Complete story in PDF form here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16832

Family Tree of Archcrystal here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14549

Final save (Version 47.05) here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16835

I have played my 40.24 fortress Archcrystal for 241 in-game years.I hadn't set out to play a fort this long (June 2015 to present). There were a few reasons I decided I wanted a multi century fort. The first one was Cave Dragons


Within the first decade I had captured a breeding pair of Cave Dragons and I wanted an army of them. I thought 1000 years would simply take too long so I decided on 200 years. I figured the would be a good size by then.They make great war animals once they reach a certain size. Having them immune to fire really helps against fire beasts as they're also immune to smoke so they won't lose sight of their target. The second reason is I've never really had "generations" of dwarves in my fort before. So I put the population cap to 30 and the strict cap to 45 to get babies.In my first 30 dwarves, I only had one married couple.


This is Bomrek Cradlecrafts the Waning Fence of Gales. I took this picture of him just before he died at the age of 170. He was the first Militia Commander of the Fort. With his wife Cerol Treatyrims the Dark Zeal, they birthed half the fort. Everyone in the fort now was born there and is descended from these two down through 5 generations. They are literally the Adam and Eve of the fortress. I accomplished this by getting one more married couple to migrate and then arranging marriages for their kids with the pre-honeymoon suites I had setup:


After that I got them to intermarry between cousins. The second youngest son of Bomrek and Cerol, Melbil, became king "after a polite discussion with his rivals" about 100 years into the fort, so the family then became the "Royal Family" of The Dipped Spears. I was lucky that he didn't have any mandate likes, so I could keep the fort running at night.
Here's some stats of the fort throughout the years:


A little background. The Fortress lies in an evil Jungle called the Jungle of Drying. It is non-re-animating, but has "Clouds of Wicked Soot" that roll in periodically and transform caravans and animals into husk zombies. For that reason I burrowed everyone inside from the get go with a Civilian Alert.


There is a 4z level waterfall where the two rivers meet. The entrance to the fort is just north of here.


I set up just simple workshop areas.


That along with keeping the population cap under 50 kept the FPS up. As well as no mayor for mandates. Now I didn't want them just wandering around doing nothing, so I had them decorate - for over 2 centuries. Here's the decorating floor:


All of the furniture is made of clear glass, and it's all been decorated with everything we could find. That goes the same for the finsihed goods, especially the large gems. Here are some highlights:


As you can see we had a lot of Forgotten Beast Attacks


The ones we couldn't butcher (Gem or Stone or whatever) we saved to do something fun with later


Getting ready we're going to need power so I constructed an underground river from one of the cavern lakes and hooked it up to water wheels:


No iron on this map but we had tons of Tetrahedrite and Sphalerite. But also got lucky with 3 very tall adantine spires.
Getting ready to build the real fort we've stockpiled thousands of clear glass blocks:


At last after a 142 year reign King Melbil, last son of the founders Bomrek Cradlecrafts the Waning Fence of Gales and Cerol Treatyrims the Dark Zeal died of old age. His daughter Libash inherited the throne. And it's time to build the clear glass fort of Archcrystal. And we're building this fort in Hell.

***

It fell on Unib to dig through the last layer of the Adamantine pillar. The Mad Queen Libash wanted her see-through fort to be amongst the swirling horrors of the underworld. The military was ready. The Giant War Tigers would be used as bait along with an artifact statue. An Artifact door would hold the initial attack to the killing floor. At last the breach was made. Unib was killed instantly and the horde ascended:


Up the spire they came towards the killing floor. They were almost there.


At last they broke through the cinnabar doors and the Marksdwarves opened fire.


The first few demons fell instantly the legendary aim of the elite marksdwarves, but more poured through the opening slaughtering the Giant War Tigers as they went.


There were two different kind of webbing demons so no need to waste the melee dwarves or the cave dragons. The Cave dragons had waited over 2 centuries for this moment. They could wait a little longer. Besides they would be needed later.


At last the horde was dead, having been relentlessly shot by the Marksdwarves while occupied with the Giant Tigers. One even survived.


Down the Adamantine spire went the military. Only 20 dwarves but backed by over 50 Cave Dragons they hold the spire against the remaining demons down below while the others work quickly to construct the stairs of glass.

Next time... Invading Hell with an army of Cave Dragons.