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[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 1st of Granite. (early spring, year 22)
The pool is pretty much done. As I write, it is filling. Originally, I had planned that the tunnel to the reservoir would be blocked by a door, which we could simply remove when the time came. Unfortunately, dwarves have this odd habit of refusing to destroy the door from the south side, where it was dry. The insisted upon walking through the door, into full water, then running back to the dining area to tell of their traumatic experience.

Miffed, I told Emperor to dig around the door. It worked, but he got wet. Oh well, all of us are going to get wet after this thing is done.

Anyway, it's almost a year since we allowed the elven diplomat to die within our walls. I wonder if the elves will personally do anything to retaliate. I will put most of the military on guard as a precaution.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 15th of Granite. (early spring, year 22)
The dwarven swimming pool is complete. The water is precisely where it needs to be. I just have no idea if it works or not, since we have no booze to put on the other side. We have plenty lots of plants to turn into booze, just no trees to turn into barrels to house the booze. Life sucks without alcohol. It forces me to be so aware of how much this desert sucks.

And to make matters worse, the elves sent a caravan. Oh gods, are they pacifist. Last year they sent a diplomat who issued us a warning, who we killed. And since then no tree has been allowed to stand for more than three days without being cut down and turned into barrels. Not to mention the fact that only like three elves have EVER left the boundaries of this fortress alive. That's three times over that they should be coming at us with bows, wooden weapons, and cannibalistic madness in their eyes, so why the hell are they bringing wood and plants?!?

Okay, you know what, I'm gonna stop complaining. I'm even going to let them leave alive. We need the wood and the berries aren't going to hurt us. But that doesn't stop it from defying all logic.

OHMYGOD THERE'S GOBLIN INVADERS oh wait they're those caged ones still. Whoops. Heh heh... Worried myself for a bit there.

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Granite. (early spring, year 22)
The trading went well. I'll include the minutes of the exchange.

Elves: "Hi, we're still unloading. Hold up a sec."
Shoruke: "'Kay."
*Couple minutes later*
Elves: "Okay let's trade."
Shoruke: "MINE!" *takes stuff*
Elves: "Frick. AGAIN! Let's leave soon, but not right now."

The good news is, wood! Meaning barrels! Meaning booze! HURRAY!

[Thuellai]

Thuellai's Log, Spring 22

Thuellai - a name much more befitting a noble.  Listen to that ring!  But regardless, there's work to be done...  Though I'll admit being somewhat disappointed.  The beasts here are all in varying states of decay, they've yet to claim a dragon (I understand the only one to visit not only was a zombie, but actually drowned in magma, without working lungs.  Armok only knows how one drowns without breathing...), and the only things to tame here are either undead or greenskins.

I suppose where there's a hammer, there's a way.

Then again, I'm not sure we have any of those, either.  Perhaps I should demand a few - no dwarven military is proper without hammers, and lots of them.  Talk to Shoruke later.

P.S.  Shoruke says it gets HOTTER than this.
I think I might die.

[Shoruke]

(Thanks for posting Thuellai, I appreciate it)
(everyone else can do so to if they feel like it)

Shoruke's Log. 3rd of Slate. (mid spring, year 21 22)
Well I had a brainwave, almost as large as the local heatwaves. I decided to create what Lambskin, our head engineer, calls a "quantum stockpile": A stockpile that foregoes the usual restrictions of the universe like space, volume, and pressure. It unfortunately has a completely different set of restrictions, such as being hard to oversee and administrate, but I will manage. The added cool thing about this is that It gave people a reason to go through the swimming pool to go get rocks to chuck into the quantum stockpile.

*In the meeting hall, one week previously*
Shoruke: "Okay everyone, we're going to fill the new quantum stockpile Lambskin should have told you about with the rocks from across The Pool."
Dwarves in General: "How do we get there?"
Shoruke: "You go through The Pool."
Dwarves: "But how? I don't see any way to get from here to there."
Shoruke: "You go. Through. The Pool. You emerge from The Pool on the other side, where the rocks are. Then, carrying the rocks, you come back through The Pool, and take the rocks to the quantum stockpile."
Dwarves: "But I don't know how to get there!"
Shoruke: "... You people are idiots. Emperor, dig a tunnel around The Pool."
Emperor: "Why?"
Shoruke: "Because I want to perform a logic test on all the hauler dwarves. Just do it."
*Some digging later*
*The dwarves, now that they can see a way from the dining hall to the rocks, decide to take the shortest route they can think of to reach their destination, which is through the pool.*

***The long-story-short of this whole debacle is that the dwarves refused to believe that there was a path to the rocks, since the only actual path was half-filled with water. Once a path was created, they took the shortest-route path they knew (through the water) instead of the perfectly dry path. This means that they cannot see over water, but they can walk through it.***

*10 Seconds Later...*

Dwarves: "OHMYGOD THE TERRAIN IS DANGEROUS! I can't handle this hauling job! But I'm not going to leave the pool for a bit."
Shoruke: "...you people are idiots... I think Kornash was onto something."


The dwarves will refuse to go find something if the only available path is waterlogged, but as long as there is a dry path at all, they will take the shortest available path... even if it is right through water. They will then cancel their job on the spot due to "dangerous terrain" which is causing neither pain, nor drowning, nor injury.

[Shoruke]

Oh cripes. After some intensive study of the dwarves, I see that some of the dwarves are behaving oddly. They will, in this order,

1) They do some pathfinding to the stones. Their chosen path involves going through water.
1a) Some of them realize that path is full of other dwarves and it would be more time efficient to take the dry route
2) The ones that make it to the far side pick up their stone
3) They figure out the quickest way back: through the water
4) Once they hit the water, they go "OMG the water is dangerous" and cancel their job
5) They keep carrying the rock anyway, until they get out of the pool again. Then they drop the rock 1-3 paces away.
6) Some OTHER dwarf comes along and goes, "Hey looky here I found a rock what needs dumping. I think I'll earn my 20☼ and dump it." Then he goes and dumps it.

The problem is that the invisible 1b) is that 80% of the dwarves go straight through the water and cancel their jobs. My announcement page is redder than the Sands of Doom themselves.

I have decided that something needs changing. Any ideas folks?

[Thuellai]

Start lockin' 'em in.  They'll only cancel once, and once one group gets hungry/thirsty/etc let them out.  Stagger groups of cancellations that way, so that you don't get tons of spam, merely minor chunks of spam, and dumping can still get done using the long tunnel for everyone else.

[Shoruke]

Good idea Thuellai. I do believe I'll just go implement that then.

Shoruke's Log. 15th of Slate. (mid spring, year 22)
The dungeon master seems to be more sociable since he came down with NCS. He addressed me this morning on our way to breakfast (our rooms are right next to each other). He made a suggestion for the swimming pool, that dwarves be forced to stay in it until they were deemed 'able to swim'. It has the ring of a community 'practice room', but that's fine. At least the dwarves will learn to swim.

The quantum stockpile has been slowing production down a bit though. Dwarves continuously make then trip from the kitchens, all the way to the surface. Most of the dwarves doing the hauling are on the food crew... which means... our newly produced barrels aren't being used. Dammit!

Production on The Tower is still going, albeit a little slowly. we still have a bunch of pearlash left, so production on clear glass is still moving along. There was a scare for a bit there as a skeletal giant leopard got kinda close to some of the masons, but the cage traps we've set up dealt with it. Nobody was hurt. But the skeletal giant leopard gets to be in the next arena fight, along with the camels (living and otherwise), kobolds, and goblins. Not to mention Monk in his turret.

Sucks for the leopard.

And we got our second legendary champion today. Sarvesh is now a legendary swordsdwarf... in the fortress guard. Useless! Well, since it's no longer within my authority to have him removed from The Guard and put into the army, I'll just have him train with something else... namely, his fists.

We're finally done melting all the useless goblin equipment into iron bars. Our stock of iron bars is up to 70. Our military shall be well-equipped very soon. (Maybe we can lower the number of injured dwarves... we've reached an all-time high of broken or mangled body parts, and one of them belongs to Maggarg.) At least we can start on melting that hematite now.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 28th of Slate. (late spring, year 22)
Summer is almost here. Thuellai, the dungeon master, is starting to complain about the heat. Is my whining that annoying as well? I really must keep that to a minimum in future.

A bunch of the local tress grew to acceptable size recently. I to told Glack to drop all hauling jobs and go reduce trees to logs. With a grin on his face an his trusty axe in hand, he went out immediately. Now we have even MORE logs to make barrels out of! Yay!

Our fortress has its third legendary champion: Flint! He's also the first of our champions to attain this title while being in a useful position. Flint will now command the military for a while, being our highest-ranking militant. Congratulations Flint. It's worth noting that Sir Geo isn't far behind him, having attained the title of high master in swordsmanship.

The outside of the base of The Tower is completely designated. Now we just need to wait for the masons to get their butts in gear and actually turn the blocks into walls. This is how The Tower looks right now (it's not nearly done... traps to remove, traps to build, channel to fill, bridge to hook up, inside layer of wall to build, that kind of thing)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Thuellai]

A glass tower?  Awesome, but, uh...

You're in the middle of a desert, and your idea is to build a giant, 15-story-tall magnifying glass?

[Shoruke]

Yup! 

[Thuellai]

...How positively dwarven.

I support this in full.  How's our hammer situation?  For some reason I imagine the Dungeon Master would want a lot of hammers, in that they are the premiere dwarven tool and I always imagined that "taming" creatures involved hitting them repeatedly with a hammer, for dwarfs anyway.

Also, I just noticed he likes Bronze Colossi...  If only they had the PET_EXOTIC and TRAINABLE tags...

Thuellai and his pet colossus, anyone?

[Shoruke]

lol.

As for hammers... sure, we have a few. But mostly they're for the military, and we only have like 3 hammerdwarves. Most of our military is axedwarves, that being the most dwarven weapon of them all IMO.

Just look at Gimli! Now that's a dwarf!

[inaluct]

You know what would be awesome?

If the tower went at a massive slant and eventually curved around like this:

Code: [Select]

Side view:
            #####
           #POWER#
          ##TOWER##
        ############
      ######   ######
    ######      ######
__######_______________________
                           _||_
   '       %        .     |    |==O
      ,                 0=|fort|
             .            |____|=o

[Shoruke]

Umm, I'm not sure I understand your picture... you want an incomplete pyramid shape that only touches the ground on one side?

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 7th of Hematite. (early summer, year 22)
Booze production is back up, which is AWESOME. We're at 115 units of alcohol.

Clear glass production has ground to a screeching halt. Our stocks of pearlash ran out, and since I don't want to use our current wood supply on anything but barrels, the only glass we can make for a while is green glass. Which is fine; we're going to use the green stuff to fill in the defensive channel. It's more time consuming than just flooring it over, but whatever. Now nothing can get stuck down there.

The herd of gazelles left, and 4 skeletal camels came. They appeared directly to the west of the fortress. They meandered a bit, until the got closer to The Tower and noticed the dwarves running around working on it. Three of the skeletal camels were caught (one almost got Inaluct, who was hell bent on retrieving a log from outside The Tower until he was two paces from boney death), and the last one got hit by one of the remnant stonefall traps. I told one of the axedwarves in the barracks to cease training for a bit and go deal with the emaciated skamel. He did so, and then went back to his squad to resume training.

However, the fact that four skeletal camels could get so close to being able to harm the dwarves worries me. MORE TRAPS! Oh yes and those skamels also get featured in the next arena match... right next to the other one.

About that match... I'm not sure that Monk is going to have enough ammunition to take out all those monsters. So I made his turret into an ammo stockpile. I'm thinking that maybe a bit of quantum stockpiling might be in order. How we're going to fit a dwarf and several hundred bolts into one square meter of space eludes me, but then again so does the stone quantum stockpile.

HEY WAITAMINUTE why didn't we put the stone quantum stockpile by the masonry shop? ...
...
...
Dammit. I foresee waaaaay too many hauling jobs in our immediate future.