Ok, I am really seriously sorry (especially after promising I'd be finished today), but it's going to take one more day or so. I've had some stuff come up IRL and while FPS has improved, it's still poor. I know I'm over my timeslot, but I'm darned close now. And things have stopped killing our dwarves (for now)! And I'm getting those steel things made (although equipping them is proving difficult as heck)!
I'm at the end of "early winter", but I've only written the update as far as the beginning of Timber because "sod it, I'm tired". Tomorrow/day after, I'll get this darned thing out of the way and sent on to the next victim madman overseer.
Diary of Urist McKiwi III, Dashing Swordsdwarf
2nd Sandstone
As the year goes by, this 'Dark Energy' thing keeps getting worst, according to old Udib. Now, I'm no engineer, but I'm a pretty dashing soldier......and while I can't fathom how this thing works, we can't go wrong if we smash it, right? So I'm having what miners the vampires haven't drained dry start digging a tunnel under where that 'Archwiseard' believed the stuff was coming from. Udib figures it's probably there. So we'll see. Trouble is, there's a dirty great lake in the way, and none of us can swim, let alone while wearing heavy armor. It's not going to be fun. To make matters worse, we've basically run out of living blacksmiths to make the new armor....I'm having to get a crash course in beating out breastplates to make up for lost time. Still, I figure things aren't going to get much better while we're sitting on a place of pure evil (although to be quite frank, I'm not sure how it can be worse than the main fortress). Might as well get my soldiers the equipment they need. In the meantime, I've drafted yet more civilians to replace the dwarves we've lost.....we can't keep this up though.
We've been having morale issues.....what with the death everywhere, rotting corpses and undead everywhere, and now this whole magic business....people are a tad edgy. When we closed the gates to seal off the fortress from the outside, one chap just wouldn't come in. He hasn't talked to anyone in ages, and keeps looking longingly at the lava moat.....it's sad, but if he doesn't want to come back, we're just going to have to leave him.
8th Sandstone
And....of course...it turns out some imbeciles decided to stay outside when the evacuation orders came in and now want to be let in. This messes up everything, but we can't afford to lose these people, and they haven't done anything wrong except be stupid. Still, at least no one is going outside now. Even better, from the terrible roars the miners working on the tunnel have been hearing, it sounds like we've got another ungodly horror waiting for the chance to kill us. One of the children took a look through a gap in a wall. Says it's made of mud. At least....we hope it's mud. Wouldn't be unfitting in this place to have us all get killed by a pile of excrement. Still.....I am a dashing swordsdwarf. And now I'm also a blacksmith, apparently. Don't know if any of my stuff is good enough to be called armor.....I haven't seen anything since I made it, and it's not getting to my soldiers. But I'll get through this....fighting four monstrosities at once is hardly sporting, but if it must be done, then I and my dwarves will do it.
19th Sandstone
From outside the walls, a cry rises on the wind...
"I'm very attached to this crossbow!"
"Jolly good! Do ye want to come in?"
"I hate life and everything living!"
"So tha's a nay?"
"Yes!"
"Alright lad! Give us a yell if ye change yer mind, right?"
Strange chap, that hunter.....Ah well. He's got some bolts. And that crossbow that'a apparently the only thing keeping him going in the world... If anything tries to attack us, he'll get to go out fighting. Poor sod doesn't look like he's planning on coming back to the fort alive. I've seen soldiers do this before...
Meanwhile, another of our archers is on the brink of death in the hospital because no one thinks he's worth feeding. Were I not as dashing and noble as I am, I'd have that imbecilic nurse 'Cutey' executed for the horrors she inflicts on her patients......and my soldiers...frankly, such an order would probably raise morale no end as well, given the history of our "healthcare" system. But alas, I am a dashing swordsdwarf, and such conduct is unbecoming....
20th Sandstone
It's started raining. The dried putrefying blood plastered over the whole Armok-blessed fortress starts to run everywhere. You can hardly walk through the main entranceway without falling over. Good thing people don't walk on the sides of the bridges.....
The smell is becoming really rather awful now. I'm not sure I can stand much more of it.
21st Sandstone
At last! We've found some of that equipment that I and the actual trained blacksmiths have been making! Steel breastplates and leggings! Just what we need. We don't have enough of them, and we certainly don't have all that I ordered, but when fermented blood is pouring down the staircase, the undead are screaming at you every time to go to use the 'john, there's ghosts and madmen everywhere and smoke's billowing out of the volcano from the loads of corpses we're dumping in twice a day.....you can't help but take joy in what you can. And there's nothing like a brand spanking new piece of steel armor, all shiny and clean and not covered in filth.
I've also had some aluminium coins made. We'll store a few of them down in the old bunker McKiwi II used for her necromancy. I''ll get them to tweak the stockpiles while we're at it...that old lass was good at siege engines and necromancy, but she had some pretty wierd eating habits! Nothing but barrel after barrel of syrup down there right now. And booze, obviously. Get some nice meat and mushrooms in there, and a squad could be stationed there all fine and dandy for a year or two.
25th Sandstone
We've cancelled the tunnelling project. It's just too dangerous to go that way. We need to take care of those monsters. Maybe come at it from another angle and snipe them from above.....or tap the volcano again and fill the cavern with lava. While that's hardly worked well in the past, it might work if we're careful.
At least the rain's stopped. Now the blood that hasn't washed away will dry and stop smelling quite so much. Unless it decides to get dusty again.....the dust is the worst, when it happens....
That dwarf came running up to me again babbling about another porcupine or rattlesnake or whatever going wild down in the cages. Chap seems a bit over-excited, if you ask me....still, I guess that's one way of coping with this place.
And a child that's apparently been scrabbling away down in the deep reaches of the fort today emerged with a rather nice willow figurine. Not very useful, but if it cheers people up, it's worth having around the place.
1st Timber
I've ordered the construction of upright spear traps in the lower parts of the fortress. That bunker my predecessor in name built is our best hope in a disaster, but it is not well defended.... I need flood doors, traps and remote-access systems installed to make it a truly safe place. With luck, we will never have to use it. At worst, we won't have time to use it. But it's worth the work to have a place to regroup in an emergency, no?
That poor soldier in the hospital died today. That "nurse" will face justice sooner or later for her outrageous dereliction of duty.
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Ok. The new corpse-dumper? I have no idea how to fix it. Nothing's worked, and I had to abandon work on it to get everything else sorted.
The armor? Doesn't seem to show up in the equipment tabs after it's made. I can't select the armor individually like I normally do, and have to go for "find *A* steel breastplate" rather than "equip this very nice masterwork one". Still, at least they're getting made. I think there may be a bug somewhere in here.
In terms of tunnelling to the demonic fortress....good luck. Seriously. There's at least 3 FBs in the lake right next to it, and getting to the fort will require either going through the cavern, going over/under it without hitting the lake OR the cavern.....or building some form of teleporter. If ever there was a good way to kill Moltenchannels (or at the very least, require the use of the Magma Cleanser).....this is it. And yes, we've got a mud monster. At least, we really hope it's mud.
I'm going to get some flak for this, given our record with magma weapons (what's that now....four failed/abandoned projects? Something like that.).....but pouring lava onto that lake may be the best way to kill the beasts and let us get to the demonic fortress. I'll take a look, see if there's anything that could be described as a "good" place to tap the volcano. I'm not even going to try it though....at this stage I'm focusing purely on "fix the military" and "get the traps and doors set up".
EDIT: Oh yes. I forgot. While it might appear that unfortunate things may be planned for Cutie for her ability to kill off roughly 50% of all hospital patients, I assure all readers, former overseers and incredibly negligent healthcare professionals that Cutie is not going to be executed. I do have some plans for her but they're strictly non-murdery.
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Topic: Moltenchannels - The magma flows - FINAL TURN (Ardentdikes II) (Read 401840 times)