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[Darvi]

Oh fuck.

[NW_Kohaku]

I looked it up more thoroughly - it turns out he didn't start out a night creature.  The king was abducted by a night creature, and converted.  Then killed by one of his former subjects. 

It's just that the legends mode only records them as "Urist McShouldHavePostedMoreGuards the midnight creature became king".

I might not be able to really start this game until Wednesday.  Mondays and Tuesdays are more packed for me than other days.  Even then, Thursdays or the weekend are better.


I've discovered it's really hard to find a good pocket map.  I found one site that was almost perfect, had a good history, but all the places with iron had aquifers and such, and I figured people would complain about that...

Then I found a perfect site... with caverns that collapsed from a few z-levels above... (amusingly, it killed a cat when the stone fell, but the dwarves were OK).

I've been playing around a lot with the worldgen, too.  Turns out, elevation variance of more than about 1000 leads the game to almost never produce enough mountain peaks.  (Playing with variance and weights are my favored ways of getting worlds skewed towards my liking...)  Hopefully, I'll find something soon, but it's a lot easier on a medium or larger map.  I'm working with a small map, now, as well... it shouldn't be too troubling.

[Dutchling]

You could mod out aquifers if you want.
No need to rush though, take your time!

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I think I found the place.

No aquifer, fire clay on the surface, and hemitite literally just sticking out of the slopes of the hills.  It's not as overabundant with ores as some of the other places I've visited, but the important stuff is there.

Northwest (4/9 tiles) is a temperate broadleaf forest, warm, wilderness.  Plenty of wood and shrubs, has limestone with hematite stick out of the sides of the slopes, along with bauxite, but no apparent coal deposits.

Center-southeast (5/9 tiles) is a tropical savage swamp, hot, and has two types of clay, including fire clay (for stoneware). No apparent kaolinite.

I see some basalt and gabbro in the walls of the slopes, so we're in volcanic layer territory.

The entire embark slopes downhill to the east, where a stream has cut a major valley through the surrounding terrain (this stream is two tiles off-map to the east, to be clear), and any further east, and we'd be embarking on an aquifer.  This gives us some slopes to play with.

Unfortunately, it has no sand, and no mountain tiles.  But I'm getting a little tired of being picky.  Both biomes have "Deep Metals", so we will hopefully get something useful down there.  Keep in mind that with my current glaze mod, even cinnibar and cobaltite have a use as a glaze, so those aren't "totally worthless ores" if we do hit them.

I'll try to write up a good in-character story for all this when I have time, but I might not be able to really play for a couple days.

[NW_Kohaku]

Should have colored it with more colors before it got this complicated, but...

Spoiler: the map (click to show/hide)

We are on the far east, southern half of the map.  The mountainhomes are on the far west, southern half of the map.  An ocean stands between us.

We probably had to go north and hitch a ride with the humans to a nearby human-occupied hamlet called "Laparozmo"/"Fedbuttered", and then hiked southeast through the swamps to our destination.

Fedbuttered apparently has a population of 55 humans, 38 dogs, and 1 water buffalo.  It was founded only 2 years ago, and is far from the human center of power, moving in towards the southeastern elven empire's lands... will peace last?

An elven retreat from "The Velvet Of Power" lies dangerously close to our position, but we aren't at war... yet.

The closest retreat is called "Ayiamala", which translates to "EsteemedNature".  It only has 35 elves in it, but it's part of a conglomerated network of forest retreats that has over a thousand elves in it total.  None of the individual retreats are threatening besides one that has 848 elves, 8 humans, 10 goblins, and 10 yaks.

Goblins were decimated in the year 71 by the elves, who completely curb stomped their entire civ.  Only a tiny fortress still survives in the cold north, thanks mostly to just being too far away and even then, it's been pillaged three times, and has not much longer to live, in most likelihood, unless it does the typical "kidnap a human child, then send that child out to fight the elven hordes" trick.

Some of these combats are humorous - 1 kidnapped elf versus 128 elves, 5 humans, 30 grizzly bears, 2 jaguars, and 2 leopards.


Our history:

We had 4 mountainhomes.  Now we have 1.  Its population is more human than dwarf.  The last king died last year.  Of starvation, of all ignominies.  All the other mountainhomes died of starvation, too.  Two died out in the year 27.  Apparently, dwarves are really crappy farmers.

I guess the impetus for this is to get some mouths to feed out of their halls, and trying to fend for themselves, preferably out in elven lands across the ocean where they don't have to care anymore.

[Darvi]

Damn apes are everywhere.

[Ghills]

No sand? Bummer, I'm a glassmaker in the other thread. I'd like a turn anyway, though.

[Bohandas]

Ok, I saw the title of this thread and just had to ask if that's really the name that the RNG came up with for your fort? I ask this because its a homophone of the name of one of the main characters from the Discworld novels and it seemed like an odd coincidence.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ok, I saw the title of this thread and just had to ask if that's really the name that the RNG came up with for your fort? I ask this because its a homophone of the name of one of the main characters from the Discworld novels and it seemed like an odd coincidence.

No, I haven't even started the fort yet, and will manually force it to be that name, and it is an intentional reference.

[NW_Kohaku]

No sand? Bummer, I'm a glassmaker in the other thread. I'd like a turn anyway, though.

Hmm... I did some playing around, and I found some sand if I just stretch the embark over a little more to the east.

There's a narrow band of land that has red sand. 

It would mean that I would have to put the stream into the embark to reach it (it's literally on the tile with the stream), and I would have to take some of the aquifer tiles to go with the sand.  I would also have some tough choices on how many embark tiles to include - a 2x4 embark would stretch far enough, but the only source of limestone and hematite would be in the aquifer tiles.

On the plus side, if we have a stream-straddling embark, we would not only have sand, we would also have access to mountain tiles (on a Serene mountain, which means fluffy wamblers and gnomes, but no giant eagles), and the stream has alligators in it.  Plus, an aquifer that you can just dig around isn't all that much of a problem, anyway.  Except if you forget it's there, and dig upwards into it... and this is a community fort... yeah, that's going to be a problem at some point.

Personally, I think we will live without the sand - we only have a couple of glassmakers, and they are multi-classed as it is.  It depends on you guys, though. 

(On the other hand, what's a community fort without stupid shenanigans !!Fun!! of some flavor?  Or rather, ≈Fun≈...)

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I'm getting ramped up for writing the "grand start of our journey to Rinsewind" 

Darvi, JohnnieRWilkins, Jake, Dutchling, Urist Imiknorris, and Mecro910 are all members of the starting seven, here.  Is there anything you want to say about your characters in this game, and how they would react to the situations of being forced out to settle in a distant land, with an ocean and an elven empire between you and your homeland, which happens to be slowly starving to death, in a funky chunk of earth?  Or that you want to say about your fellow miscreants?  Also, any quirks about your character that you want to be apparent, and if I actually work up the will to illustrate some of this, any features you want on your dwarves?

I'm thinking that for my own part, I'll be playing the "Kohaku" style of personality - a Stepford Smiler.  I'll be playing my role in-character as a relentlessly bitter and sardonic character (rather than the original's empty soul) when "writing in her diary", but play as a charming mediator whenever she's talking with others. 

Furthermore, I think that as a rule for this game, death is permanent - you will not get re-dwarfed if you are killed, even if someone else kills you.  I recommend being kind to your fellow players, lest they find you expendable when they get a turn.  If your character dies, you do not get a turn. 

Players are also encouraged to be cautious in fort construction to a paranoid degree.  The objective is to go without any deaths in your turn at all.  Bonus points for creating even more elaborate (paranoid) layers of deathtraps for the surface or cavern layers.  Hopefully, we'll wind up with every player trying to add one more layer of deathtrap per turn, winding up with a fortress that takes months to even walk through the front door, and every conceivable form of deathtrap present in at least one instance.

[Dutchling]

I like the aquifer. I've never actually embarked on one so this could be fun indeed. And we need sand indeed with all the glass-makers.
I'm already thinking of an anti-flood system that uses a lot if floodgates and plates to make sure the water cannot reach very far (doors are boring...).
I also support the permanent death thing.
About my personality, I am a doctor who does everything for the greater good of the fortress. Which means that he will try to make sure he learns at least 2 new things about Dwarven anatomy when someone is wounded

[Lord Braindead]

The hazards of the aquifer could be minimized if we include drainage chutes in all hallways close to it. Just a strip of grates spanning the with of the hallway and a vertical chute under them that drains everything into the caverns. Cant be clogged up with trees and will prevent the spread of a flood without the risk to drown someone who wasn't quick enough to get to the safe site of a floodgate.

My set of votes:
Aquifer - + - could lead to Fun but has many applications in water engineering
sand - +++ - I'm one of the glassmakers after all
permadeath - + - sounds great but i think you should be able to claim your own children as a new dwarf if you have any

[Dutchling]

The Children idea sounds good but in my experience you either get no children at all or a little more than one per year so that might be a little unfair to some players

[billybobfred]

I know "they" say people live on through their children, but I don't think this is how they meant it. o.o

I say yes to sand and aquifers. I'm neutral on permadeath.