Sorry for the delay!
12 Obsidian: Our military has begun putting the barracks to good use.
In the meantime, the bizarre omens continue.
Work is now progressing quickly on the second floor of the barracks, as well as the pump stack. The only area in which progress is noticeably lacking is in our mining; I am currently working on setting the broken bones of our fallen miner Thob Nosingoddom, but with scarce resources and no access to water the healing process is slow. No other dwarves seem inclined to take up his work, however, and as there is little mining left to do I have not taken issue with this.
13 Obsidian: Oh gods no.
I've ordered the civilians inside, and our military to attack. If it had been anything but bowmen...
14 Obsidian: This does not help!
There is something strange about these goblins. Every once in a while, one of them will do something, and a large number of odd black threads will shoot out from them. This took the commander by surprise, fatally.
It being too late to save any of the other dwarves, I've ordered the remaining militia back inside while the crossbowmen waste their ammo on the wildlife, and if we are lucky stumble into our traps. They've killed four wrestlers, a clothier, a woodcrafter and an axedwarf already.
16 Obsidian: A pair of goblin macemen decided to go after the only competent dwarf in the military, a swordsdwarf named Rimtar Oltarsashas.
She couldn't outrun them, but as neither of these goblins show that odd ability she stands a chance.
Yes, the goblin webbers shoot webs. Which about triples their effective fighting strength. Honestly, I think that if this had worked properly the first time around the dwarves would all have been dead within a few minutes. I'm just lucky I have this one swordsdwarf and that neither of her attackers had webs. In any case, most of the rest of the goblins seem to be running straight for the cage traps, so the problem should be resolved pretty quickly.
And seriously, what is with these dwarves? It's like the females here are ultrapowered! All the skilled military are female, the mayor, all of our legendary dwarves, all but one of our artifacts... and two sets of quadruplets in a row!
Alright, rant over. Back to update.
20 Obsidian: The goblins have fled, leaving us a good number of prisoners.
Let us hope that this is a lesson to them, and that we can learn something of why the goblins have been attacking.
Our casualties, while not as high as last time, were unacceptable. I've ordered some armor forged for those few left in the military. This is unlikely to help in the long run, however. To stop these 'webber' goblins, by far the best defense is traps.
1 Granite: Here ends my rule of Randomconstructs. The other dwarves have chosen a successor, and from this day forward, I am just the chief medical dwarf. I wish well to my successor, and, should they have need of it, I will gladly tell them what I have learned this past year, both of these dwarves and the goblins. I fear that there is something happening in the world, bigger than this fortress, or any one fortress. But we shall survive, and grow stronger. If we can survive what has happened this past year, I know we can survive whatever challenges come to us in the future. Good luck!
Some closing details, addressed to my successor:
I've left some notes scattered around, mostly to let you know what is/isn't finished. If a note doesn't make sense, look to what I've written here.
I didn't quite finish the dining room, in the end due to a shortage of mechanisms which I didn't notice until too late. The lever near the room's entrance (marked 'Waterfall Shutdown') is currently being linked to the appropriate floodgate, the others haven't been constructed yet, with only one of the two others even ordered built yet. For instructions on what to do:
Once you have a reservoir, have water flow into the passage on the uppermost level. Make sure that the water is pumped onto that level and not dropped from above, or else there
will be massive catastrophic flooding. On the lower levels, the pressure plate needs to be linked to the floodgate in the upper part of the room. Have this passage end in a drain of some sort, after making sure that it will
never be clogged or filled. I recommend channeling down to the caverns again from there to be on the safe side. Have the other one of these drain back into the reservoir if possible, though this is not necessary. It just saves a bit of water.
There will eventually be three levers here. I have notes marking the location of each, though only one is currently being constructed. Link the lower one to the floodgate on the higher z-level, the middle one to the gear assembly which will be powering the small pump stack to the right of the room, and the uppermost one to the lower of the two floodgates on the lower z-level.
When this is done, it will mean that water will flow into the top part of the waterfall when the lowermost of the three levers is pulled, and stop flowing when it is pulled again. When water reaches a depth of 6 or higher in the lower part, the pressure plate will activate and start dumping water into the caverns to prevent flooding. The waterfall will be powered by a pump stack connected to the second of the three levers, and the last lever, when pulled drains the water back into the reservoir. Just in case, there is an emergency lever near the dining room which, when pulled, should dump all the water into the caverns. In case a dwarf falls into the water somehow, I've left ramps in place which should let them escape into the memorial hall.
I haven't used pressure plates much, so this might not work perfectly, but I am pretty sure that under that system there is no possibility of flooding unless you do something stupid like pressurize the water flowing into the waterfall or plug up the drain somehow.
Apart from the waterfall, I have constructed a drawbridge which could act as a more effective barrier than doors to the main entrance to the fortress, but it hasn't been linked to anything yet. This is noted. I recommend adding some traps to the long path and then walling off the shorter one I made and lined with cage traps, as it would be kind of superfluous, unless you want to keep that one as well. I recommend using the captive non-webber goblins as training dummies for the (currently pathetic) military as well, though I also recommend NOT entering into direct conflict with webber goblins if you can possibly avoid it, for obvious reasons. Finally, I've about used up all the space in the tomb. You might want to build a new one, or empty all the coffins which had pets in them whose owners have died. Or something.
If there's anything I left out, let me know. And, good luck. If things keep going for you the way they did for me, you'll need it.
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Topic: Randomconstructs: Out-megaproject the player preceding you! (Read 10185 times)