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[Plank of Wood]

>Zombie Goats
>Zombie Goasts

"And John Freeman felt sorry for them because they couldn't live here anymore because they were zombie goasts so he blew up the house and they were at peace"

[ChJees]

MS Paint + Dwarf Fortress = Awesome

This thread is relevant to my interests...

[Vaftrudner]

Disclaimer: At this point, everything is going too damn well. Now, I'm not that good a player, really. I don't have the patience nor the OCD required to build epic 40 year aboveground fortresses, and I'm clumsy enough to have about half of my dwarves killed needlessly. This is where I usually get them caught in ice and slaughtered by skeletal elephants but.. They all live. I have no idea how to make success funny, but bear with me until I start fucking everything up. It's only a matter of time.



First autumn, as told by Kogan Betaneshtân, axedwarf

3rd Limestone



The caravan we were promised came on time, thank Mörul. Eral from the mountainhome met with Cog in the trade depot as we were hauling out stuff to trade. He stared for a moment in shock until I realized that none of us had even noticed the snow storm. I guess you really can get used to anything.

"You're all alive?" he said incredulously. What a comforting message to get from the mountainhome.

10th Limestone



There's a lot to say about Cog, but at least she knows how to bargain. They wouldn't accept our offer of some rock mechanisms for rope, cloth, an anvil and all of their food, so she left them out in the depot to sulk. After a few days of sitting in the snow storm eating nothing but their own frozen lungfish, they were quite willing to give us anything whatsoever for 30 horse meat roasts. 30 pieces of food and some mechanisms for 50 portions of meat, some barrels of drink, an anvil and loads of other stuff seems like a fair deal to me. Mafol is absolutely overjoyed, by the way. As soon as we carried the anvil in, he jumped on it, hugging it, saying that he'd never let go.

11th Limestone



Today, in the meeting hall, I overheard Eral say how impressed he was with Kunroder, and that we could look forward to some reinforcements from the mountainhome very soon. I went up to him,

"Did you say KunRODER? CatBALDness?"
"Why yes, we received word from a human that you had decided on that name!"

Apparently it's an easy mistake for a human to make, since there are only a few letters between bold and bald, and the elf hippie was probably too busy hugging a tree to go deliver it herself. So we're stuck with the worst fucking name I've ever heard. Well, I guess it suits the place.

Oh, Cog ordered wood. Only wood. Guess she's planning on building more magma pumps.

13th Limestone



As soon as Eral left, Cog rushed down to the basement to try her new pump out. We all gathered above to see what we could salvage, and it wasn't long until we heard screams. But the real shock was that they were screams of joy. I had to go down and see it with my own eyes - it worked! The crazy bitch was right! I have no idea what to make of this - she's pumped about 50 gallons of lava, and the pump looks fine. There's a faint hope that this is all just a bad dream.

16th Limestone





Cog kept pumping for days until she finally collapsed, and since she hadn't turned into a crisp, we all agreed to take turns pumping until we've got a steady layer of magma. The good news is that with our last minute additions to the magma room's design, we have a small room filled with water that we can access from the first floor to build a well.

25th Limestone



We received our reinforcements today! And they're.. they're..



..absolutely useless. Why in the name of all that is dwarven would a fisherdwarf and a herbalist go to a fucking glacier? And what's the potash maker gonna do? THERE ARE NO FUCKING TREES. Oh, they're going on and on about how great it is for an outpost to diversify and get new talents and inputs, but that falls flat when not even the armorer has any kind of real skill. My guess is that they're all so useless that the only place they can survive is where there is no economy yet. I never thought I'd long for a tax collector.



Edëm, the fisher, went to do his duty right away. Yeah, fish get real hungry when they've been frozen in ice since the beginning of time and only just were freed by magma. Smart move, dickhead.

10th Sandstone



We finally got enough magma that it won't just get too cool and disappear, so with no fear of sudden ice clogs, we've decided to open the floodgate to the farm room.






We had to tear down a wall to get rid of excess water, but we finally have soil. Lolor channeled the wall away from above, but surprisingly enough, the excess water did not freeze when leaving the magma-heated farm room. The miners think that since this is an extension of the mountain under the glacier, it's not quite cold enough for the water to freeze. Good to know for future projects.

13th Sandstone



Cog has two plots up and running now, a smaller one for plump helmets and a bigger one for sweet pods and quarry bushes. Lolor and Aban are working hard on a new storage room for furniture, since we have new eager hands to haul stuff. That seems to be their only skill, aswell... Cog has given orders for us to put all the excess stone on one single floor tile. I considered telling her that it defies all laws of physics, but considering the work she did with that magma pump, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt.

17th Timber

It's been a hectic month for all workers - of course, I've mostly passed the time "guarding" the place. I've finally mastered the art of sleeping standing, and as long as I stay in the doorway, no one seems to notice.



Another channel was dug for the smelter and forge Mafol keeps bitching about. Cog's pump technology murders braincells once again.



Stone and furniture has been moved, and Cog strikes again. I've heard from the immigrants that it actually is possible to pile an infinite amount of stone next to the mason's workshop if you just want it enough. I mostly cry myself to sleep nowadays. I don't want to live in a world where Cog is the genius.

[KaelGotDwarves]

>Zombie Goats
>Zombie Goasts

Just praise all the Gods in every heaven that it isn't "zombie goatse".

[Vaftrudner]

Winter of the first year and spring of the second year by Mafol Cattenetost, Metalsmith/Engraver

1st Moonstone



The immigrants that haven't been carrying stone have been working on putting more roof above the statue garden. Even if it bothers me to no end that Cog seems dead set on building a castle of ice and placing all our art there, at least it won't be snowing in there.



The miners have finished carving out bedrooms for us, we should be able to get all the stone out by spring but wood for beds is scarce, so currently we're all sleeping upstairs, in the barracks. Cog told me that she wanted some engravings around her field, so I smoothed the walls up for her. I was amazed when I started engraving, for some reason all the painful work on the ice has somehow made me an artist. Huh. Who would've known? Just to get some small revenge on Cog, I decided to engrave a picture of a door next to the real door. It's soothing for the soul to see Cog repeatedly walking into it, kicking it and cursing.

24th Moonstone



The barrels in the furniture storage are discomforting. No one's really sure exactly how much booze we have left, we're hoping that we'll get more reinforcements in the spring, so that we can force someone to keep track of this stuff. Right now we can't spare a single hand, there's too much to be done.



The miners haven't been able to dig up any more ores except some cassiterite, Lolor is our only mechanic and Aban is more of a stone crafter and carpenter than a miner really, so they've been busy elsewhere. I told Mûthkat, the armorer who came here this autumn, to start smelting galena. She's pretty pissed off having to run around doing anything but making armor, but since I'm proficient in weaponmaking and armormaking, she doesn't really have any choice. I think she'll turn into a great furnace operator over time. Either that, or a great guard for the soldiers to test my weapons on. I should tell Lolor that we need a graveyard, by the way.



She managed to squeeze out some silver from that galena though, so finally I can at least start making training weapons. The plan is to have Kogan train the milker Dastot in hammering and turn the herbalist Dumat into something resembling a speardwarf. They're not too happy about it, but as we like to remind them (while throwing turtle shells at them), they're virtually useless here. Kogan, however, is unnervingly pleased. We should really start working on that graveyard.

1st Granite, year 52



There's not much to say about Opal and Obsidian, we've all been hauling stone, empty barrels and ice for Cog's fucking castle. The masons have taken a break from the roof to put some reinforcements against the ice for our next big project, though.



Dastot and Dumat have started to get some skills too, believe it or not. Kogan claims that she could still cut them in two in her sleep, but at least it's something.

10th Granite





Some elven traders came just in time to witness our new project. We've pumped magma up all the way to the surface to create, as far as I know, the world's first glacial magma moat. Lolor's setting up a lever in the dining room for something Cog refers to as the "Rope reed cloth death", whatever that's supposed to mean.

20th Granite



To everyone's surprise, the elves brought something useful. We got some wood and cloth from them for two mechanisms and the loincloth of the kobold Kogan cut in half. I don't want to know what they're planning on doing with it.. Strangely, Cog's in a really bad mood. Mutters about "too valuable to fry".




Meanwhile, some of the bedrooms have been finished. The place is starting to crawl with kittens though so we got one to guard the door, and since Mûthkat loves cats, we put her on butchery duty just to see how she would react.

21st Granite



Smart girl. Built the butchery out of ice just so she could come running when it melted, saying "I can't butcher anything now, can I?" She'll probably be slapped around a bit and put on butchery duty forever, but I'm starting to like her.

[Vaftrudner]

Spring of the second year by Mûthkat Ardesbomrek, former armorer, current butchery bitch

12th Slate



I was overjoyed to hear that more immigrants are on their way! The original seven here are quite the tight group, except for Cog who lives in her own world of magma and sweet pods, so it's been kind of hard to be one of the newcomers. But finally we get a new pack of scapegoats to either form new, strong bonds with, or throw enough shit on to make up for what we received. The latter sounds much more constructive.




We're up to 34 dwarves now, not bad for a mining colony. Unfortunately, the mountainhome seems to use Catbaldness as a dwarven garbage room. Six of the immigrants have gone through their entire lives without learning one single useful skill.. They can't even lie properly. But damn if they can't drink. I'm glad we have a farm going. At least they sent us a hunter. Not that he'll be of much use here where the wildlife starts rotting at birth, but he brought his own steel bolts so he was immediately incorporated in our defense.

And the really good news is that two butchers came here, so I'm finally relieved from butchery duty. Thank every God in the book.

21st Slate





I finally have my own room! Considering this new wave of skill-relieved beer-to-piss-machines, I'm starting to feel slightly appreciated here. One of the peasants was put to work counting our stocks, while another was told to start extracting syrup out of the first yield of sweet pods.

2nd Felsite





Ast tells us we're almost certainly under 100 drinks now. Fuck. Obok started squeezing out wine from the plump helmets we've been harvesting all winter, so we may be able to salvage this frozen pit. Cog has been keeping everyone busy with expanding her horrific vision of a frozen castle, but at least the defensive situation looks better now. What has me really worried though is the state of our proud defenders.




Apparently Kogan does not have a lot of patience. I guess it would be easier if they would just be given some armor, but they'd rather cut off their legs than let me touch an anvil, and Mafol's crawling around on all fours, smoothing ice in what will be the new archery room. Admittedly, it looks pretty good when he's done, but on the other hand, Dumat would look a whole lot better if her ribs were straight.

7th Felsite



Mafol is now so good with smoothing ice, he's not even considered a metalsmith anymore. Meanwhile, the forge is starting to grow moss and Cog's bright solution is to have the immigrant bowyer make crossbows instead...




Some hastily thrown together silver bolts, quivers and crossbows made out of fucking guppy bones are supposed to keep us alive. Since Dastot has become slightly too, er, special to wield a hammer since the blow to the head, she was the first to receive one of them. She seems happy enough.



Eh. Survival is for pussies anyway.

[Vaftrudner]

Early summer by Dumat Ïtebgusil, Speardwarf

3rd Hematite



I've finally healed up and I've been drinking for three days straight now. I have a lot of catching up to do. It feels so good to be out of that bed.




I'm told that one of the peasants has been given a guppy crossbow while I was resting, and the aboveground archery range is almost finished. The problem is that we have no wood to waste on training bolts, and bone enough for maybe 50 bolts. All we have is a surplus of silver bolts that are just as ineffective but the crossbowdwarves still refuse to use them for training. I'm gonna go see if Cog has some solution to this.

7th Hematite



Me and my big mouth. Apparently, since they refuse to use the silver bolts on the range, we all have to go down and train in the cave. Fortunately, Kogan had the perfect excuse to get out of this alive. Just as we came to the cave opening, Kogan let everybody know that she was starting to feel slightly sober and everybody agreed that I should escort her home for a drink immediately.

8th Hematite




Not too long after we left, Stinthäd and Lokum came back. They told us that they too started to feel a bit sober as soon as they got down into the cave, nudging us a bit.

"But what about Dastot?" I asked them
"...oh shit. We forgot."



10th Hematite

We all went down into the cave, prepared to at least get our revenge and give Dastot a proper burial. And I was utterly speechless when I saw what had happened.




The giant didn't even care. He's just sitting on his fat ass in the bottom of the cave. And Dastot, without any crossbow training at all, killed an entire floor of zombie trolls - with silver bolts! When we came down there, she was still beating one into a bloody, rotten pulp with the blunt side of her fishbone crossbow. It turns out that our biggest hero is a brain-damaged milker. Not bad.

15th Hematite



So the human traders come just in time to see us carrying troll corpses and our drooling hero into the fortress. Needless to say, they were quite stunned. Even more so when it turned out that we'd completely forgotten to make any trade goods. We told them to just sit tight for a moment!

20th Hematite



Cog told Obok to just throw together anything so we could get some wood off the suckers, and mumbling about "Humans love the sugar!", he just poured dwarven syrup on top of the stove and came out with a big heap of essentially nothing but burnt syrup.



To our big surprise, when we showed it to the traders, their jaws dropped. The negotiator Jeha tried to put on a stern face but he couldn't stop licking his lips. Cog, with her usual combination of sweet-talking and pointing towards the magma screaming, managed to clean out most of their wagon with that one giant carbohydrate mess.





Suddenly we've got plenty of wood, a good supply of booze and even iron shields! Kogan and I claimed one each on the argument that "We're worth more than you, want to fight about it?" and as it turns out, no one wanted to. Dastot got one too, but seems slightly disturbed by having to use two hands at the same time. She'll be fine.

[webadict]

I like this story. It gives me happy thoughts. More will come when things go bad.

[Dr. Dorf]

You sir, are awesome.

[Eita]

Wait for it... Wait for it...

[Spoggerific]

I think the drawings put this one at a notch above the rest. Well done, sir or madame. A+, would read again.

[Zako]

I almost soiled myself laughing at the pictures and when they realise they left the brain-damaged idiot behind to fight.

Good stuff!

[Vaftrudner]

Thanks for the comments everyone! Heffa decided to take a break again, so I had to make my own art for this episode. I'm truly sorry and can only extend my apologies to anyone affected.



Mid- and late summer according to Rigòth Eralmåmgoz, Bowyer



Autumn is just around the corner and I've been working hard all summer. I've heard what can happen to bowyers at other fortresses, there are always rumors of magma and drawbridges. A lot of dwarves consider my profession elfish, and I'm sick and tired of being tossed into moats, wells and refuse stockpiles. Why can't we all just come together and love each other like brothers and sisters? Thankfully, our wise leader Cog has taken a liking to me and put me in charge of not only crossbow-making but also leather- and bonecrafting.




I noticed early on how well troll bones can be used for bolts, so our marksdwarves finally have something to practice with. Everyone seems thankful! Nowadays, when they throw me in the refuse stockpile, they don't even lock the door! This is the best home I've ever had.




Earlier this summer, Shorast, driven almost to the point of madness by the lack of trees, told us all to fuck off and stick our dwarven society up a body part that I'm too delicate to repeat here. He grabbed some alunite and some of the very few metal ores we've found and promptly kicked me out of the craftsdwarf's workshop, throwing away the shell I was working on.




To our big surprise, he came out a few days later, not the depressed nervous wreck we knew, but an undwarvenly tough stonecrafter with quite the panty-dropping amulet indeed in his hand. Needless to say, he got his own workshop and was put to work pouring out beautiul trade goods.




Meanwhile, since our miners still haven't found any ores except for galena and cassiterite, I've been told to make some temporary armor for our soldiers. I collected what I could find upstairs and made a set of bone armor for Kogan.




Isn't she pretty?

[Spoggerific]

I like it. I hope you keep updating this for a while; I think this thread has a lot of potential. I wonder what it will be that will finally send you down into the spiral of losing... hm.


Oh, also, I enjoyed the title.

[Vaftrudner]

I like it. I hope you keep updating this for a while; I think this thread has a lot of potential. I wonder what it will be that will finally send you down into the spiral of losing... hm.


Oh, also, I enjoyed the title.

Probably when the wooden pumps fall apart

Or at this rate, I'll die from lack of iron. I've never failed so completely in finding hematite. I chose a gigantic embarking area because I know how hard it can be to find quality ores in igneous extrusive layers, but seriously, it's been two years soon and I haven't even found copper!

Thanks for the comments anyway, it's a thin line trying to write like this without it becoming just rude and pointless, but I'll keep updating until I run out of steam.