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Our uniform shall be blood (red)

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Danger room training shall be forbidden.

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Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: April 02, 2013, 10:22:42 am

[Sebastian2203]

Thanks for this story, very interesting.

[CaptainArchmage]

... the very next day

Royal Journal by CaptainArchmage III, 11th Moonstone, 1097

Yesterday, I was informed that our merchants were going to clear out and trade with the outer lands. I was hoping to have the road done by then, but it looks like it will not be completed on time. It also looks like we had a short episode of rioting, probably because of the miasma in one of the gold-plated rooms belonging to the Count.

Remember the last drawing I made? This room is now full of miasma. I expect the forges to look like that soon, because things aren't being cleaned up.

We have a reasonable record for masterwork steel helmets! We have had six made so far, and four are masterwork, so that makes 2/3rds, or at least 2/5ths of the projected batch.

Urist McKiwi III's inventory, part 1

Urist McKiwi III's inventory, part 2

After learning of the state of helmet production, I hurried down to Urist McKiwi III's quarters to sort out the uniforms. On the way, I heard the engravers working tirelessly to smooth out the marble halls we dug out, so there is life around here even when the miners are drinking a long way up in the mid-caverns. When I found Urist McKiwi, she was storing some junk in a copper bin designated for armor storage, and I discovered another uncomfortable thing about our military uniform. She is currently equipped with an adamantine breastplate, but many of her other articles of clothing are in a dire state of decay. She is wearing a threadbare pig tail fiber cap, odd socks, worn out shoes, and not much else besides her armor, which does not include a pair of boots. Guess what I'm ordering next?

Royal Journal by CaptainArchmage III, 12th Moonstone 1097

AnimaRytak forged steel helmets at a 50:50 ratio masterworks to exceptional quality, and then forged two pairs of steel high boots, again 50:50 ratio masterworks to exceptional quality, but damnation. Damnation. Our steel supplies were really run through, and it takes a long time for the haulers to bring the marble up here. I'll look to the melt operation, hopefully they can get us steel faster.

Mid-Month Report by CaptainArchmage III, 15th Moonstone 1097



Trading is over! The merchants are packing up now. We ultimately cut a deal for their steel anvils and a few other items such as steel chain leggings, which will be melted down and re-forged into higher quality armor. Meanwhile, the window installations at the higher levels continue, and we finally have some staircases to increase the fort to its ultimate height. I'm not sure we'll get there by the end of the year though. Our reserves of alunite and orthoclase blocks are running dangerously low.

Fortress Journal by CaptainArchmage III, 18th Moonstone 1097

Normally, one hears about doors being jammed open by stupid little things like dragonflies or monarch butterflies or socks, but this is on a new level of What The Fuck. Momuz Athenvulom the Carpenter took up the job to haul a dead Titan into the "shit lying outside drop zone", went all the way outside and hauled the thing into the fortress before deciding to get drunk and dumping the thing in the doorway. To put this in perspective, his apartment is two floors up. Dwarves live here, you know!

[Urist McKiwi]

I did have some boots during my turn. Iron ones. I guess they got melted down. The militia in general will have scrappy clothes because of specific-item assignments, which don't get cancelled when said items wear out. Might want to check things in general (also if one of our dwarves is still assigned that artifact dress, it might be better off appeasing some noble).

I like the fact that McKiwi III has the fang from a poisonous snake stuck through her ear as an ornament.

If corpses aren't being hauled, there's two things that might be causing it:
1. Not enough haulers. Quite probable given the amount of work you're doing.
2. The corpse-dumpers are broken. Check both minecart routes and make sure they're working. If they are, check that the stockpile "take from/give to" orders are set correctly. This system always seems to be breaking down.

[CaptainArchmage]

End-of-month report by CaptainArchmage III, 28th Moonstone 1097

After speaking with Urist McKiwi again, I found out a few more facts about why the militia was in such a mess.

I did have some boots during my turn. Iron ones. I guess they got melted down. The militia in general will have scrappy clothes because of specific-item assignments, which don't get cancelled when said items wear out. Might want to check things in general (also if one of our dwarves is still assigned that artifact dress, it might be better off appeasing some noble).

I like the fact that McKiwi III has the fang from a poisonous snake stuck through her ear as an ornament.

If corpses aren't being hauled, there's two things that might be causing it:
1. Not enough haulers. Quite probable given the amount of work you're doing.
2. The corpse-dumpers are broken. Check both minecart routes and make sure they're working. If they are, check that the stockpile "take from/give to" orders are set correctly. This system always seems to be breaking down.

Urist McKiwi III was actually assigned to wear iron boots, until a swapped them for the masterwork steel ones. However, she never put them on. Regarding the other matter of hauling and dumping, a lot of haulers are engaged in construction work, and this must have screwed things up a bit. The corpse dumpers were shut down because valuable items were being disposed of, which is not a particularly good thing.

I am informed by my architects and engineers that the "bait" is non-toxic, non-corrosive, non-carcinogenic, gluten-free, sustainable, and renewable.

In order to deal with the forgotten beast overload in the depths, I designed a few chambers to trap the beasts inside using a specific err.... bait, and a drawbridge. The spider down there will be especially useful in making webs. The project was initiated following the completion of my throne room around the time of the new moon, and I created some new mining burrows to ensure projects could be worked on in parallel to save time. Mother of Adamantine, it is hard to place these things properly!

This is the control room or gatehouse into the depths. I know it should be more expansive, with store rooms and a barracks as well, but this is what we could think up.

The first cells designed are these turret assembly. The monsters are lured into these cells and the gates are shut. The fine line you can see there is supposed to be filled in with a drawbridge, so if we come under attack the spider should be able to shoot webs out of the cell. Because of restricted space, we were unable to make the cell larger. I may be unable to complete these, and will try to put some bigger cells further down.

Onul and Troll Fur Sock were assigned to a mining zone over the new tombs. About five or six smaller tombs and a massive one will be dug out on this stretch, and I would estimate another 10 days of work is needed. After that we can entomb our warriors in deserving accommodation that reflects their glory.

Around the 22nd of the month, I decided to go on break, because, like, who cares? Shit's getting done and it will get done, maybe not by the end of the year but maybe next time.

Once again, I had to sort out some prioritisation issues. There are mechanical things to work with!

I've decided to finally do something about the berserk vampire walled up in one of the cells. We set up a cage trap and are preparing to open up the cell, hopefully he end up in a state allowing for proper storage.

Finally, the woodcutter who cleared the trees from the expanded road finished and is now making cheese. I found as a result of the new mining burrows that we have no proper food stored below the mid-caverns, it is all juice, syrup, and alcohol. Something should really be done about that.

Only in Dwarf Fortress can you find "no space" on ten or twenty full z-levels of map.

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: So if I get both the web-shooting spider and the fire-shooting thingy in the same turret, do we get !!Webs!!?

[Urist McKiwi]

Re: Edited edit to the edit-edit
Quite possibly. Or they just team up to kill our dwarves.

[CaptainArchmage]

Fortress Journal of CaptainArchmage III, 4th Opal 1097

I'm sure I didn't make this entry because our clothier made a large number of expensive cloaks! Brain, Y U So Sober?

(blobs of ink can be found here)

Between running out of orthoclase blocks and running out of alunite blocks, and finding Troll Fur Sock doing some engraving in the tombs when he should be carving them out, I forgot why I am actually making this entry. See that lime green mark on the drawing? That is a loaded cage trap outside the cell with the berserk vampire. I'm going to have the entrance deconstructed now.

Fortress Journal of CaptainArchmage III, 6th Opal 1097

There is no doubt this could have become a dangerous situation, but it did not. Once the wall was opened, something shot out into the location where Oddom Salvewasp was standing, but he dodged out of the way.

Where did this stuff come from? There was a clatter of falling objects and a loud click as some machinery sprung into operation. It looks like some high-level teleportation magic to me.

The plan worked perfectly! We now have a vampire in a cage.

In other news, I ordered these coins before the end of the month but forgot to put it in the report. Our metalcrafters are minting them right now.

Having finished the control room, Lucky is moving on to digging the lairs. I will attempt to make sure their denizens have all the comforts we pride ourselves in, to the best of our ability.

As we have no weavers, I took two of our planters off planting and asked them to do weaving instead. They are actually children who recently grew up - Tobul Kindfortresses and Tulon Drinkgranite. I wanted to move them elsewhere in the fortress, but I found they had nice rooms so I let them stay where they were, adding some masterwork granite doors to their rooms.

[Urist McKiwi]

....What exactly are you going to do with a beserk vampire in a cage? I would have thought the not-insane one next to his cell would be more useful. Still, he's been in there for 10 years or so now, might as well do something with him.

[CaptainArchmage]

Mid-Month Report by CaptainArchmage III, 15th Opal 1097

The merchants are leaving for the outer lands. Here, some of the merchants leave through the western gate on their pack animals.

The wagons leave through the eastern gates. The golden road is as it was when I arrived, but the towers have been improved with gold-plated walls.

This is what the gatehouse currently looks like. Work has practically stopped on it because we have other projects to do.

The road has mostly been completed. Now our countrydwarves shall bring word of our glory throughout the known world!

(for now, image uploads are really slow. I will upload when things are going better.)

Meanwhile, while carving the tunnel to the forgotten beast pens, "Lucky" mined out some gold and red zircons. We then came across a vein of tetrahedrite in the first pen, so I suppose it is time to move a smelting operation down there as well.

The mayor ordered two helms to be forged, so I had AnimaRytak make one exceptional and one masterwork out of steel.

Of course, someone had to leave the cheese in the workshops to rot. I have assigned some dedicated food haulers to ensure this doesn't continue.

End of Month Report by CaptainArchmage III, 28th Opal 1097

We are in the very last part of the year, and I don't think I'm going to directly lead the fortress in the new year. With the outside clean, I am sealing off the fortress from both sides before anything worse happens.

The forgotten beast pens have been built. I have two dug out and in the process of being engraved, and once the drawbridges go up we will be able to seal off the pens individually and also seal off the route to the outside.

The tombs have been carved out. We have a few for our warriors, and the large one in the south is for me. The large tomb with the channels is for the Vampire Queen Iden Glazequests the Cobalt Magicians of Scandal, which connects on to a dining hall and statuary currently being mined. Beyond the tombs, we will have some more housing, so the dining hall should make the place a bit less gloomy. Right?

Here's to a productive final month!

Mid-Month Report by CaptainArchmage III, 15th Obsidian 1097

We're officially in the last fortnight of the year, but the work never stops. The new town is being dug out along with the two extra large tombs, which can be used by future leaders for their own burial. Helms and shields are being melted down into bars, and gold and steel are slowly being produced in the metalworks. The new drawbridges are being connected up to levers, and the new forgotten beast pens are being engraved with our glorious history. In the drawing, mechanisms are being made in New Townbrush for our machinery.

Iden's old coffin, deconstructed.

This is the new tomb.

The golden sarcophagus was placed in Iden's tomb, and I had her old coffin in some of the horrible wall-to-wall things removed. Formal burial will be taking place soon, though the room will not be completely engraved and the channels will not be filled with water or magma.

Meanwhile, our engravers have produced these wonderful artworks. The first depicts a goblin being shot by Olon Finportals, one of our heroes.

What kind of name is that? The corrupt what? It depicts AnimaRytak lifting up one of his masterwork copper cabinets.

The Diety of Longevity is shown here, contemplating. This are just a few of many wonderful engravings we now have.

This will be my last mid-month report. The next will be the end-of-year review of the fortress!

19th Obsidian 1097
Second Burial of Iden Glazequests the Cobalt Magicians of Scandal, Vampire Queen

The Engraver Rigòth Gebrimtar laid the thumb of Iden Glazequests the Cobalt Magicians of Scandal into the golden sarcophagus. Surrounding the sarcophagus were CaptainArchmage III, King of The Strategic Bodices, Urist McKiwi III the Dashing Swordsdwarf, and a few soldiers, miners, and mechanics. The ceremony had been rushed so as not to upset the spirit of the great queen, who had ruled over dwarven nation for over a thousand years since the first century of recorded history, and the chamber was by no means complete. It had the form of a great tomb in its final form, but not the polish. There were no statues laid out, nor was the stone engraved or even smoothed, nor had the rubble from its construction been cleared out. The great sarcophagus was laid in the center of the room, upon a platform surrounded by channels. The channels were not filled with water or magma, but rather filled with rubble like the rest of the chamber.

With the thumb safely interred, all those present saluted the remains, before placing the massive cover upon the sarcophagus in concert. CaptainArchmage III then rumaged through a crate of dusty books and ancient-looking tablets, until Urist McKiwi III handed him a few pieces of paper. He stared at the pages, orienting them the right way and changing their order until their contents seemed to make sense, but never began to speak. A gust of wind shot through the chamber - blowing out the torches and chilling those present to the bone. A thick layer of frost formed over armor and gloves, firmly gluing even the strongest warriors to the floor. The doors rattled slammed shut, freezing over. Above the sarcophagus, the image of a blue-tinted sword began to form, and a voice intoned:

You have waited far too long. Claim this and conquer for the glory of your people.

End of Year Report by CaptainArchmage III, King of The Strategic Bodices
1st Granite 1098

The end of the year is here! Before the partying starts to really go, I did the full survey of the fortress as of the evening of 28th Obsidian 1097. I'm going to go start drinking now, and if the situation massively changes before tomorrow, I will post an update. *hic* goodbye 1097! *hic* ehellow 1098! Everybody partay! Partie! Parte! Party!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh come on, load the image.

I cheked this plaice out, theyfe got some great gold thrones and tables! Is this where they went? Ih yeah.

Nice Arkitecture too. Lots and lots of flashy windows!

The mechanic, Fath whatever, was banging on this door. Man, all he has to do is pull the leversh when we say sew. I think Obok's going to cut open that cavern thingy in the depths, right Obok?

Before I forget can we put a huge gabbro blocky wall up here? West sides a mill, east side of the wall gets huge siege engines shot at it. Thanks.

Let's just put a door on here. Orthoclase. Orthoclases are so yellow, they really make a place look golden! I think this place is OK to eat and party in now.

OK Obok, we've bre-we'vre breched the

Friends and Countrydwarves, I am proud to announce that we have breached the caverns of the depths, and we shall be securing their denizens shortly.

No Obok! Get out of their! Get go mine that wall. yes that wall right over there. And lock the hatch behind you! Good! Now go and mine someplace else OK? This work zone's done!

Wow! That's the forgotten beast "One"! Its heading into the breach! Good thing these hatches are secure. I hope.

Unfortunately, it looks like imageshack has decided to screw up a lot of the images. I don't even. It looks like images from a while ago have been screwed up, but I still have them around. I didn't delete any and none of them seemed to have been deleted. They have been doing some upgrades, but whatever. Download link to follow.

Edit: To follow tomorrow. I'm getting lots of posting errors.

[Urist McKiwi]

That "wall to wall thing" isn't horrible at all. It was the first project of Urist McKiwi III/the last project of McKiwi II and solved at least one fifth of our decaying corpse problems at the time.

It has truly been an interesting turn. A long one....but you've done damned well. Any chance of a full surface map + a look at the entire palace level?


....now we just need some engravings of McKiwi III kicking goblin posterior.

Edit: And a quotes update back on the OP. It's been over a month since the last quotes got added and I'm sure there's some good ones that have turned up since then.

[CaptainArchmage]

Alright, here's how the rest of the new year's festivities went:

End-of-Year Report by CaptainArchmage III
28th Obsidian 1097-1st Granite 1098
Continued

OK! "One" is banging on the hatch! Fath, seal off the passage! Pull the lever! The Mica Lever! There's only one Mica lever in there! Wait no pull the Alunite one! The one on the wall nearest the door!

Wooohoooooo! Its midnight above ground! Spring has arrived! Crack open a case of-wait what? No, Ducim! No! No! Nooooooooo!

And the bunny rabbit too! Fuck!

Attenshion all engraversh: You know those tombs we just *hic* carved out *hic* for our legge-leggendu-lege

fffffuckshhh*huc**hoooork*

legendury warriorsh and craftshdwarfsh? There's a bigish tomb opposite the vampiresh tomb and a nishe sharcoffagush in it. Go put Ducim in it and pimp the plashe out, wud you? Shanksh.

I'm sorry! I can't hear you over the sound of how drunk I am!

Luckily, I managed to get one of the woodcutters in the lever room when Fath dozed off in there. It sounds like there's a huge fight going on in those tunnels! Maybe I should order them sealed them off now. Momuz, pull the lever!

Are you kidding me? We have a dead turkey hen now?! Man, people are partying TOO hard around here!

Whoa, that kitten flew a long way down the hall. OK! We have the Forgotten Beast Nunùr Ruthlessflight in one of the cells now, Pull the lever! Ok, we have one forgotten beast secure!

I think Ducim's stuff shouldn't be forbidden. We have everything set up for the, err, burial arrangements. Looks like he died getting drunk on some fisher berry wine too.

Wow. Lots of stuff happened last night. We trapped two forgotten beasts, but I haven't gotten "One" into its cell yet. The other one is secure, and there are like two more going around outside that did not show up. There were actually some injuries in the fight with the kitten, and a lot of teeth got knocked around. I'd personally be careful around the hallway if you access it.

Above is the final status list for the year. I now pass direct fortress control over to the next leader!

Save: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8200

Alright, its done! Its over! I'm feeling really burned out now, so I will likely not be involved in more Dwarf Fortress for a bit.

That "wall to wall thing" isn't horrible at all. It was the first project of Urist McKiwi III/the last project of McKiwi II and solved at least one fifth of our decaying corpse problems at the time.

It has truly been an interesting turn. A long one....but you've done damned well. Any chance of a full surface map + a look at the entire palace level?


....now we just need some engravings of McKiwi III kicking goblin posterior.

Edit: And a quotes update back on the OP. It's been over a month since the last quotes got added and I'm sure there's some good ones that have turned up since then.

Summary of my turn:

-Ran really slowly until I turned temperature, weather, and invasions off. There's a burning dingo outside that will probably cause everything to spontaneously combust outside. Sieges and ambushes will probably annihilate FPS now.

-Did not manage to get any migrants because of the >1000 units bug, which is not really solved by deleting the dead units (I tried). The only way we might be able to get around this is to hope the next version of DF fixes the bug and copes with backwards-compatibility, or if we can use the "force migrants" command to force migrants every season.

-Build a huge palace and got us a new king.

-Buried the vampire queen in a fitting arrangement.

-Saved some valuable items from destruction in the volcano.

-Build Club Zero, a combination dining hall, jail, and zoo, and a large tower with windows. The windows are supposed to flash "SEXY" but we ran out of pink, yellow, and red gems. I couldn't get Stonesense to show more than 3 z-levels, probably because of issues with DFhack on Mac and Linux.

-Trapped some forgotten beasts. Don't unlock the gabbro hatch, it is a Bad Idea™.

-Minted Adamantine Coins

-Made the first mead.

-Made honey and royal jelly.

-Brewed a metric fuckton of drinks. 3399 to go!

-Built a new barracks, new tombs, and new living areas.

-Carved out a plumbing network. You need to seal this off properly, add drains and floodgates, and fill it.

[Urist McKiwi]

Since wastedlabour hasn't been around for a while, I've taken the liberty of PMing bp920091

[bp920091]

Sorry for the delay. Im currently in the middle of finals atm (should be over in 24 hours...).

I can start on the weekend, at the earliest. If you guys are cool with that, im up for another round.

... 400 and 500 level Graduate Business Classes really eat your time up.

Now if I stay up until 4am when I need to get up at 6am, it's going to be my choice, rather than something I need to do to pass a class...

[Urist McKiwi]

Sorry for the delay. Im currently in the middle of finals atm (should be over in 24 hours...).

I can start on the weekend, at the earliest. If you guys are cool with that, im up for another round.

... 400 and 500 level Graduate Business Classes really eat your time up.

Now if I stay up until 4am when I need to get up at 6am, it's going to be my choice, rather than something I need to do to pass a class...

By all means take as long as you need. Your turn's likely to take forever anyway given how the framerate's been going this last decade or so.

[Wastedlabor]

Yeah, I think we can very much suspend the time rules for now unless we have a long queue of overseers waiting their turn.

[Gigmaster]

If you would enjoy having some fresh blood in the mix, I'd like to sign up for a term.

HERE ARE MY QUALIFICATIONS:

1. I've read Ardentdikes and Ardentdikes II as my turn-brain-off-sleep-time material for the past month.
2. I'm a DF veteran. IN THE PAST I have done INCREDIBLE THINGS like create minecart-enabled economies, manage to get my soldiers to equip BOTH boots and socks, replicated Aussie's checkerboard of doom, and smote human devil-gods with a 20x20x3 slab of conglomerate. I also lurk around the forums; I don't post much.
3. I work as a home improvement contractor, and I'm currently snowed out of all of my work! Hence, free time.
4. QUACK.