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[elizar]

I once got a bug with vermin, and it wasn't funny :/

What happened was that I had been collecting vermin, but I didn't really saw the need anymore, and since people were getting offended at the vermin in the pantry (tried to get people to eat it) I released it with built cage + lever.

The vermin never left the dot where they were released. After fifteen years of  keeping the fort at ten FPS, I gave up.

[Lord Dakoth]

Of course, you can always let the dwarves eat the unwanted vermin.

They won't if said vermin are tame.

Ha, dwarves eating vermin in the dining room, and other dwarves getting offended... that reminds me of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21C6x2w9nXg>the restaurant scene[/url] in the Emperor's New Groove. (Yes I know it's in Hebrew, but I couldn't find it in English.)

[The Architect]

Wellll... let's not get off-topic in Kenbo's thread, shall we? Being helpful is one thing, sharing stories is something else. I know I've had to be corrected in the past but hopefully this will save Mr. Calrissian the trouble this time.

[KenboCalrissian]

Sorry for the delay, a couple of other games got in the way <_<  Update tomorrow (with invaders re-enabled!)

[KenboCalrissian]

1st Moonstone, 208, Early Winter
-------------

"No.  No, it's all wrong!  This will never work!  Who designed this stupid thing?!"

"You did, Zon."

"Bah!  Do I look like an architect to you?!  Shouldn't someone have corrected me?"

"But you get mad when I tell you how to make things more artistic!"

"I'm not looking for art, I'm looking for practicality!"

"What exactly is the problem again?"

I tug on my beard and let out a sigh.  I had requested Asob's help to deliberate over a name for the magma road project (we still haven't thought of one) when she noticed a crucial flaw - one that can't be fixed without possibly a year or more of renovation.

"The pump stack on the magma trap is in the wrong place.  It only draws magma up from the second level!"

"So?"

"So?!  That means there's only two levels worth of magma to fill the entire trap!"

"Hmm... well, what's going to make it take a full year to fix?"

"There's only two ways to fix this that I can see... Either we deconstruct the whole blasted thing to move it, or we add another pump underneath the stack - but to do that, we first need to pump enough magma out of the pipe to get it low enough for the workers to build!"

Asob laughed.  "See, this is what you need an artist for.  Your problem is that you're afraid there won't be enough magma to pump, right?"

"Obviously!"

"Well, then!  Why don't you just make the top two levels of the pipe wider?"

I blinked.  I blinked again.  That... "That could actually work!  I think... wait... yes!  Yes, we could manage that... give the magma some time to fill in the expanded area, and it should be ok!  Asob, you're a genius!"

"I know!  You should tell me more often.  Hang on, gotta get a drink."

Asob vanished, as I have come to accept as usual.  Something fell to the ground where she once was, however.  Something shiny and blue... microcline?  No--

"Adamantine..."

A small shard of the forbidden blue stone lay in the recently vacated spot.  Of course!  Adamantine has all kinds of unknown properties.  Perhaps this is the source of her power?  I pick it up and inspect it.  It looks like something's inscribed on both sides... probably with another piece of adamantine, considering how hard it is.  On one side was an image of a seven-pointed star.  On the other was something written in human, no less.

[INVADERS:NO]

Asob reappears, dabs of strawberry wine still in her beard.  Instantly, she recognized what I had, and started quivering.

"Oh!  Uh... D-did I drop that?  I'll just take that back, then..."

She reached for it, but I pulled it away.  "Asob, I think you need to start explaining a few things.  Like your weird teleporting thing, for one!"

"Oh!  Thank Armok, that's all you're talking about!  That's pretty simple to explain, actually.  I've been putting pieces of pitchblende in my food stockpile."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"...What??  Why?!"

"We found some a while ago!  And I've heard it's great in holistic medicine.  Keeping pitchblende around food is supposed to keep your weight down and help you look beautiful!"

"What are you, an elf?"

"No, if I were an elf I'd be making my armor out of a tree I hugged too much."

"Asob, look... pitchblende does not make you slimmer and prettier.  It's a rock.  There's nothing special about it whatsoever!  But in case I'm wrong, realize that you're doing this to a public food stockpile that everybody eats from.  What if not everyone wants to be slim and beautiful?"

"Who wouldn't?"

I sigh and turn the piece of adamantine over in my hands.  "And... this.  What's going on here?  Come on, I don't keep secrets from you - I can't, after all, because you keep reading my journal!"

"Oh, alright... I made a deal with a fey."

"A fey?  Like, when you went into that fey mood years ago?"

"No, not that one.  This one only talks to me when I'm near the adamantine."

The hair on my beard felt like it stood straight up.  "And... you're sure it's a fey."

"I have to say, its original deal was pretty steep!  I asked if it could protect our fortress from goblins, and it said it wanted my soul in exchange.  Thankfully, my work as a clerk has taught me to become a Persuader, Flatterer, Negotiator, Legendary Appraiser, and a Competent Intimidator.  I talked him down; in exchange for only protecting the fort in the Autumn, I only have to suffer the loss of a loved one to tragedy.  Much better, if you ask me."

"Intimidator?!  I've never, ever seen you act intimidating before in my life."

"Well, of course not!  You're my friend, and I wouldn't do that to you, even when you're mean to me sometimes."

"Well... that's nice of you, Asob.  Now, let's get to fixing this magma trap before it goes live."

"Yeah... at least it's not as bad as what you did to the river tower.  You realize you dug your channel a level too high?"

"...What!  You're kidding!  They must have read the blueprint wrong!"

Well, on to actual work.  The first thing I do is make sure to block all access to pump stacks with doors - iron doors for the magma tower, of course.  Then, I add more designations to the magma project.  Pretty standard stuff.

It's the beginning of a new season, and Asob's... charm, which I'm still not happy about, would have worn off if it works the way she describes.  I cancel chopping of trees for a while so that no one is caught unawares if goblins decide to attack this season.

I'm interested in the vein of copper exposed outside, so I build a wall around it and have a stairway dug into the fortress.  Now we can access the remainder from indoors, where it's safer and faster to access.

Now, on to that stupid, stupid river flub.  Where has my head been??  Ugh... All this rushing is causing me to make terrible mistakes.  What am I rushing for, anyway?  Well, anyway, we can fix that with a U-bend.  Nothing to fret over.

The number of idlers keeps rising, so every time I see someone slacking off I set them to masonry to help with the construction.

We get some area dug out for the magma pipe(which of course holds up the river flub workaround).  I figure it's easier to make the area full of stairs, that way miners and magma alike can move freely.  Unfortunately, I mistakenly order some down stairs dug above area that's actually used for the fortress, so I hastily order that area floored over before we have a nasty spill!

Humm... pitchblende in the food supply... Why am I making so many careless mistakes lately?

[Kyronea]

Eeep! Pitcheblende? That's uranite! Very bad thing to keep around food; irradiating it like that will only make it poisonous for everyone.

Or it would if Dwarf Fortress tracked that, which I'm sure it will at some point but it doesn't yet.

Other than that, pretty interesting updaate.

[Flaede]

perhaps they shall all get superpowers. Or perhaps someone will get bitten by a radioactive GCS?

[The Architect]

Thankfully Kyronea is here or we might have all missed the point of the pitchblende... 

[Geb]

I've just read from the beginning. This is a very interesting concept, and the writing is great.

Once the nobles start piling up, this is all going to turn spectacularly bloody. Are there any plans yet for whether to try protecting all the consorts from the effects of tantrum spirals, or just let nature take its course?

[Grendus]

Pitchblende... ahh yes. Soon you'll be using it as part of your own dwarf-hatten project to irradiate your nobles.

[Quietust]

I find that the best use for pitchblende (or rutile, the other purple stone) is for color-coded levers/gears and doors/floodgates. My last fort's garbage disposal was a Dwarven Atom Smasher made out of pitchblende blocks. The walls surrounding it were made of lead blocks. The doors would have also been made out of lead, but I had already made 2 doors out of pitchblende for keeping it color-coded and didn't have anywhere else appropriate to put them.

[KenboCalrissian]

Once the nobles start piling up, this is all going to turn spectacularly bloody. Are there any plans yet for whether to try protecting all the consorts from the effects of tantrum spirals, or just let nature take its course?

That's actually a good idea, I hadn't thought of that... I suppose I could lock the consorts in their rooms, I'd need to get a well and some food stockpiles down there though.

Right now, there are two "tantrum-proof" chambers that can be sealed with a chasm'd bridge.  They're intended for Zon and Asob, but unfortunately as 2 of the starting 7 they started with a bunch of friends and are the most vulnerable.  Fortunately, right now the only people with more than 2 friends are the starting 7 (all of whom are still alive, I think).  Almost everybody else has 1 or 0.

[Pandarsenic]

Lying! Stealing! Friend-making!

[KenboCalrissian]

13th Moonstone, 208, Early Winter
-------------

I had trouble sleeping last night.  I feel I must confess, because I have been having nightmares about Nelare Fedíofi Fonenelare, when she first attacked the fortress in 205.  The same dream plays in my mind repeatedly, and has been ever since her first appearance.  Perhaps finally writing it down will help me to cope with this horrible dream? 

We were grossly unprepared for that attack when it happened... We had just survived a fifty-plus goblin siege in the Summer, followed by a seventy-two goblins siege lead by humans in the Autumn... and in that same season, Nelare attacked.  Despite us having several trained warriors, only a few were left uninjured after those attacks.

In this dream, we hadn't erected the cage traps over the front entrance (and come to think of it, perhaps it was more than coincidence that we decided to place those traps there when we did?) and the only thing we could rely on was the bridge trap.  Perhaps the trap would spring, knocking the dragon over and stunning it while our one remaining marksdwarf shot at it?  It was our best bet, and once in the pit the dragon would have to walk out through the path we've dug, come back, trigger the trap again, fall again, and repeat until it was finally dead.

((DFMA)) ((Movie)) In my dream, it didn't work.

Everything was on fire... every one.  Someone - I don't know who, their face was so horribly burnt, and I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman - tried to put out the flames on their body by jumping into a barrel of booze, not realizing that booze is incredibly flammable, setting more people on fire.  Whoever wasn't killed in the fire died in the resulting tantrum spiral caused by the smoke and loss of so many lives at once.

It feels so real, half the time I feel convinced it really happened... but that can't be, because we're here now, and Nelare was caught in a cage without incident.  Well... that's my confession.  I'm glad to finally get it out of my beard.  Perhaps I'll be able to sleep better now.

Anyway!  On to work with the magma project.  We have to deconstruct a few floors where I meant to have walls before we can proceed.  We've made the connection to the obsidian farm windmill tower... not sure why, honestly it doesn't provide much in terms of faster transportation, but whatever.  It felt incomplete without it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Instructions are given for the next branches of the magma trap.  Honestly, I'm not sure how much farther I'm going to have it extend... probably not much more than this.  Both windmills are now constructed, but we're far from ready to introduce magma for a test.

To increase production speed, I order some chambers to be dug out of the basalt layers just below the towers.  This will give the builders ready access to the stones I've decided to use for the walls.  The floors are all dolomite, which is already in ample supply around here.  There's so much flux on this map that I really don't mind that we're not using it for steel, not that we've been making steel lately anyhow.  The military seems pretty well-armed as it is.  There's also a lot of hematite in the area to be mined out, not that we're doing much with iron either!

Hmm... We have an awful lot of iron, after all.  I order up sixty iron bins, but have another idea.  Perhaps an even more devious way of removing... someone from our presence, without actually killing them.  I'll need to perform a test first...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is a diagram of what I want dug out directly over the magma pipe.  I'll leave the details a mystery for now...

By 17th Moonstone, I decide we're pretty likely to be safe from any sieges or ambushes this season.  I re-designate the trees to the south of the magma trap to be chopped.

The month rolls by.  Progress on both the magma trap and my new experiment proceed uninterrupted.  I notice we have a lot of milk, and begin cheese production for more roasts.

Some rhesus macaques attack just as Asob and three other miners are walking out together toward a dig site - that's right, Asob was walking this time.  Impressively, Asob recruited herself and the three miners and charged at the monkeys, slaying four of them before the fifth got away.  Not bad... their timing couldn't have been better, and it always helps to get anyone trained for combat when an easy opportunity such as this arrives.

18th Opal, Mid-Winter, Fikod Nekutlibash, the child of Reg the Miner and Reg the Planter, withdraws from society and takes a craft shop.  I suppose he was inspired by Ineth's artifact just recently.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Meh.  I'm sure Asob would have something to say about ripping off another artifact's style, but Fikod's just a kid so I won't say it.

Miasma starts to fill the butcher shops... too many cats, not enough haulers?  Probably because they're all dedicated to building the towers... Well, at least we have mist to offset the stink.

So, about that test.  I constructed a 3x3 iron box room directly over the magma pipe, and sealed a cat in a cage inside.  I triggered a cave-in to see how far into the magma pipe the rapidly deconstructing room would plunge.

((DFMA)) ((Movie)) Unfortunately, I also learned that a miner can plunge very deep inside a magma pipe before melting...

Asob (not the one I just accidentally sent to the bottom of the magma pipe) rushes over to see what happened.  "Zon!  What happened?  I heard a crash, then a splash, then a scream, and then smelled dwarf hair."

"Science."

"Uhh... Ok, that's great.  What the heck did you do?"

"Science."

"Have you lost your mind, Zon??  What was that scream I heard?"

"You heard Science."  I turn and walk away, somewhat disappointed at the results.

((Map)) Spring arrives, and as usual I retire to my room to sketch out the lands.

[KenboCalrissian]

It didn't feel appropriate to write about it in a story context, but I did learn something interesting about magma pipes and cave-ins.  Check out what happened to the bottom of the pipe in the area where the cave-in took place:



There's now a 3x3 area of "Lava Flow" at the bottom of my pipe, and it's generating "Lava" in a 3x3 column all the way to the top of the pipe.