I thought I'd set myself a challenge of making an above-ground city.
Given that it would be above ground, I thought I'd use humans rather than dwarves. I also decided I'd make it an actual city, rather than a fortress. To make things a bit more Fun, I decided to look for a more dangerous site (e.g. moderate to savage, and/or evil), and to use the new military system to ensure everyone was armed.
The results were... interesting (in the Arrgg! That's not what I intended! sense).
The story of Caspaar (Heavensstill) follow:
I managed to find an interesting-looking site, where I could get four biomes in one 4x3 area (my computer is weak, so I chose a small embark site). Not only that, it had a volcano. The biomes were calm and sinister, so (I thought) I would have a fairly relaxed learning curve, but with a small risk of Fun due to undead and monsters.
I "prepared carefully", choosing appropriate skills for hostile environment living, including a woodcutter with extra military skills and ambushing (and equipped with a great-axe), and a highly-skilled miner, so I could get building materials rapidly, six dogs (2m, 4f), a weaponsmith for arms, and a leather worker and and a good supply of great white shart leather for intimidating leather armor.
Even the randomly-generated name of my fortress and group ("Heavensstills" and "The Rough Group") seemed auspicious.
So I embarked, full of enthusiasm, sure that I could build a resiliant settlement, ere winter set in and the Jaguars got hungry.
...
When my group arrived at the site, I had a look around. The site I had chosen was interesting, to say the least. It was very mountainous, with a steep-sided valley running east-west through the site, with the volcano rising up more or less in the middle, and a plateau on the south edge of the map. There were lots of exposed mineral veins and gems, but few flat areas that would make a good building site.
My first choice of place to settle was in the SE, on a bare clay part of the plateau (where there would be easy access to the trees and shrubs on the rest of the plateau), but in the end decided on a flat rock plain to the east of the volcano, where there was more space and easy access to rock.
So I got to work, designating some non-economic rock to be minded out for building material, trees for felling, farms to be planted, and got the rest of my humans hauling the supplies to the building site. Once a few rocks had been mined out, I built a few workshops, started laying foundations for a communal long-house, and got a rock crafter churning out trade goods, I got ready to ogranize my citizen-militia.
This is when the problems began.
It was then that I discovered (and checking the raws confirmed this) that humans only get one type of noble - a "warlord" (similar to the expidition leader but with some differences in responsibilities). No militia commander, so no way to assign squads or equip anyone with arms or armor. No broker. No manager. No bookkeeper. (And no arsenal dwarf human, although without a military, that's the least of your problems).
I decided I could live without a bookeeper/manager/broker. Sure, it would make things harder and more tedious, but wouldn't be a fortress-killer. The lack of a militia commander however was a big problem, especially as it basically undermined one of the main themes of my fortress, and particularly worrying as there was now an ogre and a couple of zombie mountain goats wandering about the west side of the map.
Still, I decided to persevere. After all, I could just make everyone hunters and arm them that way. That was when I discovered that in 2010, hunters can only use crossbows, and when I assigned the hunting labour on my woodcutter/axeman/ambusher, he dropped his great-axe and was now unarmed (because my Warlord was being a lazy git and refusing to do any of his assigned labours, so I had enabled hunting on him in the hope that he would at least live up to his name, and so was now carrying my only crossbow).
Given that defence was clearly going to be much more of a problem that I anticipated, I decided to check up on the ogre, to make sure he wasn't going to attack my near-defenceless dwarves. I turns out that he had already found (or been found by) my six dogs (two of which had been trained to hunting dogs). The had managed to wound him to all-yellow and unconciousness, and were slowly worrying him to death. One of the dogs had a broken rib. The ogre - on his status page - had two whole pages of torn arms, dented legs, fractured eyes(!), oozing hands, and jagged scars. Despite this, it took my dogs several months to finally savage him to death.
During this time, a migrant wave turned up, so I set them to various useful tasks. However, It was clear that this fortress was not going to be anywhere near as worthwhile as I had expected, so I had my miner dig a staircase straight down into the bowels of the earth, to see if I could find anything interesting (or if it would find me).
Then, three ogres turned up, and before long had killed all my dogs then found my humans and started attacking them. A couple of them were unlucky enough to be caught, where upon the ogres proceeded to slowly wrestle them to death over a period of several months. (My woodcutter/axeman failed to put un an effective resistance and spent most of the time unconcious and slowly building up inguries, but did manage to become a legendary fighter in the process). Frustratingly, the ogres were also close to my food/booze stockpiles, so all the humnas who could have been doing something useful (like digging out and sealing off a new underground home) spent the time trying to eat or drink and getting interupted by the ogres. During this time, another four migrants arrived.
One ogre eventually found my miner and started chasing her. I had hoped she might follow in the footsteps of so many heroic dwarven miners, and put a pickaxe through the skull of her enemy, but she too ended up with the ignominious fate of being knocked unconcious and wrestled for several months (as of this moment, she is one of the few humans still alive).
With the deaths mounting, my carpenter finally snapped, and went berserk. He proceded to chase down and kill two (possibly three) of his companions, before meeting an ogre. The two blood-crazed individuals rushed at each other, and began a vicious wrestling match, with injuries rapidly building up. I had hoped that the berserk carpenter would be able to take out the ogres (since nothing else seemed to be able to), but she was building up wounds faster than the orge (he was all yellow, she had mostly yellow but also a few red injuries). But then, just as all seemed to be lost, the ogre's nerve broke and he ran. My berserk carpenter persued him, ran him down, and finally killed him found a soap maker to take her rage out on instead. (The ogre, in a stunning display of lack of sense, has decided to join in beating up the soap maker).
As of this moment, the survivors consists of five friendly humans (two of which, the miner and the soapmaker, are currently unconcious and slowly being wrestled to death), the berserk carpenter (still fighting valiantly, but starving and dehydrated so probably probably not long for this world), two named ogres (the third has disappeared), and several tame animals. (There is also a magma man in the volcano, and a few troglodytes in the caverns, but they haven't got involved).
My settlement is clearly doomed, but I think I'll leave it running to see what happens. (Hopefully my carpenter will manage to take out at least one more ogre).
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Topic: The saga of Caspaar (Read 1248 times)