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[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 12th of Obsidian. (late winter)
Production on those windows is going fine. The channels are going... oddly... the miners have this odd tendency to dig out one square of channel, run ALL THE WAY AROUND the arena, and dig out one square of channel on the other side. Then they'll run ALL THE WAY back and do one more, and then run all the way around again... and so on. I asked all three of them their reasons why, and they each responded that they're "doing it in order". WEIRD.

But something even weirder happened today. Inaluct himself got a fey mood. His only skill is glassmaking. I assumed, this being the case, that he would go take over the magma glassmaking furnace (allowing the other stages of window production to catch up, which would be welcome), but he instead locked himself in (wait for it) his room. It's odd. So I built a non-magma glass furnace, and he went straight for it.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
Inaluct seems to have a weird case of locking himself up in places before he goes and actually does something with his fey mood. First his room, now he won't leave the glass furnace. He wants all kinds of things. I mean all kinds. He wants...

bones
rock
rock blocks
bones again
silk
rough gems
leather
raw green glass

I wonder if there's one of his demands that cannot currently be met.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary Squared. Why am I squaring my supplements so often?
After comparing Inaluct's demands with my 100% accurate stock records, I have discovered the only component of his glass widgit that he's missing: raw green glass. Oh, the irony. I will have one of the other glassmakers get on that right away.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 20th of Obsidian. (late winter)
So, apparently Inaluct needs more than one raw green glass, and won't go gather his other materials until he has it. I suppose it IS the base material, but still, think efficiency, dude.
The arena is all carved out. Once we have all the windows ready, we can start preparations to hold some actual fights. Such preparations would include placing the cages in there, hooking said cages up, and making a drawbridge into the arena.
But by far the most awe-inspiring news item of super importanceness that everyone should take notice of...

HOLY SCHIST THERE'S A LEGENDARY ZOMBIE DRAGON IN OUR FORTRESS

Kovest Stettadoltar Ertal Fash, the skeletal dragon showed up. And despite not having any lungs or any other organs for that matter, it can still breathe dragon fire. And dragon fire, as Imush erithkudust found out just before he died, is a lot more devastating than that pansy-ass schist the fire imps breathe. No, dragon fire is like three times as hot, three times as destructive, comes five times as fast, and gets used twice as often. That dragon breathed dragon fire at the unlucky woodcutter ONCE. The woodcutter was set on fire (so were his shoes, but none of his other clothes it seems), and began taking damage. Within moments, every. Single. Part. Of his anatomy was broken. By fire. That's how badass it is. Imush the woodcutter died by blood loss technically, but this blood loss was caused by fire. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF FIRE CAN BREAK BONES AND CAUSE OPEN CUTTING WOUNDS?!?! Oh right, dragon fire.

I have ordered all dwarves to stay inside. There are to be no exceptions. Rick and the military have been told to guard the glass hallway. The lever was pulled so that nothing can get into the fortress the short way; anything that wants in (or out, I suppose) has to go through the glass hallway... which has a corner filled with traps. If the traps do not kill this fell beast, hopefully Rick and the others can. Monk is still out of commission.

Meanwhile, being unable to go outside, production has slowed. The woodcutters obviously have no wood to cut, and the craftsdwarves cannot access the bones scattered around outside from our thousand or so skirmishes.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
Okay, so the lever I thought was hooked up to the bridge to get into the fortress? It wasn't hooked up. But something's not right. The dragon is loitering around outside, doing nothing; there are skeletal camels wandering around outside as well as this dragon; and... Oh DAMMIT... the dragon is trying to get in through the volcano. DAMN.

Shoruke's Log. The next day. It's like the 23rd or something, I don't care.
That was just weird. The dragon went for the volcano, swum around in there for a bit... and... drowned. Dang. Part of me was hoping that we could capture it in a glass cage (it would work, trust me) , or at least kill it in a way that would allow us to make use of it's excessively valuable bones. But no, its corpse, skull, and... *counts* 14 bones are all halfway down the volcano. It's on the side of the volcano that faces our fortress, so we could easily just tunnel in and retrieve them, if we weren't afraid of melting everything in our fortress and all dying a horrible burning death. But, since we ARE in fact afraid of melting everything in our fortress and all dying a horrible burning death (I'm not ashamed to admit that), I guess we just have to carry on with life as though that dragon had never come.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 2nd of Granite. (early spring)
Well, with spring comes warm weather. Damn. But it also brings miraculous healings. One of those useless, layabout guards healed, but Monk didn't. I am dissappointed. Oh well.

Production has resumed its usual pace. There are only three wild (as in not captive) skeletal camels out, so rescuing that woodcutter's clothing (his corpse was burnt away) is reasonably safe. Only his bones, skull, and a few pieces of his clothing remained. I made very sure to check whether the clothes were on fire; they were safe. The woodcutter's pet donkey and mule will be put to slaughter, to spare them the confusion and trauma of suddenly not having an owner.

The woodcutters are back to cutting wood (we're almost out of trees... which I suppose is not surprising since we're in the middle of a scorching frigging hot desert) and everyone is able to haul our various pieces of refuse outside. Production of windows is still continuing (at a painfully slow rate), and Inaluct is FINALLY in the process of aquiring all of his materials. He's worse than the miners. Why would he simply sit around, despite knowing precisely what he wanted? The efficient thing to do would be to assemble all the materials he could while waiting for the rest to become available. I suppose one effect of the fey mood is a sudden obsessive-compulsion to do things in order.

Shoruke's Log. 6th of Granite. (early spring)
Two things happened today.
-One of the fortress guards, for I-don't-know-what-reason, went out to challenge three skeletal camels on his own. He never had a chance. He isn't Rick. He isn't even fully armored. But he is dead. Speaking of Rick, I sent him out to deal with the camels so we can rescue the guards' stuff.
-Inaluct has begun a mysterious construction! Using

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's promising. Even if he makes something useless (but presumably valuable), he will at least become a legendary glassmaker and he will be able to spam clear glass windows with the speed of a speed demon who is doping on some mixture of steroids and pure uberness.

[inaluct]

Yay! Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be a green glass bed or something.

[Shoruke]

No such luck. Good try though.

Shoruke's Log. 11th of Granite. (early spring)
Inaluct has finished his artifact. It's not bad. It's a green glass hatch cover, worth 42,000 munnies. I suppose it's technically usable, and it's more valuable than most of the other artifacts even (It's third most valuable out of eight). We could make some minor changes to the fortress so that the only way in is through one single-tile-width staircase, and cover it with this INDESTRUCTABLE hatch cover! Nah, too much work. And it would cause chokepoint backup in the hallway traffic like crazy. Anyway, here it is.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I find it interesting how he managed to fit two different pictures onto the same hatch cover. He put one image on the top and the other on the bottom I guess (it doesn't say in the description so I obviously don't know, okay?!?), as well as several decorations.

Why do all of our artifacts menace with spikes?

Ya know, I think it's time to do some tallies. I am going to do the following:
-count of legendary/mentionable dwarves
-value of artifacts vs. value of entire fortress
-kill count competition


P.S. if anyone knows whether savescumming this month will cause Inaluct to make a different furniture, please tell me. Having a green glass bed would actually be kind of cool. Or a window would make the arena room worth a schistload more. Thanks.

[Shoruke]

Count of all legendary dwarves, in order of profession:
Emperor, miner
Elfbane, miner
Edzul, carpenter
Mistem, stonecrafter
Domas, bone carver
Sakzul, bone carver
Inaluct, glassmaker
Lambskin, siege operator
Shoruke, record keeper and organizer

I win! Yay! Also, honorable mentions go to:
Rick RFB the macedwarf, for repeatedly fending off intruders;
Obok, Lokum, and kinda Olon the engravers, for making several masterwork engravings each (especially Lokum);
Monk for telling me some decent ideas during school;
and Inaluct for suggesting we put more emphasis on taming the wild life and unlife.

All artifacts:
highwood cup: 6,000.
fire imp bone ball: 55,200.
kaolinite earring: 32,400.
purple spinel idol: 96,000.
cave fish bone buckler: 21,600.
highwood armor stand: 14,400.
obsidian puzzlebox: 7,200.
green glass hatch cover: 42,000. (Has the longest name)

Total: 274,800.
And our entire fortress worth comes to 857,026.

Artifacts make up 32.1ish % of our entire fortress worth.


And the randomly timed kill count competition!
1st Place: Rick RFB, four notable kills, and forty-three (!) others.
2nd Place: Monk, two notable kills, and nine others. I suppose that's pretty impressive considering he's had some bad injuries and has been out for most of a year.
3rd Place: Sakzul the Marksdwarf, two notable kills, and seven others.
4th Place: Fath the Axedwarf, two notable kills, and five others.
And several others with one or two kills each. One person in the military has no kills, some civilians (mostly woodcutters and miners) have one or two, and Asmel the swordsdwarf gets a dishonorable mention for killing a fellow dwarf during sparring.

SHAAAAAAAAME.

Funny how two out of three of our top scorers are marksdwarves.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Have I been dwarfed?
If not, I'd like a male dwarf called maggarg.
If possible, can he be a military dwarf with something choppy?

[Flintus10]

This is a great story so keep it up

And I'd like a dwarf too thanks
Name:Flint
Proffesion:Swordsdwarf
Gender:Male

Ty

[Shoruke]

Yay! More named dwarves! Now when we get immigrants I'll give all of you guys squads, and set you guys on rotations so you don't get pissed by 'long patrol duty'.
Maggarg, since we don't really have any male military dwarves available, you get to be an immigrant. A wave should come soon in theory.

Shoruke's Log. 14th of Granite. (early spring, year 20)
I have decided that I should start including the year in the date of my journal entries. The fortress was founded in year 16.

The fortress is slowly going crazy. Elfbane's protests, the legendary skeletal dragon that can breathe fire without lungs, and now... one of the military dwarves is requesting a name change. And his own squad. Name change?!? Anyway, Asmel the swordsdwarf (not of the fortress guard) has changed his name to 'Flint'. I should take a more in-depth look into his preferences to get a better understanding of this situation.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

About the only thing in his page that's relevant to the name change (other than his name of course) is that "he takes time when making decisions". Well that explains why he's changed his name now as opposed to before he came here, but still...

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
I have thought of a way to put Inaluct's hatch cover to use. In the arena, I will put a small turret, and the only way in will be through that indestructable hatch cover. Then I can put Monk or one of the other marksdwarves on it, and let them shoot at the opponents to their heart's content. And they won't be able to hit him back, because monsters don't have ranged attacks, and cannot destroy indestructable artifact hatch covers.

Also, I have several projects I wish to carry out; I should make a list.
-The arena; about half-way complete, needs windows & turret
-The glass tower; not started, it's going to take schistloads of clear glass blocks and we're focusing our glassmaking efforts on the arena right now
-Perfect entrance hallway defense; almost complete, we just need that bridge hooked up to that lever and it's pretty much done.
-The glass hallway; almost complete, but it's not active right now (again, glassmaking efforts are being put into the arena)
-SCHISTLOADS more cage traps; not started, but it can be started almost anytime. We definately have enough fricking mechanisms.

I have thought of something pertaining to the dragon. Since he had no lungs, it seems unlikely that his cause of death was drowning. It's more likely that he THOUGHT he could survive the magma... but he actually couldn't. Also, his bones and skull have melted away, and only his rotten corpse is left.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary squared.
The elves have just arrived. They once again bring stuff, which I will take. Then I will have them killed in the green glass hallway.

Shoruke's Log. 2nd of Slate. (mid spring, year 20)
The elves came, brought us 10 berries, a few bins of cloth, and some wood. At least they didn't try to 'sell' us any of their huge clothes. Anyway, I seized all of their goods without reimbursement. They took forever to leave.

Leave! Bahaha!

I locked them in the glass hallway. Lambskin seems to be having a small spot of trouble shooting straight enough to hit the end of the hallway and ran out of ammo, so she's making more.

Inaluct has taken over construction of the clear glass windows. It's going much faster now.

And a lot of the stray puppies have grown into dogs. I let them out of the cage, and they are now being trained for military purposes. Flint will have some, and the next notable military dwarf we recieve shall recieve some as well.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
I amend my earlier account of Lambskin's shooting. Her most recent shot went straight down the glass hallway and hit the far wall right in the middle. On its way, it killed an elf, a mule, and a donkey. In that order.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 8th of Slate. (mid spring, year 20)
The siege operators are still firing on the elven caravan. They should all be dead soon. If not, they'll go crazy, kill each other, and then we can kill whoever's left. And th-

oh SCHIST no

The nobles have arrived. We are now a barony. The tax collector, hammerer (oh gods no), baroness, and baron consort have all arrived. I suppose we should prepare their rooms... and their tombs. Some of them are actually ASKING to have tombs. If they behave like the nobles back at the mountainhomes were known to do, they might just need those graves.

In other news, we have immigrants. The migrant tally came to:
-4 idiot froaking nobles hell bent on killing everyone in the fortress while living in the lap of luxury themselves
-1 farmer
-2 ranger (who were the first ever into the royal guard)
-1 animal trainer (who was put into The Guard)
-1 trapper (also put into The Guard
-1 jeweler (stuck in The Guard)
-1 siege operator (we need more siege engines...)
-1 lye maker (switched over to food production)
-1 wood cutter (switched into the military)
-1 mason (who likes beds and will also do carpentry but not woodcutting)
-1 thresher
-1 tanner
-an animal caretaker named Maggarg (who has this thing about battleaxes and 'choppy' things)
-2 animal trainers (one will do all the stupid jobs nobody else has time for, the other is in the royal guard)
-5 peasants

totals 24 immigrants. How will I house them all? We're devoting most of our wood to window production. And the nobles... supposedly they take joy in making impossible-to-meet demands and then killing an innocent dwarf for not meeting it. And how are we going to arm all these new recruits?

By the way, one may have noticed that rather a large chunk of the immigrants were put into the military or The Guard (The Guard, with both words starting with a capital letter, is my way of saying "either the fortress guard or royal guard"). This is because both positions have such a high fatality rate, and the military is so important, that I feel a large number of dwarves are needed for the task.

With the nobles here (bastards) I suppose economy has set in. I estimate we need 2100 each of copper, silver, and gold coins to match accounts. Which sucks, because it will take a bunch of work to get the last of the tetrahedrite for silver and we're almost out of gold. Copper shouldn't be much of an issue, we have some lying around somewhere.

And shops. I have never had to deal with having SHOPS in a fortress before. Who will run them? Will it take away from their production time? Do we really have the space, time, and labor to have everyone hauling coins to and fro? And what is with dwarves having to RENT rooms suddenly? This is all alien! It's wrong! Us dwarves are supposed to be communist, dammit. The dwarven system is supposed to be run by having everyone working together, with each dwarf contributing in their own way, according to their chosen profession.

On the bright side, we have a promising new recruit named Maggarg.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He came as an animal caretaker, but he went straight for my office when he got inside. He explained that he has this thing for battle axes and wished to be a squad leader in our military. I told him that would be perfectly fine, as long as he continuously proves himself worthy of the position.

Just one thing... with all these new recruits, how are we going to outfit all of them? Obsidian swords are easy enough to make (even if they do require logs...), but we simply can't make metal armor for The Guard. They will have to make do with leather/shell/bone armor, and bucklers we take from the goblins.

I suppose a short part of Dracnor's 'practice' will be the creation of the weapons of choice for all these new militants.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

yaaaay :3

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 19th of Slate. (mid spring year 20)
Those silly skeletal camels are back, scaring off the mechanics who are placing more cage traps to catch them in. It's like they have sentience. Or maybe they are being controlled by someone both sentient and hostile towards us. The elves?!? Surely their 'trade caravan' is only a cover for their deeper purpose: to kill us all! But camels are pretty much the least of our worries.

Speaking of elves. Tee hee.




I shall call this "Mad Elf Syndrome". I am sending Rick to the trapped corner (us dwarves know how to avoid setting off our own traps), and opening the floodgates (haha... floods...) so that he can put the elves out of their melancholy misery.

And those nobles. They are asking for all kinds of things. The stupid-ass baroness and her fat hubby both want tombs. The problem is that they're fatter than most dwarves, and will need bigger tombs. Fortunately, our masons are some of the best in the land, and can manage it. And they want things like armor stands and weapon racks. WHY?!? They have no weapons, no armor, and will keep their clothing in their two chests and cabinet each. Sheesh. I think they're just being show-offy. And the baron consort, the pretentious fat bastard, has already started making demands as though he owns this place... which I suppose by law, he does. Bah. His demand was two battleaxes, which can be EASILY met, but if he's already making demands before his room is even set up... this is not going to end well for the nobles. Or for anyone.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 24th of Slate. (mid spring, year 20)
It's odd. With 82 dwarves we had just enough labor to keep everyone busy without anyone getting stressed out, or production falling behind. Now we have 105 dwarves strong, and we have too much work to do. Everyone is too busy hauling stuff around to actually produce anything. The furniture the nobles are demanding isn't being made, etc. etc.

On a non-noble related note (finally), those elves are acting... strange... we opened to floodgate to let them out, but they aren't trying to go home. They actually aren't doing anything. They're just standing there, in the miasma from their comrades' rotting corpses, looking sorry for themselves. Oh well. Good way for elves to be in my opinion. But it is kinda depressing that they haven't done anything rash, like trying to assault Rick or set off the traps to commit suicide.

Oh man, this labor shortage is really getting to me. Everybody is too busy "storing item in stockpile" to produce anything, or even dump Dracnor's metal down to him. He's getting kinda bored.

Shoruke's Log. Supplementary.
I have just decided that Dracnor and that mechanic are done with the practice rooms for a while. We need them to help haul stuff, and besides, nobody's dumping them anything anyway.

[Shoruke]

Shoruke's Log. 11th of Felsite. (late spring, year 20)
I am slightly panicked lately. Those elves are still here, and I wonder what the humans will do if they see how we treat merchants who come here. I must take measures to ensure their demise.

A lot of hauling got done, and now there's less to do. Makes sense. The nobles have all the stuff they wanted for their rooms, and just want a bit more decoration. "I want a TOMB, not a servant's burial chamber! Make it NICER! NOW!" Really, the 'servants' as she calls them, have an unengraved 1x1 chamber with a coffin and a door. Hers is 4x4 and is being engraved. And they just keep making demands. The baron consort is still asking for his battle axes (I'm keeping him waiting just to mess with him a bit), and now the others are putting export bans on greaves and leopard leather.

We ran out of leather, which was unexpected. I had to have the butchers kill some puppies. Now we can have dog leather hoods.

We seem to have run the desert out of trees. Yes, I realize this irony. This means that ash cannot be made, which means that potash cannot be made, which means that pearlash cannot be made, which means we can't finish the Coliseum. Well okay, we have SOME stuff left, but we're going to run out soon.

I keep having to alter the price of goods to keep the nobles from causing inflation to go way out of hand. It's rather annoying. And I have to create an official announcement every time I do.

I HATE ECONOMY AND I HATE NOBLES!