loop because Norton Antivirus FUBAR'd my startup folders. I need to find my Windows XP cd... okay yeah I'm boned. So help me, Norton is gonna DIE.

[Shoruke]

News update: dad found the windows xp cd! As I type, my other computer is grinding away at healing itself. Here's hoping the repairs don't affect anything on the C: drive or the desktop...

[Shoruke]

Success! Computer is fixed! Now I can post again, yay.

Shoruke's Log. 10th of Obsidian. (late winter, year 21)
The countess' baby grew up to be a child three days ago. Now she's just spouted off another one. It's a girl named Zefon, and it likes suns. If it grows up to be like its mother, and it starts asking for objects made of the sun... oh boy. And besides, the Countess waited for what, three months after giving birth to get laid again?

Page torn from the log of Rig̣th Isonkikrost, Countess. 10th day of Twelfth month, year 21 of the Age of Myth.
I say, I finally had that second baby that Mafol has always wanted so much! This one's a girl. Although, I must say, this whole giving birth process is really quite painful and distracting; why, it was enough to distract me from the fact that I was wearing rather dreary shoes for a moment!



Log of Rick RFB, General of the army of The Mules of Artifice, Mountainhome of the Red Sands of Doom. 11th of Obsidian, year 21.
Shoruke is getting really serious about me keeping up with my combat practice. When I'm off-duty I usually avoid sparring with the other dwarves so that my R&R is more intensive, but when he recently put me back on duty he insisted I run around the surface and kill anything non-dwarven on sight. He insists I need to practice since I don't spar enough. Maybe if I had more time off, I'd feel rested enough to spar once in a while, mumble mumble.

However, I am proud that I have recently set a worldwide record for the number of hits to kill a skeletal camel: One.

Shoruke's Log. 11th of Obsidian. (late winter, year 21)
Rick has pulled an amazing feat recently: He felled a full health (or is it unhealth?) skeletal camel in one blow. After consulting with the philosopher, dungeon master, count consort, and engravers (all of whom are supposed to have a good educational mix of history and recent events), not one of them have reported hearing of such a kill. That means that Rick, one of the founding dwarves of our own fortress, holds an unbreakable world record. It is, after all, kinda tough to kill a skeletal camel in less than one shot. He deserves time off.

[inaluct]

So, how's the pool going?

[Shoruke]

Shoruke cancels construct swimming pool: Interrupted by Norton Antivirus screwing up.

Thanks for the reminder, I'll get back to that when I post tomorrow...

[Thuellai]

I'll claim a dwarf, I guess - maybe the Dungeon Master?  Thuellai.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 12 of Obsidian. (late winter, year 21)
The dungeon master has come down with a case of NCS (name changing syndrome)... I wonder if there will be another outbreak.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Work on the swimming pool is... kinda... advancing. We have a passage filled with water (it drains right from the aquifer, so it will ALWAYS be full), and one of the two floodgates are set up. All we need to do is finish channeling a few tiles, destroy the bridge (I might just put up another 'maintenance' bridge over the pool), build a second floodgate and link it, and pull the levers. Then we'll all have to get through 4/7 depth water to get to the alcohol.

In the meantime, however, I decided that it takes too long to get from the main part of the fortress to outside, and vice versa, so I decided to get the miners to make a diagonal path in one spot to get from the kitchens to the upper grand staircase.

It wasn't easy.

I gathered Emperor, Elfbane, Domas, and Rovod (all of our miners) and told them I wanted a diagonal 3x3 tunnel from one spot to another spot. The conversation went like this:

Shoruke: "We need a tunnel that goes straight from here, to right there. Mine in this direction." *Points northeast*
Emperor: "So you mean you want us to dig out this whole area? That's kinda overkill, isn't it Shoruke?"
Shoruke: "No no no, I want a diagonal path. Not north and then east like the current one, and not east and then north either. And I REALLY don't want you to just mass-designate this whole area. I want a path that goes straight northeast."
Elfbane: "I don't understand. The digging designation would be weird if I'm hearing this right."
Shoruke: "Oh screw the designating, I'll do it. Just go northeast."
All Miners: "I still don't get it."
Shoruke: "Oh for schist's sake. Here, I'll draw it." *takes out journal, which I conveniently had in my pocket at the time, and draws it*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All Miners: "Ohhhhhhhhh."
Emperor: "It goes against my natural instinct!"
Elfbane: "It's unfamiliar and I've never done anything like it before!"
Shoruke: "SHUT UP AND DO IT ALREADY!"