2nd Granite 262Jesus invited me over to his table, where he had engraved a very large, and very complex picture of something in a huge block of wood. When I crouched down near him, he finally looked up, but said nothing.
After about a minute of silence, I asked him: "How do you expect us to break through a spiky, strong adamantine reef??"
Jesus smiled. "We need to use the second strongest material known to dwarfdom... steel! But a single hull of steel isn't enough... it would just rip... No... we need a double layered level of steel!"
At this I just choked. "Impossible! How can you make steel float? It is MUCH heavier than water! It will sink!"
Jesus pointed to a bucket, with a reasonable amount of water in it. There was a lump of clay sitting at the bottom. "The clay is also heavier than the water. However, if I do this to it:" , and he rounded out the clay, "then it will float. No-one knows why, but it just is. That shape makes ANYTHING float, including steel!!"
"But how would you make it move?"
"Simple: we use the excess heat from a smelter, to turn two turbines, which turn paddles and make the ship move. I call it a "smelter-ship""
"Fuel?? We would need TONS of charcoal, and metal objects"
"You cannot melt a chest. We just need tons of charcoal, and two chests, one for each engine."
I was impressed. He had obviously thought it through, I was hopeful, until I asked one last question:
"How big is it?"
"It is 135 meters long (
27 tiles), and 35 meters thick (
7 tiles). The bulkhead is 25 meters tall, most of which lies underwater, and double-hulled (
5 tiles), and there is a wooden mast which is 25 meters tall, and square shaped!"
My mind boggled at the sheer size of this giant structure. Sure, our fort was nearly double the length of this ship... but the hull was to be designed purely by steel!
"How... how much steel do I need to make?"
"We need to make 958 units of steel, 494 units of wood, 2 units of any stone, 2 doors, 10 stairs, and 26 ropes for the sails"
I couldn't believe it... this person was asking for nearly 1000 units of steel! Each unit of steel needed 2 units of fuel, 2 of iron, and 2 of flux... thats over 2000 logs, 2000 iron bars, and 2000 units of flux!! I knew that we couldn't POSSIBLY make that in our lifetime. It was just too much! Each iron bar needed 1 wooden log as well!
We needed magma to pull this off... or many lifetimes of work...
7th Granite 262A momentous day... one I couldn't delay any longer...
I walked up to everyone, wielding a weapon. But not just any weapon...
A PICK!
Tally has been assigned as the fortresses miner, as Dorgoth is too busy with his axe to bother with mining.
14th Granite 262Jesus is busy trading with the elves. With our new-found pick, he is starting to show a little less respect to them, and asked for a bin of cloth and a golden salve barrel for two stacks of roasts. We will get more once he has more to bargain with, but we just need the cloth ASAP
5th Slate 262Jesus loves my cow cheese roasts, they are very valuable. However, after he was reminded that we can't actually cook golden salve, he just opted to buy a second cloth bin.
Now we can get enough bags to mill a huge amount of flour!!
21st Slate 262Elizar was starting to get very angry about her constant patrol duty, so we have asked her to continue her archery training until the humans arrive. In the meantime,we will improve her defensive location, and we have decided to kill all the 40-odd puppies we have so that we can have plenty of bones for her to train with
4th Felsite 262I have started up a nice party, which should dramatically improve moral!
4th Hematite 262We have struck the aquifier... it is pretty deep ... 4 z-levels below the surface.
Never mind, we are dwarves, we know how to beat petty aquifiers!
16th Hematite 262The humans have arrived, and the representative is meeting with Jesus. This time, Jesus seems much more confident, and the representative seems shocked!!
He has asked for tons of wood, barrels, cheeses, pearlash, potash, and charcoal, and pig iron and iron bars
They want plants, cloth, and footwear. Unusual...
Finally, Jesus has bought tons and tons of cheese, copper and iron bars, a little bit of flour, and a ton of beer
21st Galena 262In order to ensure our safety, everybody is now being allowed to own 7 war dogs. I already have mine, and both Zorgoth and Elizar have had thiers for some time now.
At the end of this, we will have 35 war dogs... and we will kill the rest.
But everyone is working too hard, and we are starting to be overrun with dogs EVERYWHERE!! Thankfully, we have 2 cages now. And two male cats
1st Limestone 262The dry season has come, and the lake never got to any decent level. As a result, we couldn't refill our reserviour if we wanted to. Thankfully, we don't want to yet.
Tally (our miner / animal trainer / butcher / leatherworker / tanner) has run out of war dogs to train. Now she is finishing off all the puppies
15th Limestone 262
Goblins!! We have been ambushed!! We have ordered the floodgates to be slammed shut, but they have come from the north, where our fortifications are useless.
Thankfully, there are no archers in this ambush, which means that Elizar can just snipe all of them.
19th Limestone 262I think we have taken out all the ambushers, so the floodgates have been risen. Unfortunatly, Elizar is not happy.
12th Sandstone 262Arcayna has given birth to a boy... we were expecting a baby soon, but in autumn!? This is a good sign!
Arcayna has named the boy 'Haika'
28th Sandstone 262Elizar is still unhappy. She liked the new caskets she as acquired in her own room, and she is the only one with a room (although Jesus is currently blessing 2 more rooms, one of which I hope to get soon!). But her pet wasn't buried... it decayed, and she is NOT liking that.
The cats are doing a decent job controlling vermin, however...
15th Moonstone 262Another ambush, and again, another group of melee soldiers.
If we can survive another couple of seasons, our fortifications will be complete... but the gates are down again, and Elizar is fighting them... again.
We lost 3 more dogs... building the caskets to store them is going to take some time!!
24th Moonstone 262Elizar has alerted us to a rather worrying development: We are out of ammunition. Elizar herself, however, is planning on making a ton of ammunition from the assorted bones lying around
5th Opal 262Wha... wha... wha...
NO!!!! Haika has been stolen... right from Arcania's arms! No-one ever spotted the thief. Arcayna seems to be taking it rather well though... she doesn't seem to notice that Haika has been lost
22nd Obsidian 262Elizar has managed to construct some 250-odd bolts, and has gone back to her rigiourous training schedule. However, the remaining six dwarves are almost run ragged...
It seems we won't be able to see any rock before the turn of the year, but maybe in 2 months time...
If it takes this long to cause a cave-in... how long is it going to take before we can construct a ship like Jesus wants??
1st Granite 263I can't believe it. We have survived 3 entire years!!
I am still silently mourning the loss of Haika, it would have been nice to have an extra pair of hands. I think we will be seeing him again soon, but I don't think that he will be friendly to us. I just hope that Elizar can manage to pull the trigger.
But we are doing well. Fortifications around the perimeter are over half done, and the northern front is about 2/3rds done We have a massive stockpile of charcoal, and raw supplies for roasts (although we won't be trading many roasts this year, I think. Water reserviours are at 100%, and our fort has never been stronger.
But the size of the fort is becoming too large for just seven dwarves. We are running around constantly, and yet more jobs keep on happening. When we start hitting rock, I think we can say goodbye to Tally for the remainder of our forts life, as she will be constantly searching ... searching for iron and magma and bitumous coal, and other things. We were planning on starting up a glass industry at the beginning of the year... that isn't going to happen! There just isn't enough to do!
I will need to start brewing some more drinks... or buy it off the elves. The latter option is probably the better option, as some of the dwarves are starting to complain about the lack of variety of the booze available.
But we still need more for our boat:
STEEL 0/958 (0%)
WOOD 88/494 (17.8%)
STONE 1/2 (50%)
DOORS 0/2 (50%)
STAIRS 10
ROPE 0/26 (0%)
I don't expect to get off this rock in this century. I just hope I live long enough to see home again.
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-7741-merchantswimsDear Haika: Sorry about that... I have no idea how a goblin manages to snatch a baby without the mother discovering it. To make up, Arcania now has 3 war dogs constantly guarding her. Oh, and you can pick another name, and you can be the baby that comes after Roger
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Topic: Merchantswims: A community game. Dwarven Survivor! (Read 4754 times)