Thanks, Mego. I'll try to get through summer at least.
I'm pretty sure the problem isn't my hardware. I had to upgrade to Vista recently, and my computer is much slower ever since.
I finally finished spring, though, so here's a fort update!
Dariush, you didn't list any preferences about what dwarf you got, so you got migrant #2. She's durable, quick on her feet and ecstatic about not needing to flee from skele-ox any more. Currently she's the latest addition to our hauling brigade, which is about the most useful thing a dwarf can be right now, we're drowning in stuff.
Update:
Look around, at the central hall of our mountainhome. Glorious, isn't it? It was not always so. We are lucky to have come so far from so little. Look at the safety and security of our halls, listen to the fading clacking of minecarts, and hear the whispers of our ancestors. They are all around us. What do they tell you, young dwarf?
I don't know, Grandpa. There are so many of them around! All they do is talk.
Well, let's see. What about that one, near the flowing pillar. I shall ask his story.
Year 215, in the Spring (I Think)
We sprinted into this place barely ahead of the skeletal wilddeath. 2 others didn't make it, only my wife Dariush IV and I managed to enter the fort. Everything aboveground was a frozen wasteland, and below ground not much better. Little kittens wandered the surface for lack of owners, while crazed inhabitants make mad dashes to clean the surface traps that keep the wilddeath occupied.
I was lucky - I know a wound from a broken bone, and tended victims of UrDeth the Falling Spats in my youth. I was granted a prominent place inside the fort, and relieved from all responsibility to clean and tend the traps. I was the chief medical dwarf of this fort, then.
An old dwarf named Eric II panicked and screamed about gloves and equipment. He could not move to find them, and thought it was my duty as doctor to get him back on his feet. His feet were gone. I could not help but think that he must be utterly incapable of handling stress to behave like that. Another dwarf named Tasrak II created some leather masterpiece - I could not get close enough to examine it in detail.
The only other news of note that spring was that some elvish merchants made it through to the fort, but were so distraught over the loss of their comrades, oxen, and the time spent fleeing from wilddeath that they left without trading at all. Elves!
Hellcannon was surprisingly quiet that season. The other inhabitants spoke in hushed tones of dead comrades, and strange cries echo in the caverns below, but little disturbed us. Not even the ghosts haunting this fort. There are many now, and were many then, but they are mostly quiet, unassuming souls. One was even laid to rest then, with a beautiful slab in the catacombs. Kitkun II told me that there were 3 new distinct cries coming from the lower caverns, and one, a large steam cloud, seemed to be trying to beak into the lower plumbing. No creatures succeeded in entering the fort, however. All was calm, like the peace before the storm.
I took up engravings in my spare time and made my first attempts on my bedroom walls. You may go there and see them if you like. I have forgotten much about that long-ago time, and they doubtless record more than I can say now. They were only first attempts, but what they lack in beauty perhaps they achieve in accuracy.
My engravings for that season:
https://imgur.com/a/hgPF4
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Topic: Hellcannon (Succession: Battlefailed 3) (0.31.25) (DEAD) (Read 837860 times)