1st Granite, 214:Quite a bit has happened since the last update, but mostly in the winter, hence Autumn didn't earn it's own post. But since it didn't, let's just say it was quite a breather episode in the overall scheme of things. Dwarves came and went, I gave them ~20k dwarfbucks of tribute, flipped a wrong lever when they were leaving, and now all of our offerings are in the aquifer. Who said I made any notes for myself? Did rebuild the depot just the right way in case my successor ever figures out which lever collapses it. Oh, and something intriguing happened - dwarves apparently have wagons now. Didn't screencap it, but the game basically claimed they do have wagons in the land where they simply do not exist and they have bypassed us because I messed with the entrance enough to turn it from a 3 tile wide one to a single tile one.
For the Winter, I managed to finish everything I planned to do with this fort and were just letting them idle until the season ended, but the siege came early and their "command" squad, complete with demonic master and all, fully riding giant rats and olms, ran straight into the anti-skelk weapon traps in the west. That somehow made the mounts hostile towards the riders and the thing just turned into a magnificent crescendo of limbs flying everywhere, either caused by goblins fighting mounts, the other way 'round, and the odd serrated blade wrecking things. Squad arriving from the east consisted mostly of hammerers, with the sole exception of a speargoblin, but it did mostly nothing other than getting attacked by a rather big pack of skelks and ran away after the northern one was dispatched. And speaking of it - that's the best part of the siege right there. I sent out the military to deal with whatever was left of the western squad, and they did so successfully, without even a single hit delivered according to their health. But Gizogin was missing. Via unit screen I've looked him up, and he was right in the northern squad, in martial trance, wrecking everything around him. Tried to send the rest of the squad to him, but there was a huge bout of trolls in the way that managed to stall them until both Gizogin and an unnamed legendary were downed of overexertion. The former managed to rack up 21 kills before falling, the latter over 15, both have been granted tombs that respect that. Quickly after, the goblins fled and the siege of 213 was broken. A few new soldiers were recruited to bring the squad back to 7 dwarves strong, they should be ready to repel the next year's one. An interesting note - the unnamed legendary has spontaneously revived, yet has succumbed to suffocation a few days later, much like Puwuncobi did. Didn't start a spiral of revivals and suffocations, though, it may be related to the fact I unforbid the corpse... Someone should be able to spin that into a plot point somehow.
In other news. The anti-skelk defences have been stalled, due to the lack of metal needed to construct it - it's quite a major point of them that the serrated disks in them are to be constructed of silver, and if it's unavailable, copper. Both metals have been exhausted as I'm writing this, though we have a bunch of veins available to be mined and processed in plain sight, and we do have better weapons-grade metal available - bronze in abundance, steel in respectable amounts, and about 60 bars of iron.
Back in Obsidian 212, I've disabled the civilian burrow so I could work on projects on the surface. The civ burrow exists, but I did not update it with the constructions that are safe to visit aboveground, or the ones freshly built. Since I already uploaded the save, I'm afraid I must leave that to my successor.
A lot of people have been dorfed to the best of my ability, with professions matching what they wanted
at the time of dorfing - they may have turned from a mechanic into an engraver because I did not pay much heed when using Therapist to make everyone into a wall smoother. Sorry for that, but with less than 30 workers, I were really low on dwarfpower.
I cut down the entire tree farm/pasture to provide wood for an extension of the original DWR meant to power the cannon (Still, I have no idea whenever I should call it the Hellcannon, the Failcannon, or just the cannon. Correct me if you could.) and windmills for the device detailed below.
We also have received another artifact, pictured in the picdump I'll be presenting below. It has inspired me to build another pointless device that will probably kill more of the fortress than the enemies, but hey. It's a strategic device in a world of dwarfdom, what do you expect, at least I don't have a wizard hooked up set of pumps here.
Oh, and using the remainder of my overseer's authority, I am going to request that Kar Puwuncobi is put on the continual redorfing list as an administrative dwarf. Whew, that sure was a wall of text right there. Picdump follows.
First order of business, a random, useless artifact. I don't even remember who made it at this point, should be noticeable from the legendary skill though. Didn't get a single secretive mood this year, that's a success.
Moving on, a great artifact! A fey mood bringing us both a legendary metalcrafter and inspiration for a new doomsday device. I did not use the artifact itself in the doomsday device, I see this one more as the finishing pump of the cannon more than a simple piece of a pumpstack. Don't worry about adamantine, we've got more than 50 wafers left, and a tube not even touched yet by the looks of it. Do note - this one was made in the winter, after El Prez got his appraisal skill.
Browsing the latest engravings I found these. Well, I guess this could be made into a plot point also, but are we seriously wondering why we get so many eldritch abominations when our national symbols are things like said abominations? They probably figured we're going to worship them and are coming here by the wagonload. Think three of 'em arrived during my turn, one mentioned already because it mangled the DWR a bit, I did fix most of the damage though.
Have an unit list, too, after all the dorfings. As you can see, there's barely anyone to pick now, other than maybe the vast array of children. Oh, and we've got a helluva lot of legendaries apparently. The CMD is one in at least four skills, so I granted him a title and full-on royal quarters.
And here's a general state of the fortress. As I wrote above, a breather episode, this year... but it was fun to play, actually. I have to admit, I haven't played DF for what, three months before I got PMed that I'm up for some premium Hellcannon business, simply because I were bored with it. But now? I'm going to go get 0.34 and gen up the worst hell hole Armok himself can grant me and kick it in the spore sacks.
I have no idea how to end that sentence to make it fully dwarven, so have a close-up of a sleeping craftsdorf.
Here's the save. And see you next time in another incarnation of Battlefailed, fellas.