On the map is a statue of a sphinx in Adamantine. The artwork relates the the
invention of an adamantine generator by Eli Dupree in 2010.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get any of the visualizers, or even SL's map compressor, to work. (I'm on linux, by the way.) I could send my save to someone, if they could offer to post views/screenshots/the map to DFMA? Anyway, let's take a look at this item:
> t\rv
This is an Adamantine Sphinx. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality*. It is studded with Ruby, decorated with Dwarven Atom Smashers, and adorned with hanging gear assemblies of Bauxite. It menaces with spikes of Adamantine and a goatee of Charcoal.
Also, it's 25 tiles long, 8 z-levels tall, and can breathe magma!
In the left front claw of this item is an adamantine cage containing an important figure in the local Goblin civilization.
In the chest of this item is an artifact Adamantine sarcophagus, designated to be the final resting place of His Majesty Kadol Idenathel, ruler of The Sword of Meditation.
In the intestines of this item is a perpetual motion power generator that supplies all the power needed to run its systems**.
In each lung of this item is thirteen tiles full of lovely 7/7 lava.
In its brain is an animal-based control system that distributes a regimented ~175 units of lava, then automatically shuts off. It is controlled directly by the player, without any dwarven intervention***.
It is sitting on a circular pedestal of smooth Obsidian and crouching over the entrance to the fortress at Umomònul, "Darkmirror."****
In total, it is made of 886 Adamatine wafers worth of constructions, four ☼Adamantine floor hatches☼, twenty ☼Adamantine doors☼, four ☼Adamantine cages☼, twelve all-☼Adamantine☼ screw pumps, fourteen ☼menacing Adamatine spikes☼, two all-Ruby windows for the eyes, and fifty-seven ☼Bauxite mechanisms☼ made into six pressure plates, eight connections, and forty-three Gear Assmblies (I eschewed axles). There are also nine Adamantine drawbridges on the ground, to clear the magma so that it's possible for traders to approach. If I've got the numbers right, that comes out to a total of 1396 Adamantine used directly in the construction of the Sphinx, but around 2800 used if you count the waste from the non-masterwork items built. The ground-based atom smashers and the Adamantine road on the ground only add up to about 120.
*
...Mostly. All the materials with any quality level are masterpieces, but architecture isn't. That means that all twelve screw pumps are made out of Adamantine Blocks + ☼enormous Adamantine corkscrew☼ + ☼Adamantine pipe section☼, but, after much frustration, I gave up on making all the screw pumps be both designed and built at master level.
**
There's a five-stack of iron pumps supplying it from the magma pipe, but the six pumps internal to the sphinx are powered by its own water wheels.
***
Although the current design uses a pet Horse, and might malfunction somewhat if the pet's owner dies. I originally wanted to use a goblin - preferably the leader of the goblin civilization - but since captured goblins seem to eventually go insane, I wouldn't have been able to rely on its pathfinding. The way the control works is with lockable doors - when you want to activate the lava breath, you unlock a door in front of the horse, then it walks onto the "start breathing lava" pressure plate, then onto the "stop breathing" plate in the next square, then onto a third pressure plate that traps it in an room identical to where it started, with a new door. Between the two doors, you can order a single burst or repeated bursts. It takes the horse some time to for the horse to figure out that it can move and take the first two steps, but it seems to reliably activate in under 200 frames - I haven't counted exactly.
****
I regret to say that I chose that name instead of picking one at random.
Author
Topic: Eli Dupree, Dwarven Physicist has created Keshanúgath, an Adamantine Sphinx! (Read 4800 times)