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[Marlowe]

Spring 204

The first day of spring sees the return of our wounded fisherdwarf from his bed. Our Weaver is looking less heathy. His arm's better but his leg remains a mess. We have plenty of others to work the looms, but all the same I'd be glad to see him recover.

 We very quickly almost get a repeat of the incident. A werewolf come charging through our operations west of the fort, scattering silk gatherers and woodcutters like a cloud of flies. Neosen is asleep and these woodcutters aren't of his calibre, they're upjumped peasants with iron axes and I forebear to send them piling on. I rustle up Goden, a champion training downstairs, and tell him to get to work.

 For a while I think to see a repeat of the tail-chase last season, but our most endangered woodcutter displays a bit more strategy in his blind panic than did the weaver. After being chased far to the north, he reverses direction by slipping around a tight clunch of glumprongs and comes running straight for the gate. Straight for Goden.

 Goden has forgotten to bring any ammunition, but he absently bashes the the beasties's brains all over the scenery as it runs past. I do like our crossbows.

 Fikod, my new apprentice, is disturbing me a little. I've got him cobbling out mechanisms and laying stone traps around our main stairway under the tower. He's only just got his mechanic's badge and already he's talking about a "waterfall tower". I keep wanting to point out that we're on the flat, which could make such a project rather insanely--insanely---insane.

 Speaking of towers, I had a suite of rooms channeled out of some jet on the residencial level so we'd have enough to put a few more floors on the Wulfen Tower. They'll come in handy in the far-fetched event that we get some complete stranger arriving one day and demanding a lavish set of rooms in return for inflicting us with outrageous demands. You never know.

 I finally figured out what to put in the deceased wrestler's tomb. I thought about what I'd want if my mortal remains were spending long periods in close proximity to Rickvoid. From that it was easy. A locked door.

 It turns out to be microcline, which seems appropriate. One conspicuously useless thing deserves another.

 Rickvoid has been acting strangely lately. Well, actually he's been acting normal. Which is very strange. He's been throwing himself quite heavily into working on the tower, since I never told him he could quit the routine masonry duties. He's been getting lots of fresh air and sunshine and now only looks three weeks dead. He let's my boneworking orders stack up for weeks and then casually turns out a whole string of exceptional and masterwork pieces in a matter of hours. It's all damned weird. I hope he's going to be ok.

 Spring brings Elves. Sometimes I wish it didn't. Well, always I wish it didn't. But if they're here we might as well ultilise their willing garbage-hauling services trade. We give them the goblins leader's iron cap, a pile of crafts and a lot of the cleaner goblin silks for a couple of cloth bins, wooden spears and swords (for when crossbows are getting dull), booze, barrels, and bags.

 Our last purchase is the one I'm most happy with. I let KLAR! free the kitten (now a grown cat) that's been our watch animal for almost three years and tie up it's replacement. A giant jaguar.

 I rather wish I'd bought the cougar as well, but we have enough animals.

 In fact, we have more than enough animals. I think I'll order a few slaughtered.

 As the Elves are sitting around the depot smoking their "Grass weed" and looking hungrily at, well, at us; migrants are spotted, led by a dungeon master. Well don't that beat all. Better start furnishing those new rooms, guys.

 This DM must pull a bit of clout back home. She comes with three professional military types. A speardwarf, and axedwarf and a marksdwarf. These guys are relatively feeble at the moment, compared with our own champions, but their equipment is good and they bought it themselves. I order the marksdwarf to put on some of our iron chain over his leathers and set them all to spar unarmed. The Dungeon Master's first task on entering the fortress is to forge a copper axe for the axedwarf to practice with after he's wrestled himself into shape.

 The other migrants include 2 potash makers and a soaper. These guys are so drafted. The rest is something of a mixed bag. There's a clothier which is good. Unfortunately, our former-metalcrafter has been working cloth so such he's now of at least equal skill. There's an armourer who would have been great news a year or two ago, but now is no better at this trade than Datan. Another stonecrafter is good news, another bonecrafter is sort of good news, and all the peasants and children and pump-operators and such aren't horrible news. They'll work. Although we might have chronic idlerism for the first time in the history of Fogcrystal.

We have bedrooms already sitting ready for about half these guys, the rest will have to crash until we can catch up.

 We're getting stuff dyed at too slow a rate to match our clothing production. I'm thinking seriously of a second quern and dyer's shop, and certainly we can get a second clothier's.

 

[Marlowe]

Summer 204

The only interesting thing to report about summer is that Kubuk was defeated in the mayoral elections. Not by me, but by a Fisherdwarf named Iton. She's an odd choice. The Herbalist's wife, but with no other close friends. I'm working on the theory that all the fisherdwarves voted for her, the founders split their votes between Kubuk and myself, and everybody else voted for themselves. If I cared, I'd ask around. I don't care. My office is looking quite swish these days.

 Our migrant axedwarf has chosen a new name; "Xenomorph". Frankly, I don't know what all the craze is about taking new names. Maybe it's deep seated psychological disturbance caused by his recent shift of profession to elite wrestler. I don't care. He can get a new axe when he hits champion.

 Anyway, we got the news about the new mayoralty while carrying goods out for the human traders. These guys are a gung-ho bunch. On the way in they killed a kobold thief and while they were waiting for me their guards ran out and killed a raccoon that was hanging about. Sometimes I wonder how caravan guards get trained that makes them do stuff like this.

 Trading started well. A bunch of stone crafts, a silk robe, some Goblin junk, and three platinum goblets (apparently, we have over thirty of these. It's getting silly) for almost everything they have, this being leather, metal, ores, meat, wood (quite a lot of it) booze and barrels. While it's being carried downstairs I get the news that our new mayor, who likes phantom spider silk, had placed a mandate on not exporting it. Oh dear. I have to run back from the depths of the fort to try to get our robe back.

 This worked out pretty well. There was a great pile of goblin junk that hadn't arrived at the depot on time for my first trading. I get rid of a stinking mess of used goblin leathers and silks in exchange for our robe. I get some bags while I'm about it. I keep the giant cave spider silk items back to trade with our Dwarven friends in the autumn. We get some space back, the Kingdoms of Flesh get a better profit margin. Everybody's happy.

 On their way out, the trader guards kill a werewolf. Saves us the trouble I suppose. Oddly the wagons leave one way and the pack-beasts another. I hope they know where they're going.

 Our dungeon master is settling in. She blew a floodgate at me because her office wasn't as good as the mayors'. I explained to her that that's because we hadn't finished engraving her office yet. I hope we don't get trouble over this later on. She's been making herself busy around a forge, which is nice but I have heard phrases such a "criminally inept purple-shirted bar-banger" bandied around. I might have to think on this.

 While inspecting her rooms, I find some engravings by KLAR!. Interesting, I hadn't even known he dabbled.

I got a gem-encrusted Platinum statue put in the dining hall. Rovod suggests that the next statues should be of iron; "to more accurate represent the fundamental strength that characterises our settlement here, and by the employment and combination of Dwarvomorphic figure and cthonic element to make a synergistic statement that dwarf and fortress are one and indivisible".

 Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on Rovod. And his werewolf kill was a bit dodgy too.

 The Wulfen Tower is rising, already it dwarfs (oops) our curtain wall. We are running out of different stone colours for the floors. We are actually MINING MICROCLINE to get an extra colour, and next we're working on Orthoclase. Imagine that.

 I'm becoming more and more curious where I got my kimberlite mechanism from. Some kimberlite right now would be very handy. Apparently, it occurs in Gabbro. I'm ordering more tomb spaces dug out in the hope of finding it, but so far no joy.

[rickvoid]

From the Elf-Flesh bound Diary of Rickvoid, Lord of the Bones;

Finally, I've managed to get some time when the fools are busy and none of them are reading over my shoulder. My apprentices are progressing quickly. Soon, they will be ready to begin learning the many secrets of Death that I have amassed in my not-inconsiderable years of study. The fools still think I'm offering them a path to eternal life; Warholla is not appealing to all, it would seem. I doubt they would be so eager to learn if they knew I was planning on binding their souls to my will, as my undead servants for all eternity!

I think Dakost is becoming suspicious of me. He recently ordered the tomb of yet another of our fallen bretheren sealed, glaring at me all the while. As if I needed to disturb the remains; these woods provide me with all the corpses I require. Therefore, when he announced the construction of his "Tower Wulfen", I joined in with as much gusto as I could muster. It's not like my bonecrafting takes me very long, and it's a good excuse for me to be seen pitching in, and perhaps allying some of his concerns. As with everything else, of course, I have other reasons for wanting that tower up. All fortresses need defenses, whether they be for the living, or the not-quite dead...

OOC: Tower Wulfen is an awesome name, inspired by the Wolf-3d looking 3Dwarf picture, I take it? 
And as to the locked door comment? 

[Marlowe]

[I was thinking we could rename the whole place Castle Werewolfenstein.

OverlordFT, sure you can have Rovod. Do you want me to rename him?]

[overlordFT]

[I was thinking we could rename the whole place Castle Werewolfenstein.

OverlordFT, sure you can have Rovod. Do you want me to rename him?]

Yeah sure.


Diary of Rovod

Diary, i might have had to escape from the mountain homes after my protests but now I'm back to work agian, why should us Common dwarves do the work while these rich fat cats in the mountainhomes do nothing. I hsve experimented with an idea called "Democracy" inspired but some of the mayoral election in the outer colonies.

The monarchs are soft and useless, not like us real dwarves, who work in the mines all day, i think its a bad day when the hard working dwarf is commanded my a sissie dwarf no better then an elf. Soon we will rise up!

Today i was already subtlely sharing some of my beliefs with the leader, as a part of the democratic process he should uderstand.

[Marlowe]

Autumn 204

 Autumn comes like old age, more quickly than you expected and accompanied by crackling sounds. I've forgotten what the mountainhomes were like. Except that they had copper and we don't. I hate them. What are we supposed to do with our zinc? Make it into counter-tops and open a chain of bistros?

 Of our spring recruits four made champion this month. Xenomorph the axe-person, the markdwarf, the soaper, and one of the potash makers. I've given Xenomorph the copper axe, the marksdwarf back his crossbow, and the two formerly useless people an Elven wooden sword each. We already have iron swords sitting down in the stockpiles.

 I've been ashamed to mention it, but our stockpiles have been overflowing all year. The only thing we're growing now is dye. Even allowing for the malignant effect of the blood gnats on our food supplies, it really looks like we could survive for years on our plump helmet stocks without planting another one. That's if we don't catch any fish or butcher any animals. Trust me, we will. I just wish we had more space.

 The stocks invoices are depressing me. According to this we have 167 barrels, and still never enough.

 Our new mayor, Iton, gave birth to a girl this season. That's the very first native-born Fogcrystal child. A poignant moment that all those who saw it will be trying to forget for the rest of their lives.

 We haven't cut a tree since spring. There's been really no need. Our wood stocks are steadily dropping but since we still have over 200, I really don't care. The woodcutters are working on the tower, along with anyone else I can catch shirking.

 Not speaking of shirking, I called the rest of the founders together and asked them to remind them of all the jobs I told them to do years ago. Seems Kubuk got off pretty easy. She's just been mining and doing masonry, but KLAR! and Koji have been doing a bizarre variety of tasks, like weaving and tanning, that we've had specialists to do for a while now. I relieve them of these duties to speed up...all the THINGS we have to do.

 Koji is now legendary.

 Since the goblin attack (the "Third attempted abduction" is what the engravers are calling it) we've been guarding carefully against more. Minimal ventures into the forest, and Champions (we call the first batch "Marksknights" now, to differentiate from the newer set training with swords and axes.) on guard every trading session. I've been switching them from crossbow pratcice to unarmed combat regularly, in the hope of causing that thing we're they get something stuck in their hand and wind up bashing each other with their crossbows. You can't tell me that's not funny. Anyway, it's cheaper than making them practice hammers.

 The mayor likes copper. It's a worry.

 I've had to make another compromise on the bonecarving issue because of too many bones. Rickvoid is doing great work but he isn't getting rid of them fast enough. Besides, how many exceptional turtle-shell encrusted goblin-bone gauntlets does a fortress need? I've forbidden all the interesting bones (werewolf, goblin, kobold)  for Rickvoid's personal use later, and ordered them all to decorate with shell, and to make bone bolts out of the endless turtle and fish bones. Needless to say, we're butchering animals at a pretty fair rate by now [OOC: Raccoonplosion]. So more is getting added to the pile all the time.

 Traders come from the mountainhomes. Bleh.

 We sell them our usual set of stone crafts, some of Ushat's wooden masterpieces, some platinum quaffing utensils and goblin giant spider silks, and buy them out. They have an anvil. We don't really need it. I buy it anyway. They're practically kissing my toes (or maybe trying to steal my robe) as they leave.

 I watch them go. But no goblins.

 I ask Iton to ask for some steel trap components when she gets a chance to talk to the liason. Those we could use. And better we buy them than waste our wood churning out the iron variety.

 We have engraved the dining hall. Finally. Looks like a pretty good job was done. Lots of engravings of goblins dying. Werewolf killing stupid wrestler. Koji killing werewolf. Neo withering away. Tables. Thin crosses. My election as mayor. And one of me embracing a pair of mules. I may have to talk to somebody.

 I've just discovered that rather than visiting every damn workshop for the things I want done, I can just post a list. So I'm ordering bulk armour forging, iron bolt forging, cloth dyeing, clothes making. Heh. I have this grand vision of having enough armour in stock to equip not only the military, but the founders and the woodcutters as well, to form a reserve in the case of goblin assault.

 I can see it all in the mind's eye. Me leading Kubuk, Neosen, Koju, Ubid, and useless-but-buff people like Ushat in ill-fitting armour, our copper picks flashing, to relieve our hard-pressed military and save the gate. Except with my luck I'll be in bed at the crucial time.

 Speaking of the military, our last potash maker makes champion at the end of the season. I hand him a wooden Elven spear and tell her to get sparring. The speardwarf hasn't made it. Seems he's got a neck injury and can't spar.

 Um.

 I hand him back his steel spear and tell him he's now our professional werewolf exterminator. It's the only way he'll make the grade.

 So he goes after a werewolf. Accompanied by his two pet mules (WHO embraces mules now?).

 Now, when our boys meet werewolves, I'm used to seeing werewolf bits flying everywhere in seconds. Kubuk killed quickly. I killed quickly. Neosen killed pretty quickly. Our Marksknights don't seem to break a sweat.

 This boy spends two hours breaking the thing's limbs one by one. He actually overexerts himself. I don't stay to watch the end. We've struck kimberlite in the tombs level. On the whole, a less than impressive performance for all but the hopelessly depraved. And Rickvoid wasn't even watching.

 I hope this isn't a sinister portent for the future.

 

[Boksi]

Rickvoid is just such a fascinating personality, is he not?

I hope it is a sinister portent for the future.

[rickvoid]

Rickvoid is just such a fascinating personality, is he not?

I hope it is a sinister portent for the future.

Muhahaha!

I am basing my "diary" entries off of the behavior Marlowe describes as "Dakost", but it really isn't taking much work to do so. I think I got lucky when I pulled him at random. Either that, or bonecrafters are just naturally weird. 
Or perhaps it's the fact that I requested he be moved to the tombs, that is making him weird... More testing is needed.

Also, changing the fort's name to Castle Wolfenstein would be awesome. We could- oh god. Epic idea!

Some of these werewolves may have never killed a Dwarf before, right? Therefore, we ought to be able to catch them in cages. If they've never killed, and it's allowed in the data... then couldn't we tame them? Imagine, tame werewolves chained outside the entrance to our mighty Castle!

Now I just need to find out if werewolves can be tamed... time to check the raws... 

EDIT: I'm no code monkey, but I compared the werewolf entry to the dog entry, and werewolves lack the trainable flag. The closest thing they have is slow learner, which covers something else I think. Oh well. 

[JoshuaFH]

ooc: yeah, the dog raws have one tag that no other animal in the game has, and thats the tag that lets you train them into war dogs, and i'm pretty sure thats it. the tag the dictates whether you can tame then and whether you can train them into war animals are completely differently i think. i could be totally wrong of course.

[rickvoid]

Perhaps it's the PET tag? I noticed that most other animals that end up being tamed in forts have that tag. I should probably ask in search the modding section.

[Strife26]

Autumn 204

  I've forgotten what the mountainhomes were like. Except that they had copper and we don't. I hate them. What are we supposed to do with our zinc? Make it into counter-tops and open a chain of bistros?

 

Name: Strife
Profession: Resuranteer
Jobs: Cooking, Butchery, Dyeing, (he has a minor in interior decorating)

If he likes zinc, that's a big bonus.

He wants to create the best dinning hall EVER! And decorate it with zinc!

[neo1096]

@Rickvoid and Chaoticjosh: FYI the tag is [trAINABLE]

[Marlowe]

Nice idea, but I think we might be running out of werewolves.

There's a "number" (or something) stat in the raws. For werewolves it's 10-20. As of spring 205 (not to spoil anything) we have killed 15.

hehehehehe.....zinc tables. Can do.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that we have another artifact. A mudstone ear-ring. It's worth a decent amount but it was made by a child, meaning we didn't get anyone legendary out of it. Dakost is a little *meh* over this and so am I.

[Marlowe]

Winter 204

 Morul our werewolf hunter made another foray, leading to a comedy of grotesque ineptitude that necessitated a minor military operation.

In the first clash the werewolf breaks his spear arm, followed a while later by his shield arm. Our boy keeps hold of his spear but appears to be trying  to trim the werewolves' nails with it. They stay locked in what for lack of a better word I'll call combat. Morul is pretty good at dodging the slavering maw and the claws, but he's still got two broken arms and his spear twisting isn't effecting the werewolf at all.

 After some

considerable

time

the werewolf is plainly getting tired, he abruptly breaks off and tries to wander off for a cup of booze and a lie down. But Morul's not having any. Both broken limbs flapping limply he CHASES the thing, screaming "Come on! I'll bite yer leg!"

 I can't take it anymore and send out a Marksknight. I have to grab Mebstot, one of the ones currently sparring unarmed, but it shouldn't matter. He breaks the werewolf over his knee, and then returns, seems he has a headache.

 The MOMENT the werewolf is dead, Morul lies down under the trees and starts moaning about "the pain...the pain..." and "...water" as though he hadn't been perfectly capable of moving two seconds previously. Pathetic. Of course, we now have to go out and pick him up.

 Mebstot's headache is diagnosed as a minor brain injury, meaning the only thing he'll be practising with now will be the crossbow. For Morul's sake, I'm going to assume that this came from the sparring and not from the werewolf. If I had to believe that a useful soldier got crippled for his sake I really would be a teensy bit cross with him.

 Just when I'm totally disgusted with the whole situation, I get a shout that another werewolf has turned up, and the engraver that went to pick up Morul is falling back on the gate. Fortunately (or not) the wolf chooses to chase the engraver rather than put Morul out of our misery. I send out Mebstot again and this time he's got a crossbow. With him is Feb, another Marksknight, bare-handed. They deal to the thing shortly and stand guard over Morul until help arrives.

 And so, our proud warrior lies whimpering in the grass, while an ex-potash-maker and milker guard him from harm.

 I don't want to talk about this anymore. Did I mention that winter is goblin season?

 The Wulfen Tower is complete up to the Orthoclase level and now that we're out of colours I'm ordering the higher floors to repeat the nicer ones we've had, this time with inlays of Kimberlite and Bauxite in the shape of a thin cross. It's the lower levels that are concerning us, specifically the ground floor. It's basically a box of fortifications with an opening. Not very defensive. If we lose the perimeter then bowgoblins could stand outside and cover our stairs. Also the opening faces the gate, meaning there's a line of fire from outside the perimeter walls to our stairway.

 First, we remove the fortifications and replace them with walls. Needless to say, this gets done very carefully. We've got ten stories of Jet looming above us. Plus the Wulfen Tower is directly above our main stairway, meaning that if it collapses it will collapse ALL THE WAY. Down to the tombs. The survivors will find themselves living around a chasm. That would be hilarious, but since Rickvoid would most likely survive (his rooms are a little far from the stairs), not really worth it.

 There's no other place to put the entrance that doesn't cause worse problems, so we build a short stretch of wall in front of it. That just means you can't cover our stairways from the outside. We secure the entrance with iron bars hooked to levers on the storage level.

 We do the same to the bridges connecting the tower to the wall. If we lose the perimeter now, we'll still have the tower and the bridges and be able to harrass them from these constructions.

 I get ahead of myself. This job takes a long time. Fikod and myself use up all our stockpile of mechanism, even my kimberlite one.

 Discussing the Morul issue (it's a real conversation-starter, the Morul issue), it emerged that spears are almost ineffective weapons against things that don't feel pain, at least unless one is really skillful. This means the problem may not be Morul but his weapon. Giving him an axe is suggested, but then it gets bought up that there might not be that many more werewolves left for him to train on. The easiest solution is to hand him a crossbow when he recovers.

 This also puts the wisdom of training one of our people in spears in doubt. We've got a few silver bars in stock. I order them made into training hammers and give one to our former spearperson.

 Speaking of recovery, our injured Weaver had his leg progress from "real mess" to "just Broken" last season. This is good, as he suddenly appears limping down the corridor and giggling to himself. He flings a clothier out of  his shop and limps around, with agonising slowness, gathering blue cloth, gems, shells, even a bit of stone. He becomes quite a common sight on the stairs, grimly dragging himself step by step while clutching his latest find.

I'm really concerned, he's so slow.

I'm quite relieved when I get word he's begun construction. He produces a short skirt. We all agree it's very pretty. It's worth about 48,000. I'm not trying it on though.

Now we have a short skirt and an earring. Maybe we can save these things up and get an artifact-grade skanking outfit eventually. Although finding somebody to wear it might be harder.

[Marlowe]

EDIT: My mistake, the "earring" is an amulet. Still fits the concept.

Spring may take a while. Not to give the game away, but we have had a terrible, terrible disaster. And it's taking a while to furnish the rooms.