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[NW_Kohaku]

It's OK, Darvi, I'll take the next turn.

I guess I might as well put everything in good shape, since it seems we have a lot of people who don't have much experience running fortresses, anyway.

You can take the turn after this one, where the military should be fairly stable.

I don't particularly like using much military, and we don't have many soldier dwarves, anyway, so I'll be mainly focusing upon mechanical solutions to the goblin question.  We have some siege operators, too, so I think I'll open the western bank with a nice ballista overlooking the area.  We should also get some nice repeating spikes set up, as well.

Then there's that FB down in the caverns... I really want to mash that thing.

[NW_Kohaku]

*In-character Acting*

The dwarven New Year celebration was going in full swing.

Actually, it had been a party organized somewhere around the start of Granite, and it had been "in full swing" for so long, the dwarves still capable of standing on their own two feet had decided it would be best to just relabel it "The Dwarven New Year Celebration", because otherwise, there wouldn't be a new overseer selected in time.

Kohaku, de-facto manager of the fortress, after managing to drag a few more unconscious dwarves back to their rooms before they choked on their own vomit, came back into the dining hall to find to her surprise that the voting for the next overseer had been decided.

"Oh?  And who has won the vote?"  Kohaku asked.

"Yaahaha!  It wush a closh deshishun.  We had half votin' for Geb.  Other half for Dutchlin.  Both on account of 'em dyin' in a dwarfidy manners defendin' the fort."  A severely inebriated dwarf explained.

"... Excuse me, but... Aren't both of them dead?" Kohaku asked, managing to hide her rising alarm. "How, exactly would that work?"

"Well, shee, we wush arguin 'bout that, when thish goosh showed up and shtarted honking and biting at shum mule, and we shaid, "Look, them'sh gotta be Dutchlin'." Then othersh shaid "Nah, thash gotta be Geb." Sho's we tooksh a vote, and it turned out the goosh was named Dutchlin' by two votesh." 

"... and by winning that, we have our new overseer, Dutchling the Goose." Kohaku replied, letting her utter fatigue at babysitting these louts show through.

"Yup!" said the drunk as he hefted back another barrel of dwarven wine, emptied its contents, threw up, collapsed, and proceeded to drown in his own vomit.

Kohaku sighed and kicked the drunk over so that he would be capable of breathing, and decided that perhaps that this was for the best, anyway.

"My fellow dwarves," she announced, "you are very lucky to be in the presence of one who speaks fluent... umm... Goosenese!"

"Ohhhh?  AHHHH!" Cheered the crowd, which only vaguely was capable of understanding they were supposed to agree, and completely lacking understanding of what they were agreeing to.

Going up to the goose, she greeted it with a polite curtsy and a "honk honk" of hello.

"Hen? Haaaan! HOOOONK!"  Replied "Dutchling".

"Ah, yes, it appears that he is quite happy to have me carry on as his right-hand-woman and translator in manifesting his iron-bound and completely unquestionable will.  Furthermore, he will accept no testimony from other silly pretenders that claim to speak goosenese.  Only my translations carry the seal of approval."

At which point the goose, having been lifted up on the grand feast table, lifted up its hind quarters momentarily, and let loose a payload of... goose waste.

"Umm... err... That's his... Shit of approval!  Yes!"  Kohaku gave a presentational pose while trying heroically to hold back the tears over what had become of her life.

A roar of approval went up from the confused and heavily inebriated crowd before they toasted themselves comatose.

"As my first order of business, I am going to have to inquire the brewers as to what, exactly, they have been distilling these past 12 months."

[NW_Kohaku]

Cut this from the last post, since I was running long...

Overseer's Manager's journal, 1st Granite, 128

For all the love that Suton doesn't have!  If it weren't for the fact that, after I get my revenge upon the Mountainhome, I would be driving my species extinct to kill off the whole lot of these bastards, I would do so.

As it stands, not even killing off most of them, but for a single male, and repopulating the planet is a good plan, as that would require deigning allow one of them to touch me.

As such, it is readily apparent that I must assume direct control of the operations of this fort if our species is to survive.

If you are reading this journal and it is not in a shrine to my glorious resuscitation of our race, then I have failed, and history's probably better off not knowing what a dwarf was, anyway.

...

So I guess the only thing left to do is look through the fortress, and see what I need to do to keep this place from having its occupants devolving further into just eating themselves.

Our front gate now has some drawbridges, some weapon traps, and an awful lot of blood on it.  I see that at least Blade managed to get some defenses working properly. 

I also see a well that leads down into the stream.  The water is fresh, but I fear this may be a potentially exploitable hole in our defenses.  I must tap the aquifer again to give our fortress a better plumbing system.  I shall make that a middle-tier priority after beefing up our defenses further.

Our stockpiles overflow with the cages of captured wildlife.  We have many beautiful dogs, children of some of my own beautiful pets, who languish in cages when they could be trained to kill for the dwarven cause.  What wastefulness. 

We have a dungeon master, so training these creatures should be fairly easy, although I'm not entirely sure if an elite squad of war badgers particularly makes sense. 

Blade apparently saw fit to butcher one of the alpacas, apparently because of pasture overcrowding.  There are multiple empty pastures, and several overcrowded pastures.  They need to be immediately sorted into better land management.  No more than three creatures should be in any one pasture at a time, and there is little reason for creatures that don't need to graze to be outside of cages at all.

Our supply of food is more than adequate for the number of dwarves we have, and our alcohol supply is sufficient to carry us through an entire year, which means that checking the stock for tainted product shouldn't put us in any danger.

According to Vercingetorix's accounting since I stepped down as bookkeeper, we have produced over a million ☼ in cumulative GDP, which makes the lackluster caravan goods even more puzzling.

Speaking of which, Blade apparently didn't meet with the outpost liason at all.  I guess that means I have to drop everything to attend to that, as soon as I am done with getting myself organized.

Soldiers are being well-trained... the melee dwarves, at least.  The crossbow dwarves apparently can't shoot at the firing range because someone knocked some holes in the floor as part of some cockamamie "bolt retrieval" scheme, and now the whole place has been declared "structurally unsound".  I'm going to have to patch that place up before anyone will get some training done.

As for other aspects of the fortress, it looks very similar to the layout I had before I left.  Aside from apparently having gold fever, and knocking down any wall that stood between him and more gold nuggets that he didn't even bother to smelt, just left laying around on the floor, Blade did very little excavation.  The new workshops are just excavated into the floor right below the old ones. 

The bedrooms, of course are just down below the old ones, as well...

Wait, what?  That's not a bed, that's a coffin.

...

OK, apparently, Blade went and decided to just dig a little deeper, and repurpose some bedroom spaces as eternal resting spaces. 

That means I will want to dig out some proper funerary space, aren't I?  For some odd reason nobody has complained that their next door neighbor is a corpse in a coffin, but I'm going to make sure that we have a proper distinction between the living and the dead around here.

Maybe this is where they got the hare-brained scheme to set up a goose in charge?  Thinking the goose just walked out of a bedroom so it must be him, or something...

... bah! Anyway, I accomplished much in my previous term, but this will be a busy year for me as well, I see.

[Armok]

You're a brilliant comedy writer. Utterly brilliant. Haven't laughed this much in ages!

[Truean]

Is Truean still alive? If so, give me stats and I'll contribute some POV writing.

[NW_Kohaku]

Manager's Journal, Granite 2, 128

It's only been a day, but I already regret illegitimately seizing power just because I wanted to survive.  Dieing is SO much easier.

Sorting out these pastures is annoying work.

Apparently, in spite of a single water buffalo alone eating all the grass in the area, two water buffalo, a cow, two alapaca, and four goats were all stuffed into a single pasture, while almost all the other pastures were left practically empty.

There was also a very large room that was crowding up against the main dining hall, right off the main hall and living space for our dwarves when we had a massive amount of completely unused floors below us to put less-trafficked rooms in the fort.  This appears to be Dutchling's tomb, the one Blade made out of guilt with having Dutchling die. 

I don't mind proper respect for the dead, but this is really in the way, so I'm going to have another tomb excavated, and place the dead dwarves in a proper place of burial.  Maybe I'll repurpose the tomb space as more dining hall, since we seem to be needing a bigger one soon.  That's a low priority for now, however.

In any event, I ordered a new catacomb level be built by repurposing some of these gold mines.  By place a few walls, I could make a place for a good door, and make something that reasonably looked like a room...

But then I found out we have no doors.

Confused by this, I checked to find that we still only have two masons, one of which is Patchy, and she's kept busy hauling and setting up traps.  I shut off her hauling duties.

Apparently, we have nobody working at the mason's workshop, but we have a jeweler's workshop working away at encrusting all our gems onto things.  I ordered the jeweler's workshop deconstructed.

The mason's workshop, meanwhile, is set to making nothing but coffins on repeat.  The only masons we have are also repeatedly called off to build walls.  We must switch to excavation whenever possible to save this precious labor resource.

Also, the entire area around the fort was designated for logging and plant gathering, including areas outside the protected enclosed areas.  This is probably why people were leaving the protected enclosed areas and getting ambushed.

I un-designated everything, and had to forbid a huge number of logs to prevent dwarves from running out to collect them.  One of the bloody fields that was obviously a site of an ambush was right in the middle of the path to all the logs that had been designated outside the protected area.

Spoiler: Unprotected woodcutting (click to show/hide)

All those logs are in the unprotected area, the protected area is down the cliff face, where you see the white "+" signs as the top of the walls on the highest points of the protected area.

It took me a while to figure out what our hospital actually was.  It's some beds near tables on the same floor as our stockpile floor.

I need to get a reservoir excavated soon so that we have proper access to fresh water.

I'm ordering the excavation of a new chute to drain water from the aquifer into the caverns, creating a "well" from which we can draw our reservoir water for the hospital, and other uses.  I am also planning out future expansions of our aquifer-based repeater system.

Our defenses need to be cleaned up.  Since we have our miners so much more free than our masons, this will be done by excavating a new passage into the fort through the side of the mountain, filling it with proper traps, and then closing off the old one.

Our soldiers need to be reorganized.  I have merged our melee squads into a single squad, and made DrKillPatient the militia captain.

New uniforms were drafted.

New trap emplacements have been devised.  We will also be using animal watchtowers to detect incoming lurkers.  These will be "watchtowers" inside of our excavated passage into the fortress.

I decided it would be faster and better to just excavate a new barracks for our marksdwarves than to patch up the other range, and stuff all our soldiers into one barracks.  The new marksdwarf barracks will be closer to the new marksdwarf lookout post.

Our atom smasher has been going unused, while stockpiles have been filled up with rhino lizard and lungfish remains.  I have ordered a mass dumping campaign to take place.

The dungeon master was about to snap.  Apparently, he's been demanding a billon coffin for most of the last year, and hasn't gotten one yet.  I let him "vent his complaints" with the goose.

I think he was pecked for his trouble.

Ugh, so much to do before I can even unpause the game...  I've spent basically 8 hours on it.  I'm not even done micromanaging everything yet, either.  I still haven't even begun with dwarven management yet, either.

[NW_Kohaku]

Is Truean still alive? If so, give me stats and I'll contribute some POV writing.

Yes, you're a miner and a hauler, and you don't have much mining experience.

Of course, as soon as I'm in charge, I'm going to be working you to the bone, so that "not much experience" thing is going to change right quick.

[NW_Kohaku]

I can see why people quit instead of taking this turn...

I'm rearranging the military, so that all the military dwarves are in one squad, and now I can't remember who the fourth melee dwarf was supposed to be.  (Ah, Fallofthechosen)

I still haven't gone through the full list of everyone who is supposed to be in what job, and it's absolutely crippling that we only have one dedicated mason.

I don't suppose I can ask someone who watches this thread to volunteer as a mason?  We need a lot of stone-related materials right now, desperately. 

Apparently, we've got someone on permanent plant gathering duties, and nothing else, too...  Which is weird, because I can't find where the heck this guy came from.

Anyway, I'm going to have to expand the workshop area, as well, so that we aren't cramming all work down a single stairwell.

I've also changed my mind on the drain into the caverns to get rid of the aquifer water - I think I'm just going to set up a mass of atom smashers to eliminate all the water, instead.


Also, Dutchling, your graph is messed up.  You appear to include a sum of all dwarfed dwarves in the sum of your to-be-dwarfed-dwarves for each job.  The list says there are four dwarves who are waiting to become masons, but there aren't any, there are only two, and those are already dwarfed.

[MonkeyHead]

Quite happily be a dabbling mason as well as a bonecrafter. Heck, throw in stonecrafting if needed.

[NW_Kohaku]

Manager's Journal, Granite 3, 128

Apparently, it's the new day, judging by someone who said "good morning" to me.  I was unable to resist the urge to knock him unconscious for bothering me.  Hit head multiple times to make sure wouldn't remember the encounter.  Dumped in bottom of residential areas with coffins to avoid discovery, and left an empty booze barrel that had failed the tainted booze inspection for the curious to find.

Ordered a change in plans on the well-and-drain system for the aquifer.  Decided that dumping the water into the caverns was a risk that we didn't need to take, and that we could simply run a series of atom smashers on a "bottom floor" in order to clear out water, instead.  Apparently, I am back in the proper mindset to use the physically impossible to handle my minor wants. 

Other than that, it was time to do some workshop babysitting.

Some serious, serious babysitting.

Goddamn morons would probably need me to help them wipe if the gods weren't too prudish to allow us to have toilets.

Found out that the glassmaker was building nothing but glass serrated blades, which aren't nearly as useful as simply making iron blades, and as such, I ordered him to make doors and tables and chairs and nest boxes and other things we actually need, instead.  Glass cages are much more cheap and replaceable than wooden ones.

Found out that the previous administrator had made all our weapons traps out of green glass serrated blades instead of iron ones for some odd reason.  I guess this is why they could walk through 6 rows of weapons traps without dying.  I will need to order the construction of massive numbers of iron serrated blades to give our defenses actual stopping power.

These glass discs are extremely valuable, however, so I might just sell them instead of anything else. 

... Apparently, the previous administrator made one row of weapons traps that consisted of 5 iron serrated blades each, and then the rest were all green glass.  Not efficient - the first trap is pure murder, but if they dodge that, or the first one is clogged, the rest are weak.  It would be better to mix up one iron blade and four glass blades.  In fact, mixing in some giant axe blades would probably be more useful - serrated discs attack three times, but if it's not penetrating armor, you might as well go for blunt chopping damage.

We have a massive backlog of quarry bush leaves that weren't being prepared.  Ordered our farmers to get back to work.

A "milking" order was clogging our farmer's workshop.  We have no milkers.  We do have spinners and shearers, though.  Whatever, just give them something to do.

We have billon for that billon coffin order, and we have 12 bars of steel and 26 bars of iron.  We can easily make armor for our marksdwarves at this rate, and make iron serrated discs as long as our iron production continues.

Ordered more craftsdwarf workshops to be built, and ordered bone bolts to be constructed for our marksdwarves to use as soon as their new barracks are built.

Ordered the construction of nest boxes, so that we could take advantage of our poultry surplus.  Ordered the construction of cages to prevent an extreme poultry surplus through allowing all those eggs to be fertilized.

Apparently, we have one HELL of a mussel fishery running.  58 raw mussels in our stockpiles, and 19 raw mussel biscuits.  (Is that sanitary?) Apparently, xordie, our cook, is allergic to cooking with plants, because all our other meals are egg or buffalo biscuits.  Some of our dwarves are full-time fisherdwarves, and nobody has been shucking the mussels they keep fishing up.  At least we won't want for shells in any fey moods.  Ordered one of the fisherdwarves to stop fishing, and work on shucking the shells.  I then ordered another to stop fishing altogether, because she was also a glassblower, and that's much more useful than fishing.

Ordered two of the waterbuffalo to be slaughtered.  One was in pretty bad shape - apparently two of the bulls had been going at it with each other for a while due to overcrowding, and one of them was about to die on its own, anyway.

We also apparently have hundreds of strawberry seeds, even if we lack for dwarves to actually plant them.  I don't much mind, being a fan of strawberry wine, myself, but apparently, our fortress subsists almost entirely on prickle berries and strawberries, along with some occasional seafood. 

Ugh, there are entire floors of nothing but coffins in our residential section.  Apparently, Blade wanted to give everyone there own tomb just a few feet down the road from their own bedroom.  Friggin' creepy. 

I hope he wasn't planning on FILLING them all...

Maybe I should prepare an Unfortunate Accident, just in case?

Ordered a re-evaluation of the amount of wood we have in light of forbidding such a large quantity of the wood beyond our reach, at least for the time being.  We are apparently down to 13 unused logs in safe locations.  131 logs were apparently cut down in the areas outside the safe zone, and have been abandoned.

This makes my head pound.

AND WHY DO WE HAVE SO DAMN MANY MINERS?!   Assigning Truean and Rolan7 to hauling instead of creating more things to haul.

I just noticed that the stairs to our well are both "up" stairs, meaning they don't function - a dwarf has to walk along the wall to reach the well.

Ordering a wounded captured goblins' cage to be set up in one of the abandoned mines with a lever, while I requisitioned myself a nice, blunt weapon SO I HAVE SOMEONE TO KILL TO TAKE OUT THE STRESS

[NW_Kohaku]

Quite happily be a dabbling mason as well as a bonecrafter. Heck, throw in stonecrafting if needed.

According to this, you are slated as a bonecarver and a stonecrafter, but only your stonecrafting has actually been used.  You are also our only bonecrafter and stonecrafter.

I'll shut down the silly rock crafts thing, so that you can work more on bone bolts.

We also had a woodcrafter, but no shop for him, and nothing was produced.  Of course, that person was also a carpenter, so that may be just as well.

[NW_Kohaku]

I just noticed a billy goat leg and a cow's tooth up on the wall next to the stream - the pastures are so overcrowded that the water buffalo have apparently decided to stage a deathmatch against the other animals.  There are a lot of dark grey or red wounds on the animals. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Looking through our stocks, I just noticed that my character (NW_Kohaku) apparently made a statue of Patchy. 

Also, Khift made a figurine of Dutchling, but it's of him being terrified of blood gnats, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea to throw that in Dutchling's tomb...

[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't suppose I can ask someone who watches this thread to volunteer as a mason?  We need a lot of stone-related materials right now, desperately.

Anything to avoid being targeted with an unfortunate accident! 
Seriously, I'm fine with it. In fact, I'll just say it now: I'm fine with any labor that is not likely to be dangerous, especially if it is not laborious or it involves some creative expression. Just be sure to mention it.

Also, Khift made a figurine of Dutchling, but it's of him being terrified of blood gnats, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea to throw that in Dutchling's tomb...

Yes. Why not?

[AdeleneDawner]

I don't suppose I can ask someone who watches this thread to volunteer as a mason?  We need a lot of stone-related materials right now, desperately.

Anything to avoid being targeted with an unfortunate accident! 
Seriously, I'm fine with it. In fact, I'll just say it now: I'm fine with any labor that is not likely to be dangerous, especially if it is not laborious or it involves some creative expression. Just be sure to mention it.

Ditto!