Earlier:
"Kethas, Kethas! Just the dwarf I wanted to see. Come on in." Bjorn waves me into his office cordially and gestures to a chair.
Bjorn, the Headdwarf of Settlement Affairs in my beloved kingdom of the Gears of Striking, is courteous in two situations: receiving bribes, and screwing over our nation's ever-shrinking supply of competent settlement managers. "This concerns the new efforts in the east, I assume?"
He nods eagerly. Leaning back into the second, slightly-smaller marble seat in the room feels remarkably like stepping squarely in a bear trap. "I see you've heard of them. Not the details yet, surely. After your work at Goldenboots the King is convinced you're the man for the job, though, and I wanted to bring you up to speed."
"Goldenboots failed when you sent three years' worth of caravans filled with caged kittens instead of the ale we requested. Sir." I square my face with his. Somehow I don't think the feeling of watching good dwarves die of thirst to the tune of mewling cats really filters back to the home office.
"Come now. The caravan guards said you were doing just fine and just needed some cute pets to brighten the mood." "The guards were
also kittens. Sir."
He claps his hands happily. "Oh, you noticed! We thought a good laugh would be appreciated. Nothing at all to do with the decidedly underimpressive statue you sent to my lovely niece as a wedding present. Your good friend Urist sent one twice as large, with lovely silver accents. Nope, nothing at all." He smiles. I contemplate homicide. "The settlement, sir?"
He shuffles some papers and finds a recently-inked set of maps. "Our scouts have found a particularly interesting site at the far east end of the Oracular Lands. I'm sure you'll agree:"
"There's a brook for irrigation, plenty of trees, and we're confident flux will be available for smelting. The scouts also confirmed a magma vent in the area."
"Isn't that a bit far? You really couldn't find anywhere closer for a decent town? What good would even a thriving city be that distant from the Mountainhome?"
His smile broadens. "I can't go into the details, but our scholars are convinced that settling there is in our strategic interests."
"... and didn't we try settling there years ago, never hearing from the caravan again, minus the one poor dwarf that showed up at our nearest outpost muttering nothing but 'zombie giant orc carp pikeman sasquatch gnomes'?"
His smile now stretches comfortably from ear to ear. "I can't go into the details, but our scholars are convinced that settling there is in our strategic interests."
I sigh and stand. Presumably, while not mandating as many puzzleboxes and mugs as they desire, the nobility picks settlement locations by tossing darts at a map. As I turn to start reviewing the colonist candidates, Bjorn tosses off, as an afterthought - "Oh, and my lovely nephew's marriage will be this Granite, you know, if you care to send a token of appreciation."
Tragically, if I beat him to a pulp, the hammerer would go after
me.
- - - - -
After watching (and enjoying!) a lot of succession games here on the forum, I wanted to record and publish a game of mine as I went through it - if anyone would like to play a year, I'm all for it and will distribute the save; if not, hey, you all get to read a neat story anyway.
The only mod I use is the Orc one (specifically, Summer and Winter being the active seasons) along with Mayday's tileset.
Zero savescumming, please, both from myself (at all) and from folks that volunteer to join (for the year they play) - it's a bad habit of mine I'm trying to break.
If anyone would like to adopt a dwarf, just let me know what nickname/profession/gender you'd prefer and we'll make it happen.
And with that, we rejoin Kethas, assembling his motley crew.
- - - - -
Earlier, but not quite as early:
Different settlers have different strategies. Some like to specialize their team in one industry to get trade or production up as quickly as possible. Others like to bring along a lot of multitasking dwarves and jump into many different production arenas from the start. Me? I like the basics:
- Iden Lolorosir, Miner
- Ushat Uzolbim, Woodcutter
- Udib Zulbanshorast, Carpenter
- Edzul Mengalath, Mason
- Kogan Etostmuthkat, Grower
- Lokum Lanlaratir, Brewer
- Udil Logematir, Cook
This way I can avoid worrying about whether I should be saving, say, logs for when an
actual carpenter arrives, or squander the practice on a no-skill immigrant that I'll replace when an actual woodworker wants to immigrate - anything sustenance-related I can do whole-hog from the start.
And, like any good settlement manager, I embark with a wide variety of bits and scraps of gems, leather, cloth, and such junk, to sate the more emo members of our proud race when they get all moody:
I think that just about does it. My requests for something actually
useful, like an armed escort or the latest Babies 2 Dwarves tapes, were rejected.
As usual.And we're off. Can't wait to see just what kind of carp-infested swamp we'll be digging into. Blasted carp. Blasted Bjork. Blasted kittens.
I've got a good feeling about this one, though. The Armored Hammer - we decided on a group name that would highlight both our dwarven stoutness and our love of stacking metal onto other, equally good metal - is trained, eager, willing, and ready. The destination has most of the natural resources we could ask for. The groundhog meat is fresh and the rum isn't. Worklovers could be my big break.
Or, you know, I could end up a tasty snack to a marauding zombie gibbon. Better make sure those entry doors are double-thick.