1st of Granite 594
It's over. I'm done. Praise be to Doren.
What's better still is that I'm alive.
The humans came to trade and I took useful items from them, mostly some metal, weapons, food and drink. Not that we particularly need it, but it doesn't hurt. Same with the dwarven traders that came later in the fall. The mayor was able to speak with them and I've persuaded Iden to request more... useful items. I mean, honestly, do you really trust someone else's prepared crundle lung? I can barely manage to choke down my own, much less something that's been handled by someone else. Of course, anything is palatable if I can wash it down with enough prickle berry wine. Tart's a good word for it.
This place is finally beginning to shape up, though, organized it is not. Far cry from it in fact, but hey, you can only do so much with what you've been given. Of the original batches of dwarves I have no idea how many are left, but it's precious few. Considering the ninety odd coffins out front I can't imagine too many are still around. I even had a pet cemetary installed around the corner for Edem. She was moping around for months because her pet dog died and she was unable to bury it. Well, we got to it eventually I dare say.
After some difficulty with the power system for the pumps we finally managed get those working and divert the river enough to wall off the entrance to the underground caverns, which will stop the flow of water to them. Who knows how many cave systems we've destroyed by flooding them. We even lost one of our named wardogs. Twas it that finished off the second blind cave ogre. Shame.
Anyways, it's all sealed now and the river's running along it's proper course. I've torn down the pumps and power systems to use elsewhere if needed, but it wasn't until afterwards that I realized that our well will need to be moved over two paces. Had to have someone dig out a small piece of wall to access the pit that the river still flows into, so we'll always have water there, but the well will still need to be made.
Had a few more weapon traps installed to cover the entrance. Hope that helps keep down the goblin ambushes. We can always fall back to the inner layer of traps if need be. It's still a work in progress. I even requested five stone floodgates made to use as a proper gate instead of a silly old bridge, but haven't gotten around to installing it. Ah well, I'm sure the next guy will take care of it. Which brings me to the 'next guy'.
So, sometime in mid fall I wake up on the floor of a craftsdwarf workshop, holding in my hands an exquisitely carved toy boat, down to the rigging and sails. It seemed like it was made from pure gemstone and glinted when held to the light. Chrysocolla I believe and the blue-green surface was fabulously shiny. On the wall written in blood (cow by the smell of it) was it's name Zamoth Nothok, or the Venoms of Obeisance in the common tongue. I don't know what or who possessed me, other than perhaps the spirit of some poor sap who recently died around here. Pretty boat though.
Apparently I annoyed Fikod Gladglazed though. I'd dabbled in gemcutting in my youth and knew a bit about it, but with the creation of my toy boat she'd been heard storming through the fortress shouting that it was her job, that SHE was the gemcutter here. (Not like I've let her do any of it, mind you. Heh.) So, not a month or two later she decides to do a piece of her own.
It's pretty. I suppose. Arrogant bi... I mean, um. Am I allowed to write this in here? Anyways, my boat was valued at 4800 DB while hers, since she cut a perfect emerald was valued at 96000 DB. Sure if I had known it was a competition I'd have used some of the diamonds... But she's gained insight from her piece that I have not, so I guess it's back to the butchery for me. Not that I mind it.
Means I get the best cuts of meat before anyone else does. MMMMmmmm ... tenderloin of crundle anyone?
Here's the save:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2385(Zipped of course. For the next overseer's turn you may want to consider beefing up entrance defenses a bit. I ran out of weapons to put in the traps. Also please not that under (o)rders most of the dwarves have almost everything disabled, as turning everything on at once would overload the job queue. Best of luck to you. Also, Jordrake, your son Drake is alive and well.
So, things are reasonably stable, we're fairly secure though IF we want to access the outer slopes again the walls will need finishing. Lots of holes in those still, but I worked on them somewhat. We have 28 dwarves around, many of which are children, despite my attempts to let snatchers get away with Drake and his crew. Except for the four or five ambushes and a half dozen thieves it was really quiet. Of course we had no reason to send dwarves anywhere particularly dangerous and we're still very short of weapons and armor. So best of luck to the next guy.
Now that I've played the new version I find it interesting and I'm looking forward to trying it out some more. Squads are complex, but you can set them up to do an awful lot, which is cool. I do have one questions still, everytime I saved the game to exit the program crashed. Every time! But only after saving my progress, strangely enough. Anyone seen this before?)
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Topic: Cavebrands (Read 68622 times)