Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Text and images. Old school is better.

23 (82.1%)

Live stream and video. Newfangled technology must be applied to everything!

5 (17.9%)

Total Members Voted: 28

Voting closed: January 19, 2012, 06:50:05 pm

[Eric Blank]

My computer is extremely unstable at the moment. Something's up with the harddrive, crashing the entire system, and some files are becoming corrupted.

I'm still going to progress as rapidly as possible, but the chances of having to "savescum" due to system crashes is incredibly high, and updates may be slow and intermittent (which I despise but have to live with personally. If you can't wait then skip me.) I'm not sure whether the hellcannon save could end up being a target of the corruption or not, but if upon uploading the file the next player discovers it's corrupted and unplayable, then I'm sorry... and probably just barely containing a terrible screaming curse.

Anyway, if that doesn't happen again, then expect an update tonight.

[Spish]

You may want to back up the save in its current state on DFFD, then update it when you're finished. You know, just in case.

[Eric Blank]

Good idea. I'll do that now.

Here it is, if anyone wants to look right now/in case something stupid happens like the entire house loses internet and I can't link to it later.

Alright, here's the update I promised. Sorry that it's a little dull, still. Hellcannon is a little dull...

Journal of Eric, Head Stoneworker of Hellcannon

Felsite 16th

    I’ve adapted the militia’s schedule to account for more intense training and a patrol route covering the entire interior of the fortress. I also designated a new panic room and made some alert protocols to get everyone in there during a crisis. I sincerely hope that in such an event, the overseer remembers that the drawbridge used to keep undesirables out must also be opened via lever before anyone can get in, and then another elver on the interior to shut the gates again. (this is mainly to keep it off-limits and ensure that it is empty and safe to use.)

    I’ve also redesigned the trap plans after it was brought to my attention that the gear of any invaders would be impossible to recover, and goblin equipment is rather useful. The outermost section should be enough to handle any undead, while the innermost can be flood or drained as desired. It should be kept flooded when dwarves don’t need to recover items from it, though.

Felsite 17th

    An elven caravan showed up today and was immediately assaulted by goblins.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

    Rather amusing to watch them flail helplessly. They helped pinpoint 3 more ambushes.

23rd Felsite

    The smelters have run out of galena ore and tin bars. We still have cassiterite, though, so bronze production hasn’t stopped. I’ll have to order more mineral veins dug, however.

    My stoneworking team is a little swamped right now with all the fresh designations. I’d say we need more on the team, but everyone else is equally tied up with both helping us construct floors and walls of various structures, and with domestic tasks. I haven’t applied the new squads to a barracks yet, because the sooner the rest of this crap gets done the better.

24th Felsite

   Based on information from Arcangelsd and his engineering team, I’ve designated a generator system closer to the surface. The aquifer here can be used to power an enormously efficient system of waterwheels, unlike the archaic design used to power the magma pump stack at the moment (which may or may not be a security threat as well with the flooded fortifications.) Once we can get a power train from this baby down to the old pump stack and begin constructing additional tiers of that stack, we will never again have want for magma, water, power, or even obsidian on the surface. A few pumps, an ocean of whatever the hell we want.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

    I pray to Lûk that we don’t fuck this up and flood the entire fortress with magma, aquifer water, or both, or that panic chamber may end up being used prematurely…

    The smelters have finally ran out of cassiterite. No more bronze for the moment, but we can certainly begin production of armor and silver weaponry for the militia. The adamantine isn’t ready yet, unfortunately, so no new blades.

1st Hematite

    I was making my rounds, checking in on everything when suddenly I heard a shriek of terror, turned and faced the noise and witnessed an apparition attacking one of the militia dwarves.

Udil Growlmoats, Ghostly Merchant batters Udil Abyssattics, Soldier!

    The specter ripped his whole hand off and threw it against the wall!

    That isn’t the worst part either: after screaming right into the poor dwarf’s face, it turned and came after me! I ran as fast as I could, but it chased me down and pinned me to the floor, and started screaming at me about something while shaking me violently. All I understood was that it was pissed that we hadn’t opened “the chamber” yet, complaining that “you immortals” were moving too slowly and without purpose or whatever. It told me to hurry up and put the down “the monster” so the spirits could finally rest in peace.

    I am so confused… I don’t know if I should consider it telling me specifically that we “immortals” need to put down some sort of monster as proof that my dreams - or should I say nightmares - really were memories of a past life or not. I remember which way he was pointing when he complained about the chamber, though. Maybe I should investigate; spirits, sane or not, would at least be able to inform us about anything the find amongst the stone.

    Udil seems fine, at least. Missing one hand won’t end his military career. What a way to start the summer, though! That ghost will have to be dealt with.

13th Hematite

    Some chucklefuck (the same one whose baby got it’s foot smashed when she took it with her to battle that forgotten beast) decided to throw a party at a silver statue. I had to immediately disband the party to convince half the population to get back to work.

    Within 6 hours, Stormtemplar the 2nd did the exact same thing.

17th Hematite

    Apparently my interfering with parties made me incredibly unpopular incredibly quickly. A mob of angry protestors came to my door whilst I was trying to sleep and demanded I surrender the position of mayor. Understanding that being kicked in the nuts until death for a second time would royally suck, I did as they asked. They immediately rejoiced, held an emergency mayoral election, and selected Reudh II to lead them. His first order of business was to reinstate the meeting halls in the statue gardens and declare the 17th Hematite to be a day for the humiliation of crappy leaders (and they succeeded) and for mandatory celebration. I don’t want a holiday in memory of my being humiliated and ousted from office any more than any other dwarf, but honestly I don’t want to find out what they would have actually done to me if I hadn’t listened.

    Gizogin refuses to accept that I am a man, for whatever reason. He made a large effort to help humiliate me at the party. He came back recently to deliver some old notes, which are pretty useless at this point. They didn’t include instructions on managing the trap network, either, so my plan to inhibit them all and pull levers at random until we figure out what does what is still on the list.

19th Hematite

    I’ve begun some exploratory tunnels in the region pointed out by that ghost. Nothing at all yet, but the others still think we’re searching for galena deposits.

    Migrants also arrived. Even with the goblins outside, and closer to the entrance than the migrants, Reudh wants to get them inside, and told me to handle it while he was busy partying. I ordered all the troops stationed in the hall near the doors and made preparations to seal them anyway if the goblins get too close.

    The migrants are moving faster than the goblins, and the goblins are split between them and closing on the entrance, so I hope the migrants will provide their own distraction. This is one crazy job Reudh is asking us to do, and I pray it goes exactly as he’s planned.

20th Hematite

    Only two of the migrants made it inside before the goblins bore down on them. Five more corpses for the overworld, I suppose. The lucky survivors will be joining the militia to help fill out squad #4. There was a huge herd of living, non-undead reindeer, though. Sight for sore eyes, that.

26th Hematite.

Today Reudh mandated the construction of three fine pewter items. He promptly fell out of favor as mayor and was replaced by Kikrost, one of the soldiers.

1st Malachite

We found something in the stone where the ghost pointed. A round chamber carved into the natural stone. That’s all I can say about it for now, unfortunately.


Yeah... We'll just have to wait and see if I ever get that ghost put down, or leave it for the next guy to !!experience!! when it starts taking dwarves' heads off.

[Ieb]

Is it one of those ghosts which don't have a name on the stone slab engraving list?
Because that'd really suck.

[Reudh]

I was the mayor?


Mayor of Hellcannon.

That title has a nice ring to it.

Wait, i've been replaced already?
Oh...

[arcangelsd]

Journal log of Engineer Arcangelsd
Today, the miners uncovered a certainly unnatural cave formation. Their descriptions evoked something... dwarfmade. So I packed my tools and went to the location marked in their (crude, for my own refined tastes, due to my years at the engineering school) maps, and, well, I must say that it looks somewhat... alien. Anyway, I'm an engineer! I check reality for facts, not my gut!
Results:
-Incredibly smooth rock: I couldn't find any imperfection to the naked eye. Must add that it doesn't look like anything dwarfmade.
-The chamber forms a perfect circle: after precise measurings, I discovered that it fulfills the Uristhagorean theorem to the nth degree of accuracy.
-Sound probes revealed something.. unnerving. The entire chamber VIBRATES. At the same frequency. I must do some pressure test in there...

Journal log of Engineer Arcangelsd
I must start writing down the damned dates.

Journal log of Engineer Arcangelsd
Screw the former log: I don't even know the date. I'm underground, dammit!
It must have passed days after my trek to the chamber, and days after Erica simply kicked my sorry ass out of there and gave me a buttload of work to keep me occupied. She..wait, she? She has a beard, but is so girly whati'meventhinking...Whatever. It must be keeping something to itself. It gives me itches

[Mego]

-Incredibly smooth rock: I couldn't find any imperfection to the naked eye. Must add that it doesn't look like anything dwarfmade.
-The chamber forms a perfect circle: after precise measurings, I discovered that it fulfills the Uristhagorean theorem to the nth degree of accuracy.
-Sound probes revealed something.. unnerving. The entire chamber VIBRATES. At the same frequency. I must do some pressure test in there...

Somebody has been reading Dean Koontz.

[arcangelsd]

-Incredibly smooth rock: I couldn't find any imperfection to the naked eye. Must add that it doesn't look like anything dwarfmade.
-The chamber forms a perfect circle: after precise measurings, I discovered that it fulfills the Uristhagorean theorem to the nth degree of accuracy.
-Sound probes revealed something.. unnerving. The entire chamber VIBRATES. At the same frequency. I must do some pressure test in there...

Somebody has been reading Dean Koontz.

Or studying an engineering degree =D
I had never heard of Dean Koontz until today.
But now I'm interested.
Like it happened with Homestuck.
You guys are rubbing on to me some time-consuming readings.
I love and hate you for that at the same time xD

[Mego]

Seize the Night was the book I was referring to. It's a sequel to Fear Nothing, so read that one first.

[kisame12794]

I started with Odd Thomas. Dean Koontz is a great writer.

[Eric Blank]

Update! Yay!

Journal of Eric, Head Stoneworker of Hellcannon

15th Malachite

    Our attention has been focused on the old room we found. Arcangelsd showed me his notes on it. Not quite accurate, to say the least. The walls aren’t perfectly smooth, despite being smoothed pretty thoroughly, and for that matter the portion we can see right now doesn’t appear to be perfectly round, either. Methinks he needs his vision checked… I would wager it was made by a team of stoneworkers of various skill levels working from the same blueprints, from the high variability in the quality of carving and smoothing. The air movement his strange little device was indicating has dissipated. Not sure why that is, but it acted rather like wind in that air seemed to be rushing into the chamber from our opening and out from the chamber itself, similar to the air exchange from opening the lower cavern layers far away from any natural caves. One of the workers found a scrap of cloth, which promptly deteriorated when he picked it up. Very strange. It appeared to be extremely old, but even the oldest tomes in the most expansive libraries don’t crumble like that. None of us have experience dealing with older structures like this, and I don’t know of anyone who deals explicitly in abandoned ruins, so we’ll have to make this up as we go.

    In addition, the ceiling collapsed at some point. Apparently it was dug literally right underneath a load-bearing column in the caverns. If you look directly above it in the second cavern layer, you can see the portion of the ceiling that collapsed. There are some heavy blocks sitting on top of it now propping up the rest of the overlying rock, so we’re reinforcing the ceiling while we clear the debris. There appear to be eight supporting columns in the chamber itself, arranged in the cardinal directions and between them. The ceiling collapsed between these columns, crushing whatever was in the center, although it isn’t clear yet whether there was anything in the center or if it was merely left open. There seems to have been a pit in the center at least, so perhaps it was a pool.

17th Malachite

    While we were busy with our excavations, Strategia made some sort of sheep wool vest, and dubbed it “Sparklebroiled the Full Fangs.” On it is an image of a cow ugly woman (Strategia insists it’s a human woman, but it just looks like a cow to me.) in cat bone, and an image of a monster in alpaca wool. The monster is sparkling and sucking the cow’s blood. The cow is being cooked alive... He calls this hideous humanoid monster a “vampire.” Never heard of it before.

    The smiths are running out of materials again. This time the hot items are silver bars and raw adamantine. We can’t extract any more adamantine right now, but the walls of that chamber were carved into cassiterite and galena veins. So, that’s silver available, and the possibility for more bronze.

20th Malachite.

    We were digging out the area for the new power generators today when we stumbled upon a portion of the soil layer that was still dry. I was overjoyed and cleared all designations to make sure we could use it for routing magma to the surface, but some dumbass still managed to open up the aquifer and flood it. I’ll just have it pumped out and built up to block water flow…

    While setting up said pump, we found yet another dry spot in the aquifer. Hopefully this time it isn’t destroyed.

24th Malachite.

    One of the soldiers was throwing a tantrum in the forges and broke one of the magma smelters. He’s demanding to speak to mayor Kikrost. Poor Kikrost…

    Or rather, Poor Solon the Soldier! After he assaulted one of my stoneworkers, Vgray, Stormtemplar came along and beat him savagely with his artifact silver war hammer, killing him. So much for justice… Apparently he was one of the new migrants, and was pissed off because his pets were locked outside and slaughtered by the goblins. Beating up Vgray improved his mood for the remainder of his life, at least. So much for being able to say “nobody died inside the walls while I was overseer.” That would have given me a little extra respect among the commoners come time to step down.

12th Galena

    We’ve finally run out of bronze for armor. I wish it wasn’t so, but the stoneworkers are stretched thin and we haven’t had much chance to prospect for better ore veins.

    Damnit! Nobody picked up Solon’s corpse, and it’s starting to stink up the central stairwell. What sort of foolery is thi- oh hey are those fish I spy in the flooded area above the cavern farms? Why yes, they are! I love cave fish! We must capture them…

18th Galena

    Whilst trying to exploit the gap in the aquifer and construct a pump stack beneath it, the workers were assaulted by the forgotten beast Anan. It was soon put down, but seriously injured that same baby that the last forgotten beast did. That child, and it’s mother, have terrible luck. Militia Captain Stukos Dorendodok dealt the killing blow.

    A human caravan arrived at some point, and we prepared to let them in since they survived a week without goblin ambush (which implies a lack of goblins…)

24th Galena

    The entire caravan made it inside alive! We intend to trade away some useless crap and send them out through the caverns.

3rd Limestone

    The year is more than halfway over, and we’re barely halfway done with the more important projects. It doesn’t look like it’s going to start speeding up, either. We won’t be able to provide much protection for the dwarf caravan, and the goblins probably won’t be taking another season off.

    We’re also out of wood for the power plant, and don’t exactly have much supply beyond possibly the elves or our own caravans, if they ever make it through. The humans brought none.

5th Sandstone, mid-autumn

    More migrants arrived. Since goblins don’t show up before caravans, and the last caravan came goblin-free, we opened the doors and they poured in like the migratory bastards they are. The chief medical dwarf was yet again replaced with a renowned diagnoser from the mountainhomes. Practically legendary in her field. Unfortunately it’s already too late in the season to scavenge from the corpses on the surface… Time fleis when nobody dies!

    And apparently so do barrels. We’re out of barrels. Hmm… Why the hell don’t we have more stone pottery?



Well, things are going a little too slowly, and even that last migrant wave only pushed us ahead 6 more dorfs. Two were drafted as stoneworkers (never enough miners!) and two more as soldiers. The remaining two included the new cheif medical dwarf and a woodsman who is assigned woodcutting and thus would be inefficient as a soldier. I may not accomplish everything, especially the traps in the new trap system. Someone else may have to apply traps and the magma pump stack. (Which hasn't even begun to be built! damnit!)

I forgot to engrave a memorial for that ghost again, as well.

[Gizogin]

Gizogin refuses to accept that I am a man, for whatever reason.

Journal of Erica, Head Stoneworker of Hellcannon

That's why.  Within the fortress of Hellcannon, I am actually a crippled woman (I complained at great length about this when I learned of it), so I probably shouldn't put too much stock into in-game genders and such, but whatever.

[Eric Blank]

Yeah, admittedly I did forget to switch gears and use the masculine form considering I specifically asked for and recieed a male dwarf.

Not much has happened lately. The human caravan picked a fight with a forgotten beast after going insane whilst standing in the lake in the first caverns.

[stormtemplar]

Journal of stormtemplar

This fortress is so out of order! I had to beat someone to death just to get him to shut up and stop beating people up. Admittedly a good whack in the limbs would have done the same, but this was more fun. DEATH TO THOSE WHO CHALLENGE THIS FORT'S ORDER. WHICH WILL PROBABLY END UP BEING EVERYTHING, INCLUDING MYSELF. I HATE THIS PLACE SO MUCH.

[Eric Blank]

Very short update tonight. I'm too bleedin' tired to play DF.

Journal of Eric, Head Stoneworker of Hellcannon

24th Sandstone

    All hell has been breaking loose in the caverns. The human caravan tried to exit through them, wandered right into the lake that is around 5-6/7 full, and spontaneously stopped moving, staring into the abyss, like statues of flesh. A couple days ago every last merchant and animal went absolutely bonkers, some of them even assaulting the others. The guards seemed unaffected and snapped out of their trance immediately to deal with the offenders. Then, a forgotten beast, Ilu, showed up and began pummeling one of the guards. Ilu took some damage but has failed to deal any. It’s poisons didn’t do anything blaringly obvious either, but the guard is acting like his limbs have gone numb, and maybe a little drowsy. I regret we don’t have a marksman squad to deal with the beast.

    Over the last few weeks not a whole lot of important work has gotten done. The magma pump stack project is stalled simply because we can’t produce magma-safe pump materials. Minerals haven’t been getting mined, dorms for the stoneworkers besides the more valuable individuals were never dug, and there are still no traps for the trap hall. I never got around to pulling those levers. Maybe we can do that tomorrow…

25th Sandstone

    Scratch that. I’ve redoubled our mineral allocation efforts instead. There’s plenty of metal to be had, and plenty of smelters to be built. We extracted a cassiterite vein behind one wall of that camber.

    I also went down into that chamber again and searched for more clues of it’s origin. I found only a single scrap of cloth with charcoal print on it. A dwarven character obviously, but since it was just one character it really has no meaning. Luckily, I found something in the walls of the central pillar. The panels on the sides are actually carved-out, implying the pillar is hollow. I’m going to look into it later, though. We’re simply too busy for any further excavation.

20th Timber

    The outpost liaison was killed before reaching the fortress, so I could not request materials for next year’s caravan. Rest of the merchants made it inside safely, the guards killing a few skelk. Still not a goblin in sight. Strange, and terrifying. I need a break, though. I’ve been working all year… The traps are just barely getting started, and the magma pumps are still out of the question.