If this is the wrong section, I apologise.
Hello. I'm a relatively new user of Dwarf Fortress, having discovered the game on TVTropes and a Spore fansite a few weeks and many months ago, respectively. I'm greatly enjoying the game, and I'm wondering if this challenge, which TVTropes might call a "Town With A Dark Secret", is feasible. Note that all buildings will, if possible, have flooring in them.
Firstly, set up a fortress in a temperate wilderness woodland area, with 1 miner/mason, 1 architect/mechanic, 2 woodcutter/carpenter, 1 grower/cook, 1 grower/brewer and 1 trader dwarf. Use a pretty basic setup with equipment, but trade in a pick for an axe, and get both a brew-capable and aboveground food (ideally both, and ideally uniseasonal).
Do some stone mining, then set up temporary carpenter's workshops. After that, build two story houses (using wooden walls) with dining rooms, workplaces (if possible) and storage backrooms on the first floor, and bedrooms (about the size you'd expect in a typical family home) on the second floor.
For the grower/brewer's house, make the workplace a bar.
Dig out a small cave for your plump helmets, ideally near to your village. Plant some farms utilizing outdoor seeds, ideally uniseasonal ones like prickled berries.
Build a large, two story house house that will serve as the expedition leader/broker/mayors house, as well as housing a small guard. On the first floor, lay it out with some areas for aesthetics purposes, with statues, a meeting hall and the like. Build the mayor's office, with a door going to the side and through a door and trap filled corridor, culminating in a room with an entryway dropping directly down into the centre of the room below it.
Build a guardroom nearby, with barracks downstairs and a weapons storage area upstairs, with a "closet' guarded by a door (preferably iron) that contains several downwards staircases, going down to one level underground. Link it in a long tunnel to a medium sized, square shaped chamber (which we will build later) (for bonus points, engrave, ideally with something disturbing), and build a grate over the entrance to the chamber.
Build a bedroom or bedrooms upstairs for the houses inhabitants. Leave them unlinked to the barracks armoury.
Find an underground river (or some way of getting water through the tunnel and put a flood gate over another tunnel at an intersection bridging between the path to the chamber and to the water. (For bonus points, use magma). Then, get to work creating a room below the aforementioned room with the dropping entrance, and dig out a pit in the centre of it that is 2 Z-levels deep, digging out the top level first and then sending your dwarves to dig out the bottom level through the tunnel. Put some decorations in the room if you want, and set up some cage traps outside of your dwarves houses and around, say, a small shed with a 3-wide entrance holding a trade depot.
Dig out a small room below the mayor's office with two levers, one connected to the pit-grate, another to the river/magma-grate.
Now, capture some goblins or kobolds. Disarm them to strip them naked, and have them released into the pit mentioned earlier. Give them no food, save for the bodies of anything that has died in there. You can occasionally release the water or magma to clean up the pit and/or drown anything in there, though you will need to manage this to avoid flooding, perhaps using a series of floodgates and hooking them up to more levers in the same room used for the existing ones.
It gets even better if you get elves, because you can create a cannibal horrorshow. Other things you could do include a secret passageway from the lever-room to
, which you could make a "guardians of ancient secrets" or "cult" backstory for, getting a butcher and, in his storage room, putting a red herring room with a long pit (perhaps with spikes at the bottom) behind a door, "closet" style. You could also occasionally throw in a single piece of clothing or meat, and let them fight over it (multiple pieces if there are different species-sizes in the room. If you want to be extra cruel, make the only clothing of the wrong gender, so you'll have male goblin deathmatches over dresses (though it won't have any gameplay effect).
What do you think? Is this feasible? Are there major barriers or prerequisites, such as the digging out of the pit, or the transfer of cages around stairs, that I may need to adjust, work around (say, with using ramps instead of stairs down to the pit or dangers (flooding, goblins attacking after being released, etc.) I may need to know of?
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Topic: Is This Theme/Challenge Idea Feasible? (Read 1218 times)