Anyhow, my idea is to make a sphinx, maybe two if I feel like it. I'm thinking maybe making it out of gold blocks (not sure how much gold my map actually has) and using glass and other colored blocks for the head. Honestly though, I'm not sure how I'll do the head, may or may not do the egyotain headdress thing. I know it's not exactly origional, but hey, its my first megaproject I'm thinking of actually doing. So, any tips on how to do it?
Bonus points if I make the nose and get it to fall off, lol.
Oooh, incredibly close to my current megaproject, in a way.
A sunken Egyptian landmark. Making a huge square hole in the landscape (<calculates>... 125 or so units on a side; somewhere around 10 Z-levels of rock deep in total, but I may double that) drilling down below soil level (on a not quite flat plane, which means at least three layers for about 25% of the area) and leaving
native rock in the shape of a central pyramid and 28 strategically placed outyling obelisks containing stairwells and bridges (pairs of meeting bridges) between them giving an upper-level walkway feature within the hole and accorss to the tunnels within the rim of the hole. Appropriate access points being in all features (I might make the pyramid extend below new-ground-level), the floor of the construct delineated by long decorative ponds (if the water doesn't evaporate too readily/I can tap the underground river that I've got elsewhere on this map, but yet to dig into), all rock being smoothed, maybe even decorated. All hopefully missing both the underground magma and other promised surprise until I'm happy to tap into it.
I'm currently putting all my workshops into the rim (accessible from steps from the rim top that I will later remove for a more elegant solution, ditto the current placement of the depot), in areas that may remain as workshops, be re-used as plebian accomodation as and when the economy starts, forgotten about or modified into non-royal noble accomodation (I forsee the royals taking up at least some of the pyramid internals), depending on what requirements arise.
My only concession to sticking to the native rock (smoothed, of course) is to hopefully be able to cap the pyramid and the obelisks with electrum tips (though I suppose I could remove the natural ramp sides and replace with limestone ones, for an additional historic synchronicity and de-stripe the pyramid's outer face). I wouldn't have considered doing the tip for the obelisks, except that I already accidentally ruined the originally intended rock tip of one them, while removing the surrounding rock. I immediately rebuilt that cell as a block of the same type of rock it was hewn from, but without going back to the prior season's backups I've decided to extend the electrum tip idea instead of just making do with that cheat.
Of course, I've got to keep my fortress socially operational at the same time, and though I've usually managed (these days) to avoid starving my dwarfs, the current internal and external field layout isn't as efficient as it could be, due to various practical restraints (for food I've actually got some captured elephants, but the raw plants needed for drink isn't being produced as fast as I'd like and external pools keep evaporating where they aren't already dripping into my foundations where I've sliced them with my project, whenever it deigns to rain,
then evaporating), and I've got a Fey Mooded guy who has just started desiring shells that I don't have (and can't seem to aquire any fish from the open-air watersources, never mind shellfish), so I'm eagerly awaiting a trading delegation before both situations get too much out of hand.