Okay, so... Yeah, I let this slip behind a bit. Long weekend, some fast catchup on university stuff. But I'm back in the clear and through another year!
So, those two Dwarves that migrated in last time? A peasant and a
cheesemaker jogger. They are now cowofdoom and ToonyMan respectively, and I quickly put them to work hauling crap and carving stone blocks. Life goes on, as boring as normal for a while...
Libash and Cog, now that they actually have someone to tell it to, finally get married. Also, thank fucking God, more microcline and orthoclase! Just what I needed! Digging and random, color-coded building enterprises are begun.
MOAR MIGRANTS! Two. Two moar. One brought his own tree cuttin' axe, so he must be WorkerDrone. The other, a
nother cheesemaker, is smigenboger, who gets to plant seeds. All spend time carving diorite blocks and haul shit. Why all the diorite blocks you ask?
Livin' in the PJ's... The Projects... Low rent high rise y'all. This crappy apartment building will house everybody for a while, and then eventually just the poor-ass haulers. I think it'd be fun to build a modern-esque Dwarven city in this undead hellscape of a burning savanna. Shortly after, the merchants return. Irritatingly enough, the apartment's foundation rests on the wacky meandering path the wagons were able to use before to reach my depot. So I just got two donkey's worth of goods. But
what great goods they were.Turtles, steel, logs, and coal. Rockin', sorry about that wagon full of expensive crap you lost last time you came. Here, I'll sell it back to you, on the cheap. Oh, and take this pile of gazelle skulls as a token of our appreciation. And speaking of gazelles...
Another little gaggle of migrants arrives in the fall, and this is what's waiting for them. I'm thinking I'll call the area The Bone Bone Plains or something. I suck with names. Anyway, the migrants are mostly crap, save for an Armorsmith (congrats Akigagak, you're useful). I organize the miners under Libash and the peasants and fish dissectors under WorkerDrone, and the battle is on.
TacoDan gets his Neo on, but is also the casualty, laid up with a broken arm and no kills to show for it. Most of the others bag a gazeleton or gazombie each. The man of the hour is Deon, who held three gazeletons at bay while the others caught up. However, a few idiots go running south, chased by a vagrant skeletal warthog. I really hate this map. JoshuaFH puts it down.
TacoDan being a wimp who won't drink alcohol, necessitates a clear path to the foul, undead tributary of the River Styx down hippo way. This giant mass of pathing restriction is supposed to keep the Dwarves from running too far south, into shambling monster attention. It fails of course. Josh gets chased around by a stingray and a couple gazeletons again, and puts them all down waiting for the military to arrive. He's quickly becoming the most well-heeled Dwarf in the fortress. Oh, what military you ask?
Any chucklefuck can chop down a tree, so I make WorkerDrone head of the new military. He's supported by Deon and Myroc, wielding hammer and spear. None have the slightest bit of skill. I send them down to do battle with a few more bony gazelles and tigerfish, before charging the real danger.
Skullspurned, the skeletal hippo with a name! The foolhardy conscripts bumrush the biggest, baddest monster on the map and...
WorkerD smacks it down in one hit. Motherfucker bodyslammed a hippo. And so ends the interesting news of the year. TacoDan luckily healed up, reclaiming much else over by the river is stymied by haulers running in terror from another hippo trapped in a hole, and I remember why no one can go outside when a (mortal) giant eagle arrives.
I don't know how, but no one is dead yet. People named aside, Duke 2.0, Armok, and Vester also got Dwarved. Duke takes up tree choppin' with WorkerD on gazeleton patrol, Armok is a clothier with two kills under his belt, and Vester is busy smoothing stones. See y'all next time.