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[varnish]

((Do trained war elephants really get dangerous if they kill a dwarf, Naithal? I ask only out of curiosity, and not because that's likely to happen, soon. Small updates for now))

News from the Fort, Late Summer 303

So far, Lorbam wasn't showing any signs of madness. She'd ordered some statues constructed, and told the masons that they could choose whatever subject pleased them, so long as it was "appropriate".



Maggots were very appropriate, she told them.

..........................

Remalle was finally able to tell Aban that they had enough coffins for every dwarf who had died in Oceanbridge. Not enough of the bodies, which meant there were still some ghosts wandering around, but it was a start.

..........................

And something new wandered up from the depths.



...........................

Next: Death and Traps are Both Inevitable

((I think purring maggots sound sort of cute, actually))

[varnish]

((updates))

More News

The giant cave spider was a welcome sight to the Soldier, who was happy to be facing something ordinarily horrifying.



Once, she would have been terrified to face a monster like that. Now, it was a pleasant distraction, albeit one that only lasted a few seconds. The spider lost its first pair of legs to a blade trap, and proceeded to lose the rest to a very enthusiastic militia.



All in all, a good days work.

..........................

Neo hadn't  left the bridge for weeks. The work was back-breaking, but it kept his mind from wandering to things he didn't want to think about. Thoughts about the undead, and the destruction of Oceanbridge and the memories of a future he still wasn't sure were real...



But someone was trying to remind him. Statues kept appearing on the bridge, even though he'd given no orders to build them there.





He was going to have to find this "Kel", and talk to her, or him. Or it.

..........................

More refugees arrived, but only a few. They came from an old, old outpost, that had been overrun by "something". They weren't saying anything more. Not yet.



..............................

And Ishar and Di-III dug a dry path back down to the magma. As long as nothing horrible was lurking nearby, it looked like the magma forges would be starting up again.



..........................

Next: Another Update?

[varnish]

((Well, why not one more?))

From the Journals of Aban Brothertreaties:

Another season, another siege. This time it was the bird-men.



They seem to be taking turns with the ape-men. Well, we were ready for them this time, and kept the gate closed for a while in case they decided to burst into flame.

They refused to combust (very unfair of them) , so the Soldier, Neo and the rest marched out to the field. Then they waited as half of the bird-men were held at bay by just one of the giants.



The record gets confusing here, because for some reason, the Soldier gave the order to charge. She could have waited for them to kill the giant, and then run into our trap line, but she didn't! She sent our whole militia onto the field.



And of course, that's where things went wrong.  I'll let some of others tell the story, as, well, I wasn't actually there.

............................

Balnash Reports

I ain't seen a fight like that in years! Truth is though, we should've waited for them to come to us. The Soldier's just been itchin' for a real fight for a while now. That's why she went ahead of all of us. And that's why she got jumped by about eight bird things. We drove 'em off of her, but yeah, she got hurt.

Damn good fight, though.



...............................


Neo Reports:

This is nothing new. Some wounded, none dead? We've had worse days. But we need water. I know what happens when you've got a lot of wounded people, and no fresh water.

Why did she do it? I don't know. But we followed because we didn't want her to die fighting them alone.

..............................

Aban Concludes:

So that's that. Gar, my dear husband, has been drug out of the pit he calls a safehouse, and told to get to work on a new water "purifier", I guess we can call it. Oh, and where is our new mayor, in all of this? It's a good question, but it doesn't have an answer.

.............................

Next: An Answer

[peregarrett]

How am I supposed to finish the SafeHouse if you distract me on every snooze?!
The usuall well should work fine with getting water. Do you know what well is? Right, its a bucket with rope hung over pool of water. With mechanism to put is up and down.
If you're really mad about salt water, then just use pump desalinator and hermetic constructed cistern!

And I'm back to work, there are a lot of mechanic links to do... Especially when we got magma back. It opens wide opportunities to our defence strategies!

[Nathail]

I don't think the elephants will turn murderous if they're already tame. If a wild elephant kills a dwarf and is then tamed, then it will kill every dwarf it comes across (none of whom will run because it is technically a tamed elephant). But so long as we've had this elephant for a while, we'll be fine.

Excerpt from the Journal of Nathail, Animal Trainer of Oceanbridge

...Oh, and we had a siege. Beak Wolves, apparently. I hate those things. I can live with bird-men, and wolf-men, and men-men, but bird-wolf-men are pushing it. If those exist, then what if pig-bear-men turn out to be real? Anyway, apparently The Soldier jumped the gun and ordered a charge whilst the Beakies were being smashed by a frost giant, and got surrounded. No word on how serious just now, but I expect she'll pull through. She's a good soldier, who wouldn't ever not make a hatch she didn't not make. I need a drink...

[varnish]

((the water situation is weird, and the only thing that worked was dfhack. But we have fresh water now))

From the Journals of Aban Brothertreaties:

Well, our mayor came back, and she still seems sane, and normal, and even... competent? I know the Soldier told me she was dangerous, and I've got no reason to disbelieve her... but Lorbam seems harmless! She explained that she had been down near the underground lake during the siege, looking for a source of fresh water. And to her credit, she and Gar managed to rig up some sort of mechanism that gives us just that. So no one is going to die of thirst now, especially not the Soldier.

Speaking of her, I haven't seen her in the hospital yet. I really hope someone actually remembered to get her off the field!

................................

Meanwhile:

"All right, the Soldier," Ishar said to the wounded commander, who she was carrying on her back. "I almost got you back to safety. See, we're at the gate! Nothing's going to attack you here-"

It was at that moment, of course, that a goblin sprang a cage trap right next to her.



Ishar jumped as the cage walls slammed down an inch from her toes. The Soldier groaned as she came close to falling.

"Augh, sorry about that!" The goblin screamed and slashed at the cage bars with its dagger, but the silver was no match for solid oak bars. Ishar backed away, just to be safe. "Ok, nothing's going to try to kill us now for sure-"

The second cage trap came down in front of her, and she found herself staring at another confused and angry goblin. This one was a bit bigger, and was carrying a silk bag, for some reason. Fortunately, silk wasn't much good for breaking cages either.

Moving with care, Ishar stepped to the side, and inched past the cage and its snarling contents.

The third goblin was caught as it crept over a weapon trap. Ishar only saw the creature's head as it spun by, spraying her and the soldier with blood. It look startled.



She blinked as bits of the goblin dripped over her eyes. "All right now. Ok. Now... I think I'll run you inside, and only then I'll say something about being safe." She tried to look on the bright side. "At least we've got clean water again! We can wash up now!"

................................

Next: About Goblins

[varnish]

((it's cold))

Gambling with Goblins

Mr. Anderson tapped the lever with his cane. "It's simple. The goblins who arrived at our doorstep recently are hostile to us. The goblins who live alongside us here are not. That is what it seems like, at least. We shall release the caged thieves into their midst. If they greet their cousins with their blades, then we shall know for certain."



Ishar nodded, "I get it! They fight and kill each other, so we don't have to!"

"Precisely. And when they have finished doing so, any survivors will be weak enough for even our militia to dispatch with ease. Now, let the battle begin." Mr. Anderson pulled the lever.

He and Ishar watched the goblins for a while.

"So, they aren't fighting."

"No."



"In fact, they seem to be pretty happy to see each other. Look, that one's giving his friend a hug! At least, I think they're friends. I'm not sure how goblins treat their friends."

"Nevertheless, you seem to be correct." Mr. Anderson sighed. "At least we know where the loyalty of 'our' goblins lies, now. Fetch me my crossbow, please."

..............................

Next: A Sad Reminder of Artifacts Past

[varnish]

Memorializing and Remembering

Let's see... what did he remember about Lokum... Well, she had liked prickle berries, that was for sure. Almost liked them too much, really. Remalle started chiseling her name into the smooth granite slab.

"Good morning, my dear. What are you doing?"

Remalle jumped, and nearly carved his thumb with the chisel. "Oh it's you, Mayor Lorbam." He carefully put the chisel down. "I guess I'm just carving a memorial slab. For one of the dwarfs who died here, a few years back. It's what I do."

"You memorialize the dead. A good cause."

"I guess..."

Lorbam seemed to have something else on her mind. "You have been here for years, I've heard. I see your name on all the carvings here. You must know all about the history of this place. Do you recognize the name 'The Disemboweled Ring'? One of our butchers created this bin, you see."



"That... yes, that was an adamantine axe. A very, very good one, too. I don't remember who made it, though."

"And does it still exist? Is the axe still here?" Lorbam leaned in close.

This was something Remalle felt safe answering. "No, it's been missing ever since the first time the fortress fell. I'm sure it was stolen, or lost in the ocean, or something like that. We lost everything that wasn't nailed down, really."

"Ah. Well, that's disappointing." She looked around at the carved walls for a minute, then said, "You've done good work here." After that, she left, heading back up the stairs to the main dining room.

Remalle didn't try to stop her. He still had a lot of work to do.

.................................

Next: Basically, Doom

[peregarrett]

Huh.. what if we'd organize loyality cascade for goblins... I think it could be possible with dfhack - select one of goblins, switch to adventure mode, attack, switch back to fortress mode.

[Di]

I don't know, last time I've tried to go adventuring from fortress it caused loyalty cascade for everyone on the map.
Also didn't a simple well work for as a water source?

[varnish]

The water is weird. Even with a well, they weren't drinking it, and water pumped into a completely constructed room would count as fresh for a moment, then turn bad.

Changing the game mode turned the entire screen black, and the unit list got all... crazy. It's possible I did it wrong.

I did use dfhack to find out where the missing bodies are. It turns out that they get scattered everywhere on the map, and I do mean everywhere.

Any testing I do in dfhack is done in a copy of the fort, obviously. I worry about the save getting buggy and unplayable enough as it is.

Update soon.

[varnish]

From the Journals of Aban Brothertreaties

I get to record something here that I almost never do! Something went right! That alligator beast attacked, and no one died. (Except for it, which I am damn well fine with). This is... unusual. I don't know how to write about good news anymore.

Start at the beginning at least, right?

The first we heard was one of the refugees (a beekeeper, who naturally isn't busy) running up the old magma pump stairway, screaming about being chased by something. It was pretty clear that she wasn't talking about elk birds.



When she had calmed down, she told Mayor Lorbam about the alligator beast. How it appeared out of nowhere, and had nearly torn her in half right there, and how she had made it up to the dining room with it a stairway or two behind. Well, that's pretty urgent.

So the Soldier (who is doing better) called out the militia. Thirty dwarfs, all armored in steel, with some of the best weapons Oceanbridge has to offer. And we all knew that it wasn't enough. It's never been enough, before.



I came down with them. Well I had to, didn't I?

The Soldier's original plan was to just wait for the monster to arrive, and fight it as best as  we could. (IE: Die.) Fortunately for her, and for the rest of us, Neo remembered something else. Years back, during another attack like this one, he and some of the other dead people started building a trap walkway. The idea was for the monster to be drawn up to it, and somehow get knocked off the causeway, into the pit below.

Arrive it did. I'd forgotten, even after everything I've seen, just how terrifying and immense these monsters are. The thing filled the pump stack. This huge, green scaled... alligator thing. (Describing this might be easier if I knew what an alligator was)



And the plan failed. The monster stepped over the traps like they weren't there. I don't even know if any of them worked. Maybe they had rusted over, or been broken by gremlins, or something. They failed.

So there we were, facing down this enormous alligator creature. Neo moved to fight it. But someone else got there first.

Some marksman, who I've never met, (but I really want to now) charged it before Neo could draw his own sword. The marksman didn't use his crossbow, he didn't fire a bolt, he simply ran at it with his fists.

The monster dodged him, easily.



It dodged right into the open air.



We all had a good, long look at the monster as it fell. It was a long, long way down. The lake is down there too, but the monster didn't land in the lake.





So there's a celebration being thrown, and for the first time in years, I think it's a genuinely happy one. I'm going to celebrate. I'm going to celebrate the fact that we're finally winning. The bridge is growing, and we've beat everything Rakust can throw at us. Neo and Remalle's future isn't going to happen. Not if we can keep this up.

..................................

Next: The After-Party

[Nathail]

Excerpts from the Journal of Nathail, Animal Trainer of Oceanbridge

...The goblins have gone... Well, sane I suppose. Instead of meandering around waving at dwarves, they've decided to treat us the way goblins traditionally treat dwarves, snatching children and setting up ambushes. They seem apologetic about it, though. I think they're more interested in killing and kidnapping us than in hurting us. Fortunately, goblins suck at killing painlessly. Wait...

...Forgotten beast attacked! I hate those things. This one was apparently incompetent, though. A marksdwarf charged it (must have had an empty quiver), and it dodged right over the edge of the walkway. Apparently there was a wonderful view of a giant, ageless, alligator-thing plummeting down several floors. I heard one dwarf say it made a "very satisfying splat" when it hit...

[varnish]

I would just like to note that the main body of the bridge is only 730 blocks away from completion. It's actually almost, almost there!

*Collapses*

[varnish]

((things happen))

Events of Winter, 203

It turned out that Mayor Lorbam's interest in old artifacts wasn't just casual. A few days after the alligator beast was killed, and after the party celebrating its death had ended, Remalle found a note waiting for him in his room, asking him to "kindly try to remember anything he could" about "that old axe".

A few days later, when he had sobered up enough to actually make sense of the message, he went searching for information Which wasn't easy, considering everything that had happened to the fortress since then. The axe was nowhere to be found, but he discover a dusty slab in a long abandoned corridor, that he must have carved at some point. It had to be right. Memory wasn't reliable. Carved stone was.



...............................

Neo had spent the party on the bridge. He could see the opposite shore in the distance; a pale green shadow in the mists. He wasn't going to stop for anything now, not even a party.

It had been getting colder, he noticed, the closer they got to their destination. It even snowed, sometimes. That wasn't normal. Perhaps it was another sign of how the world was changing.

Or perhaps it was a sign of something worse.



.....................................

Next: Things get Confusing

((Really, really confusing))