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[applet]

Thanks to Archcrystal for introducing me to Dwarf Fortress! I've now played a few forts and feel like writing the story of my latest one, Ledpaddled.

The twist:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the only hard rule, I also don't easily allow other residents but this is case-to-case.

This started as an experiment to see how a grown fort would work, then the elf diplomat died and I thought this could be a story worth sharing.

Hopefully whoever reads this will find it at least somewhat enjoyable.
Perhaps my writing will improve over time as well, I feel somewhat limited by my english vocabulary.

Feedback welcome!

Would you like to get dorfed? Check the latest update, at the end there should be a list of screenshots of currently available dwarves. Pick one, then reply to the thread with: Name of the dwarf to be dorfed as, dorfing name, custom profession (if any), desired labours (if any).

I do reserve the right to override labours when circumstances demand it (such as your dorf getting married and normally being in a raiding squad).

[applet]

On a pig tail scroll dated 264
Baron Domas Zanegudist

Finally a book to write in, if you can call it that. Pig tails mashed and pressed then rolled around a piece of glass is what it really is. Gonna need more of these if I am to document the progress of Erariden - Ledpaddled.
Where did they put those damned glass sticks anyway?


14 years ago, I set out on king Stodirs mandate together with 6 other dwarves to found an outpost on the border of the Åkrusnamoz ūsp kingdom to keep them in check. Come to think of it, do goblins actually have kingdoms? I've never heard of a goblin king, their leader instead being called the master. Would that be a masterdom then? Sure, sounds about right.

The king ensured me that it would be easy to found this new outpost and that we would have migrants to bolster our numbers within a year or two. The only issue was that there is an aquifer, this being found out the hard way by a previous (failed) outpost near the same site.

We reached a small hill and dug in, creating space for a temporary meeting room which would later become our trade depot. We also found the aquifer, one urist below our chosen entrance level. I had recieved instructions from our mechanics at mountainhome however since this was expected. A workshop for woodworking was set up and parts for one of the most dwarven of contraptions was created: the screwpump.

Spoiler: The entrance at the current year. (click to show/hide)

Oh damnit, one of the mercenarys pet cats have gone and died.

I suppose it was quite old.. for a cat I mean. It is strange how it seems that the animals seem to die of old age at the turn of the year. The gods have a strange sense of humour.

Screwpump was set up according to the instructions carefully memorised and my now-wife Bėmbul took to powering it. The pump pumped just fast enough for the rest of us to slip down into the water and try to plug to the flow. After a while we got tired and stopped trying, however it seems that nobody thought to notify Bėmbul of this. After a while of none of us not going by down into the water she came out to see what was going on and found us picking plants for food. She didn't say anything, but I could discern that she was annoyed, although I think nobody else noticed. I think this was when I fell in love with her.

What is it now? Oh, the elves. I guess its about the trees again? Send 'em in.
100 trees you say? You realize, Mr elf, that we never fell that many trees in one year, right? It's like 2 or 3 per year. 132 trees? Thats pretty funny. What do you mean it's not a joke? Get out of my face.

While we were working on breaking through the aquifer I was suddenly informed that the caravan we were expecting had showed up. And then promptly left, because we had no depot set up. For the record, the farms were already up and running at this point, since I realized it would be a while before we broke through to stone.
The liason showed up and told me that we're ready to become a barony. I laughed so hard I actually fell over. Us? A barony? But sure enough, when I had calmed down, the liason assured me that he was serious. Oh well.

Damnit.

[applet]

Written on a pig tail scroll dated 265
Baron Domas Zanegudist

I cannot remember exactly what happened after we breached the aquifer. We did set up a dining room with food storage as well as basic rooms for everyone at some point. A workshop area was dug out with wood storage and a physics defying pile of stone.

What now? Mudo? Whats that? Oh, the beast on the lowest cavern. It broke our trap? And did not get trapped? Great. Couldn't it read the signs? It says pretty clearly "Cave dragons only". One would think something so old would at least be able to read. Oh well.

We also set up a trade depot during 251 as well as a physics defying bridge (it folds up into a VERY small space) to protect us in case of emergency.

When the dwarven caravan arrived in the autumn of 251 I was officially made baron. So of course I had everyone drop everything they were doing and build me some rooms fit for a baron. We had no metal at this point, so everything was all my furniture was made out of limestone, at least it's matching, right?


Doors + trap installed at a later date.

This took about a year, at which point I realized we were completely defenseless (well, except the impregnable bridges, but thats just details!). So I mandated that some maces be made. Unfortunately we had no weapons grade metal at that point, even though I could clearly see hematite in our stairway. "Just dig it out" I said, but no, as someone pointed out, this hematite is directly below the aquifer and is not easily minable.



At this point, we still hadn't gotten any migrants. While I didn't talk about this with anyone else, I made note of talking about this with our liason next year.

When the metal industry had been emergency setup to comply with my mace mandate, we dug in a more structured way for coal ores and iron ores. And we had lots of coal, and some iron. Some iron armor and spears were constructed and outfitted to me and Bėmbul. A mercenary showed up after we had a rudimentary barracks dug, asking to train in Ledpaddled. This was the first and so far only request for residence granted.

In truth, I wanted to be militia commander, but everyone else said that a baron cannot also be militia commander, something about this not being proper dwarven custom. I picked Bėmbul instead, as this way, we could enjoy eachothers company during the training.

While we were training the rest of the fort focused on producing prepared meals, both as a trade good as well as a way to keep morale up, by this point I had been informed by our liason that there would be no migrants - something which I kept to myself at that time.

Some goblin siege showed up at around this point in time, they however decided to just leave the moment they showed up. Maybe something about there being goblin visitors to our tavern? No idea.

In 254 or possibly 255 some crundles broke into the fortress from the caverns, apparently climbing in through a tunnel that breached the caverns ceiling. The 3 of us in the militia dispatched them all after they had killed a couple of cats and dogs. They also injured some civilians, Tulon - our primary grower - most notably. There was also a giant rat break-in at some point, also injuring Tulon after playing "who can bleed the most" with half our dog population.


Tulon died to infection in 255, right outside the trade depot. Ironically the hospital had been completed just prior and his lover Fath being appointed Chief Medical Dwarf. I was the only one to find this funny.

[applet]

Written on a goat parchment scroll dated 265
Baron Domas Zanegudist

With no migrants the death of one partner could potentially be disastrous. Fortunately there was still 2 pairs of lovers, me and Bėmbul as well as Thob - our best miner and Deler - our manager, bookkeeper and metalworking.

And so, in order to promote closer relations between the lovers, I order everyone into the military to train together.

Written on a cave fish parchment scroll dated 265
Mercenary Led Esdoralåth

New author here, Led Esdoralåth "Soldbolts", I am the resident mercenary of Ledpaddeled. It seems the previous author has a somewhat cloudy memory of the early events of the fort. In particular, when I arrived. I arrived to Ledpaddeled in late 252 in search of somewhere to train in the martial arts, something my family could never understand, since I do not condone war, a belief that has only strengthed during my time here.

I quickly found out that there were a lot of cats around Ledpaddled and the cats found me as well. While I may like cats more then most other dwarves I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of cats starting to hang out with me. I got used to this pretty quickly however and gave them all names. It seems someone locked most of the ones I didn't name in a cage however. Who would do such a thing? But I shouldn't complain too much, with 40 cats and 40 dogs running around it was quite difficult to navigate even short distances inside the fort.

Now, about this all-fort miltary training, while I don't want to deny any dwarf the chance to train, I did find it a bit suspicious that the entire fort were to train at once. No-one to take care of the animals, no-one to plant and gather plants. But it seems it worked out, the animals took care of themselves well enough. I suppose being mostly walled in helped with that. The training regimen makjes a lot more sense in retrospect though, especially since now reading about the baron knowing about this no-migrants business earlier then the rest of us.

During the "Year of training" as it has come to be called by the residents, even though it was for more then a year, the elves came to trade as they usually do each year with their diplomat to discuss their weird tree felling restrictions. We paused training to haul some trade goods to the depot, then some goods back to storage after the trading was complete, animals and food if memory serves. I don't recall anything out of the ordinary happening - the meeting with the diplomat seemed to go as it usually does. But something broke the diplomat. At first we didn't notice, but he was standing outside the trade depot, staring off into... I don't know what. Maybe the blood spread around the depot, some dwarven, but mostly animal and all the animal corpses was too much for him.

Some time before this we installed (I mean, the citizens of Ledpaddled) a bunch of serrated metal discs to keep the local wildlife out. It turned out that they might have been slightly overkill for the purpose, since the blades tend to tear their victims to bits. Many bits.

In 257 the elven diplomat died of thirst, officially we reported him as "missing" to the elven traders next year. Even though he was/is lying in our refuse pile.





Shame.

[FakerFangirl]

They say when an elf dies, a tree is born.

[applet]

Written on a badger parchment scroll dated 266
Mercenary Led Esdoralåth

After the year of training we had our first real goblin seige. Real as in the goblins don't turn around the instant they spot our walls. Bridge was raised before they got to the wall however and it didnt take more then a few weeks before they gave up and headed home.

The year after that there was another goblin seige, this time they brought climbers. Time seemed to stand still during this seige, we dwarves moved a hundred urists before the goblins could move one. Initially there was a single goblin who climbed in from the north, we took care of him quickly though.

Soon we heard the dogs someone had trained for war - someones idea of a joke I presume - barking and growling madly at the south wall. Somehow, the dogs had gotten up on the wall and were being shot by the goblins outside. Eventually one of the goblins made it up on the wall and it turned into a wrestlematch, except for the bowgobs outside. For some reason every single siege we've had has had ONLY bowgoblins.

The baron ordered the gate opened so that we could take the fight outside, even though our numbers were smaller. I tried to tell him that we would be pincushioned by the archers, but he would have none of it. Said that since we were moving so fast, they wouldn't have the time to aim before we were on top of them.

In theory perhaps.


In practice spears are bad at blocking arrows. We lost 2 dwarves, they died as spearmasters. Fath - our chief medical dwarf and "widow" as well as Unib - our legendary grower and best brewer. In truth, this was very lucky - as neither of these had any potiential to be a parent, something I now realize would become extremly important. We lost about 10 war dogs, but since we had around 40 to start with, none pets, the impact was very small.

Even though we all considered each other friends the emotional impact of the 2 deaths was smaller then I expected. I guess Tulons death hardened us, sad as this is.

In the aftermath of the battle we decided to introduce a "weakness" into our defences, so that the goblins had somewhere to go, instead of climbing over the walls at the point of their choosing. Then we filled said weakness with razor sharp steel jagged spinning discs. 10 of them per 1 by 1 urist. Except the outermost one, which we filled with the barons copper maces, since the damned things were everywhere (they still are, really).


The "weakness" as it looks in 266.

Fast forward about 2 years and a dwarven caravan arrives but without a liason. The baron somehow knows that the last years liason never left, something about a guest book being signed-in but not signed-out? Whatever. Turns out he was right, the liason was still in sight of the fort. However stuck in a tree.

How he got there is anyones guess, but he couldn't get down. The baron ordered a couple of trees felled in the area and after only 6-8 months someone got around to doing that. Felling trees isn't particularly high on the priority list when you there is only 4 working dwarves in the fort, me not included of course - as I'm a mercenary.

The liasons meeting with the baron seemed to go as normal, he didn't at all mention being stuck in a tree, and I get the feeling the baron didn't want to mention it either, even though I obviously told him.

Politics. Bah.

[applet]

Player intermission

Found one of the reasons that hauling (and some other jobs) didn't get done. Having only 4 work-capable dwarves I had assigned everyone either mining or woodcutting. Problem came when they were also in the military (for the same reason, need to have some militia at the ready).

Now, I knew that there was an issue with having 2 "uniformed" jobs for the same dwarf, but not how severe a problem it was.

Hopefully now I don't need to use fastdwarf teleport from time to time as I've had before.

[TheImmortalRyukan]

Welcome to DF! PTW

[Loud Whispers]

As an aside, doesn't DFhack have an autodump function? If you've got a ludicrous level of hauling to be done by a small number of Dwarves and you're ok with DFhack, autodump might be your salvation instead of fastdwarf teleport

[sketchesofpayne]

If you have a stupid amount of stone to dump:

"z" - stocks - stone - arrow over to the stone type - "d" to toggle dump - esc
"k" to bring up the look cursor; put cursor where you want to dump all the stone
DFhack "autodump"


And honestly if you need more than DFhack "fastdwarf 1" to get everything caught up you're managing things very poorly or you're in too much of a hurry.

[applet]

As an aside, doesn't DFhack have an autodump function? If you've got a ludicrous level of hauling to be done by a small number of Dwarves and you're ok with DFhack, autodump might be your salvation instead of fastdwarf teleport

It does indeed, I have used it when there is a lot of dumping to do (or so i thought). Can you dump into stockpiles? Most of the major hauling is into stockpiles, food, goods traded for and so on.

If you have a stupid amount of stone to dump:

"z" - stocks - stone - arrow over to the stone type - "d" to toggle dump - esc
"k" to bring up the look cursor; put cursor where you want to dump all the stone
DFhack "autodump"


And honestly if you need more than DFhack "fastdwarf 1" to get everything caught up you're managing things very poorly or you're in too much of a hurry.

Just to clarify I was using fastdwarf 0 1 (teleport only) since the hauling was seemingly the problem. The real problem was "Pickup equipment" however, with 2 uniforms.

A side-effect of teleport is that the dwarves end up idling for a second or so before DF has created a new hauling job. Turns out that this is enough time to get some babymaking done, although I'm not entirely clear on the mechanics required for babymaking, other then the couple needs to spend some time reasonable close together.


I've updated all chapters to include the authors name as well as the initial post about the self-imposed limits. Originally I thought all of this would come out through the story, but when I re-read what I've written, it was confusing and I think this clears some things up.

[applet]

Written on a yak parchment scroll dated 270
Baron Domas Zanegudist

Things reached a critical point after the deaths of Fath and Unib, no babies had been born since none of the couples had married yet. Being one of them I knew the reason: No leisure time together!

I ordered 2 new bedrooms built - much to the confusion of the others, we have enough bedrooms. These bedrooms are special however, each actually being 2 bedrooms, overlapping each other.

No dwarf can resist a ≡steel statue≡

I instruct the lovers to leave their regular bedrooms and take a bed beside their lover. They do this since I leave my grand bedroom to downgrade to the same level as them or maybe because the suites are quite a bit nicer or maybe because I'm the baron? Or all three? Eh.

No sooner then I've turned off all leisure activities (tavern, temple) and all work, Deler and Thob have married. [Player: At this point I just broke down laughing, 10 years of hoping things would work out naturally, since the lover pairs had formed in the first year. Just a little nudge required.]

Not one to be outdone by a Miner I propose to Bėmbul a few days later and she accepts...

[Loud Whispers]

Bit of gentle marital persuasion

Also you should be able to autodump onto stockpiles

[applet]

Written on a cougar parchment scroll dated 272
Mercenary Led Esdoralåth

Roughly one year after the couples married a goblin siege comes for us. This time we're prepared however, since the traps are set in the 1 urist wide entry.

I suggest we gather (after everyone get their gear) at the end of this trap-filled entry. That way any gobbos that make it through should be 1 vs all of us, since they can only come at us one at a time, to start with anyway. We do this rather more quickly then I expect, and the gobbos are not even close to the entry when we have 3 of us ready, the other 2 join us shortly after. The main gate is closed by this point of course, this is something that everyone know must happen instantly when theres an outside threat. Drop everything and run to the lever, thats the idea.


After the siege, note goblin bodies at main gate.

Turns out that goblins aren't as smart as I thought they were, they brought only bowgobs last time and managed to kill 2 of us. I would have thought they would do the same again, but no. This time they brought mostly bowgobs but also some melee gobs. Strange.

This was only the beginning of their show of intelligence however, as 3 goblins ran into our animal-defences. Yes the discs in those traps are steel, but there are only 2 in each and you can easily go around them. They are made to kill or wound the stupid rhesus macaques that keep slipping in. The goblins just took the shortest path from the north from where they came to the siege entry and ran straight into the animal murder discs.

Their leader avoided them however, not that it mattered since he was the first to enter the trap-alley and die to the first non-copper trap. This is how we learned he was the leader, since the rest of the gobs turned and ran. We let them go, since it seemed wasteful to use dwarf resources on chasing them down.



While all of this was going on, the first birth happened, right where we stood guard. I didn't even notice, since I was so focused on looking for gobs coming through the entryway. The second birth happened soon after, just after the gobs had fled.



We celebrated for around an hour or so that night, but it was quickly back to work - except me of course. There is little time for rest when we only have 4 working pairs of hands.

The baron seemed particularly pleased with this, I think he was nervous that we'd never have any babies. Although he should have known far ahead that there were babies coming now that I think about it. Hmm...

Since then, we've had at least one birth almost every year. There's 20 of us now.


Population early 272

Although more has happened since 261, which the next scroll should elaborate on, It's still undecided who will write it.


Players commentary

Something intresting happened during the siege I noticed when I looked through the combat logs afterwards:




The amount of hits the serrated discs dish out between the goblin losing his bow (the latest he could have fired an arrow) and the hitting of the cat by the same goblin is a bit crazy. It could probably have been even more if the goblin didn't die before the arrow struck the cat.

10-disc weapon traps don't mess around.

[Loud Whispers]

We don't call them blenders for nothing ;P