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[peregarrett]

A 2x16 embark and war with the Elephants?  You're screwed!

... A dorf please!  A metalsmith who believes that any bridge worth building is worth building out of steel.  Name:  Turk

...If not being flooded by magma.

Steel and glass!

[Masked_Hunter1825]

Give me a crossbow dwarf and name him Heavy Weapons Guy.

Hes got a new plan for goblins.

MORE PAIN.

[varnish]

Oceanbridge, the first month:

While building an enormous bridge for no good reason was obviously vital, Aban and the others agreed that it would be hard to start while starving to death and dying of exposure. Nix and Karakzon got to work turning the hard packed sand dunes into a set of semi-habitable rooms, while the others busied themselves unloading the wagon.

Aban was pleased to see that they had two decent quality copper axes; she claimed one for herself, the other naturally being picked up by Derm, the Soulchopper. Derm wasn’t especially happy with his first assignment, to “go chop up a few of those palm trees that have been menacing us”, but he acknowledged that they would probably all sleep better on beds. Besides, who could say whether trees had souls or not? They might, and they might really deserve a good chopping. He got to work. The shelter began to take (admittedly ugly) shape:



3rd of Slate, 191

“Just keep digging, Karakzon, that’s what I say. There’s bound to be some good solid stone somewhere down here. Just we’re only two layers down, so- hey!”
Karakzon, who’d been only been half listening to Nix’s chatter looked up from his own work. “Hit some stone?”

Nix pointed to the hole he’d been digging.  It had already filled with muddy water. Karakzon grunted.  “There’s a problem.” He leaned on his pick. “You think we might be able to build this bridge outta sand? Because I think that good solid stone you mentioned might be buried in a couple hundred feet of water.”

Nix nodded. "There's ways through aquifers, right? I guess we should bring this up at that meeting Aban's having up top. Speaking of which."



The First Official Meeting Of Oceanbridge:

“Ok, is everyone here? Even the dogs, are… ok, good.” Aban looked around the “main hall” (a little room carved out of white sand, and held up primarily by hope). “Just when did we get these dogs, anyway? Did they come along with us? I don’t remember them from the wagon…” She shook her head. “Whatever. The point is, I thought we might take this meeting to talk about this, well, this bridge we’ve got to build. I mean, at this stage, we don’t even know how we’re going to build the thing, so… ideas?”

Gar, the mechanic spoke up. “I’m no glassmaker, but I see a lot of sand here, and a lot of trees. Easy enough to put those together. Just picture it, if you will: A bridge of green glass, shining like a beacon as it stretches from horizon to horizon…”

Aban nodded and began to take notes. She’d lost all of her papers in the sinking of the raft, and had to make do with a block of wood and a piece of charcoal, but she was going to take notes come hell and high water. “Green… glass… ok, that sounds-"

“And steel! “ This came from one of the two that Aban hadn’t had a chance to meet yet. Turk, maybe, a metalsmith. “A bridge like this, it’s got to be made out of steel. Aside from providing work for yours truly, it would… Well, just think of it! There’s no metal out there better than steel.”

“What about adamantine?”

Turk sneered. “That’s a myth, Karakzon. Adamantine doesn’t exist. No, if you want something built right, you use steel.”

“Green glass, and steel.” Karakzon said, correcting him.

“Right! Oh, and we can pump magma up from the depths and run it down the middle of the bridge!” This suggestion from Gar got applause from most of the others.

Aban looked surprised. “Why would we do that?”

“Why? So we could pour it on our enemies!”

“Oh, right. Them. Er… any more suggestions?”

The meeting went on for another few hours before a rough plan was completed. (It involved glass, and steel, and giant trap doors, and elephants. Aban was trying not to get worried about the actual feasibility of it all.) Nix sat quietly in the back, wondering when the best time to mention the aquifer would be.  Well, if they were going to start off with glass, they wouldn’t need stone for some time, right? He decided to mention it to Aban afterwards. After all, the damn thing wasn’t going to go anywhere. Not yet.

(Next: Migrants and Aquifer and Giraffes)

Sure thing they will be on both sides. Even different squads of single siege. And we'll meet them at the middle of bridge and drop the bodies at depth of the ocean!

Thieves will be dropped alive and being bet on getting to the shore or drowning.

So basically sieges are going to spawn mere yards from the front door? I thought that the idea was that the fort was on one side of the bridge and the sieges spawned on the other.

((In my experience with this kind of fort, yes. Sieges do spawn right next to the fort. Ambushes too. It's a whole lot of fun! And I'm sure you know what that means.))

[Karakzon]

It is possible to get through an aquifyer layer in just a year using wood, since a pump next to a pump transfers power.

anyways: Ide like to have a real grafitying i told you so concerning adamantine when we find it
if we live that long.

[Person]

Posting to watch. Also, fun fact. the ocean is 10 embark tiles wide here, so for a 1 tile wide bridge, you need 480 blocks, and then some for the beach tiles. This is gonna be long, but awesome. How's the fps by the way.
Also also, dorf me as the metalsmith. Also also also(I use that word too much, must fix), do you already know how to pierce aquifers? If not, are you going to look it up?

[peregarrett]

I'm taking architector's jobs. We have to pass through aquifer, we have to pump magma up here... a lot of pumps and mills... BTW, do ocean waves move waterwheels? I'm curious...

[Person]

Pretty sure any water will move a wheel, but waves aren't constant so they probably would be no good.

[varnish]

((Some comments:

1. I got through an aquifer once using pumps, but I only have a vague memory of how it worked.

2. To make glass we need charcoal. To make charcoal we need a wood furnace, which needs to be built from fire-safe materials. Of which we have none. Woops!

3. Steel? Ha ha ha, steel.

Also, Turkey, I just realized the dwarf I gave you is female. Is that all right, or would you prefer another?))

Workin' on the update. And here:

Events from the Summer of 191

Nix knew there had to be stone around somewhere. He’d had a long career as a miner, and one of the most important lessons he had learned was that if you don’t strike gold in the first spot, you find a new place to dig. Pick in hand, he was exploring.

 He’d found white sand, and loamy sand, and just plain sandy sand, when some densely packed earth (also sand) gave way under his pick and revealed what had to be stone. Not much, just a small basalt boulder, if he was any judge, but still, stone!

He gave it a light tap.



A bit later:

“You found stone and you didn’t fetch it up here? Why not?”

Nix coughed a bit before answering. He was soaked to the bone, again. They’d managed to haul him up the (now flooded) stair just in time. “I had some trouble with the boulder, Derm. It was heavy. And I was trying not to drown. Because the ocean rushed in. Which nearly made me drown.”

“Oh, fine. We still could have used that damn thing.”

They were interrupted by Gar, who ran into the hall shouting. “Monsters! There’s a whole herd of monsters out there! No wonder they call this Nightmare Island!”

“Right!” Derm leapt to his feet. “Turk, my axe! Thank you. I’ll deal with these monsters. The only nightmare they’ll find here,” he yelled as he charged out the entrance and into the surf, “IS ME! I’ll-“ Derm stopped.

There was a small herd of animals out there all right. But they didn’t look like monsters. Or at least, not like any monster he’d ever seen. They were… confusing.



Just when Derm had decided that, confusion be damned, he was going to settle this matter with his axe, he heard a cheery voice call out, “I say! Is this the Bridge? We’ve come quite a ways to see it, and it doesn’t appear to be around!”



Migrants!

[peregarrett]

Gar is mechanic, not animal worker, so his knowledge of nature sucks.

I think we have to pass through aquifer with wooden pumps and walls. Glass will be after we find magma or coal veins, charcoal is for losers, and we don't have plenty of wood here... Is there enough wood to make walls and pumps?

 Maybe we should consider cave-in method?

[TurkeyXIII]

anyways: Ide like to have a real grafitying i told you so concerning adamantine when we find it

Pfff, like that could ever happen 

Also, Turkey, I just realized the dwarf I gave you is female. Is that all right, or would you prefer another?))

Female is no problem.

[NRDL]

Nix seems to be a pretty talkative and social dwarf, all things considered.  I hope mining gives him superdwarven stats. 

[Di]

I request a dwarf, gender irrelevant, name Di. Profession: mad artillerist. Since we're bringing magma up, I'd recommend trying out firing balista through moses effect lava wall to see if firing arrow results in more deaths (actually that's what I'm trying to do in my current fort but may very well never finish, just as compassion of 'a better pumpstack' and Hussel's synchronized pumps, the last one being conventional pumpstack but built from top to bottom. What I can say for sure about it is that it'll move magma all the way up in one tick without filling the intermediate levels) but I digress, in a meantime, my dwarf could do the masonry or help out with mechanics.

[Mormota]

Awesome. Requestin' a-me a dwarf called Mormota. Preferably miner/military, or, failing that, an engraver.

[Karakzon]

i belive the basics of drilling through a aquifyer with just wood is: a square box of dug out aquifyer, surrounded by rows of pumps that pump the water into a trought that is also dug out of the same aquifyer, wich will then take the water pumped ontop of its water layer and absorb it.
make sure the box is big enought to acomidate multiple aquifyer layers though.

[varnish]

From the Journals of Aban Brothertreaties

Well, I’ll admit that I was not expecting migrants. I wasn’t actually sure what to expect, as our mad queen is somewhat unpredictable. I mean, it's just as possible for her to send a wagon loaded with tower caps harps, as it is to send help.

Their spokesman seems to think the bridge should have already been complete, (how?) and the rest of them seem equally eccentric. Plus, when I asked them how they got here, he told me “by boat”.  Why the hell didn’t we take a boat? Since when do we have boats? Also, does our queen really expect us to be done by now? We haven’t laid a single block yet, all because of this aquifer issue. Well, nothing to be done. Aside from start building, I guess.

I’ve met a few of the new arrivals. Here’s some notes on them. Got to keep myself organized. I might not be able to depend on anything else, but at least I’ve got my notebook. Er, such as it is.

There’s a miner calling himself Aussie Evil. Not sure what the first word means, but I’m a bit worried by the second.



Person, a metalcrafter. Odd name.



Then there’s Di. When I first met her, she demanded to be shown to the ballistas and magma, because she had “a plan”. I guess she was disappointed when I told her we had neither.



((More dwarfs coming soon. It was a very small migrant wave))


The summer of 191 was a busy one at Oceanbridge. Gar went to work with enthusiasm, designing and building a set of screw pumps that he said would “move the water out, real safe, no problem.” There were still some issues.



One of the new migrants (who had decided to beat the rush) almost drowned while trying to fish in the flooded tunnels.



Aban was still unsure how he’d survived, but had ordered him to fish in the ocean like a sane person.

The First Official Test of the Pumps: 16th of Galena, 191

“So what’s the plan here, Gar? I assume you have one?”

“Of course I do, Nix. It’s simple. We start the pumps going up here, they empty the aquifer. You hop down into it, neat as you please, and lay down the floor and so on. That gives us a nice dry place to dig down into stone.”

“And you’re sure this will work?”

Gar thought for a moment. “Theoretically.” He turned to his two assistants, ignoring Nix’s protest. “All right, start the pumps!”

The pumps, in fact, worked spectacularly well. So well, that Nix was caught completely off guard by the wall of water that came rushing out of the output valve. It hit him square in the chest and knocked him down into the flooded channel he just dug. He couldn't really swim under good circumstances, and being over your head in water while more poured on top of that was pretty far from good.

“You ready, Nix?” Gar shouted over the sound of the mechanisms. “I think I can see a bit of ground down there, so-“.  He realized he was talking to the air. He looked back, and saw Nix flailing helplessly in the channel “Oh. Hold on, you two.” The assistants stopped pumping, and together the three of them hauled Nix out of the channel. Gar shook his head “You damn fool, you weren't supposed to jump down that one. That's where the output empties, weren't you listening?”

Nix glared at him. “Shut up, let me get dry and let’s try this again. And this time, you can jump down there.”

The second test went much better, and the first blocks were laid down in the floor.