Part 2 (216 winter - 217 autumn)
The final pre-obsidianizing preparations have occupied the next half of the year. Everybody is already clothed, we’re doing decently with food, and two little projects have been started in the first and third cave. Namely, two rooms were built on the edge, their floors covered in cages, and then a small portion of the wall torn down. Yep, I just deliberately ruined the cave seals.
I’m hoping that having spawn options in all caves will make the second cave a little less busy when it’s time to wall it up. Also, as you can probably figure out, the trap room for the third cave was really badly planned. So, I tore it down and rebuilt it; the exit of the corridor had to conform to the existing hatch airlock, resulting in an… interesting… design. Whatever, it’s supposed to work well, not look good.
And it definitely does work well, because the third cave spawns a whole bunch of beasts; a good half of them are crundles, of course, but we also got some rutherers, reachers, elk birds, etc. Most of them have been tamed and slaughtered; our meat stocks have gone from absent to overflowing. The only survivors are 3 crundles, who now make up the fort’s only breeding animals (as it's recommended, as soon as they produce the first generation, they’ll get butchered). The semi-sapient animals (plump helmet people and gorlaks), were assigned to a built cage nearby, and were left there.
(This little misadventure resulted in 3 civilian deaths, bringing the population to 45).
Apropos of nothing, I remade the hospital, and temporarily moved the well above a spot in the pond with 2-deep water. The previous well had run dry; or rather, water level finally dropped at 3. Dwarves keep using it for washing themselves… which I can’t really blame them for, now can I?
The well is temporary due to safety concerns; its new water source very much allows critters to climb up into ‘safe’ fort areas. A new well is getting built… somewhere, as soon as I figure out a spot for a cistern.
It is now winter, I’ve run out of distractions, I have 3 very unhappy dwarves and 2 unhappy ones, let’s punch some holes in a volcano.
The first target is the northern lake; it (probably) has no Forgotten Beasts around, so if I screw anything up it shouldn’t be that much of a disaster. A single-tile channel will carry magma to the northern edge, then be redistributed closer to the intended target, by way of other channels. Unfortunately for this log, screenshots of the channels make no sense outside of their context, so they’ll get skipped. Instead, I’ll focus on their effects.
The initial plan for moving magma did not include any pumps, and relied on normal flow to move the magma. I’m not doing that again, because it took about five months and achieved mediocre results. It did have results, obviously -- the zombie tree was partially set on fire, many of the zombies loitering in water got annihilated via obsidian casting, the map edge itself was partially obsidianized, and is about 2/3rds of the way ready for construction (so it’s not yet ready). Between late obsidian 216 when magma started falling, and the start of summer 217 when flow was cut, mob numbers went from 359 ‘living’ & 286 dead to 288 / 422.
Lastly, the three very unhappy dwarves have survived carving a fortification in the volcano; yay for them. Unfortunately, all three of them keep tantruming, beating up dwarves, destroying all sorts of things, and generally exhausting my reserves of patience. The spring of 217 was their last season alive; they were, at last, convicted of the long,
long list of transgressions they’ve committed, soundly beaten, then they were locked in their respective hospital pods. By summer, the fort was home to 42 dwarves.
… I should build cage traps in the hospital pods. That may well save a lot of trouble in the future.
Summer started with a few small changes to the magma channel -- namely, the addition of 3 pumps to put some pressure in the flow. It’s not a super-safe system, and a small bout of magma flooding already took place when I stupidly let the ‘input’ pump going after the ‘output’ ones had stopped.
But, the desired blob of obsidian has expanded noticeably. This section of the edge is fully sealed, and can be built on top; minus that tiny tree that’s still home to ~15 zombies. I’m not counting the zombies caught below the tree; those are completely enclosed, they can’t exit until the obsidian is dug out. They’ll be eventually dealt with manually, with the army’s intervention. That’s part of the reason why I expanded the military; that, and just… well, did you look where we are?
Now, this took until end-autumn; the new death score is 279/449 (~160 new deaths, only 3 of which were dwarven). Let’s talk about what else I’ve done in the meantime.
Firstly, the army was expanded and armored some more. There are now 16 hammerers (only 10 of whom have skills), 2 axe-dwarves, and 5 crossbow-dwarves. We’ve spent all copper bars making some very crappy armor (because somehow both our skilled armorer and weaponsmith have been killed). But there is still not enough for everyone, so the surface will have to be opened. The military can pick up armor, and the civilians can reload the traps. As well as whatever else, I guess.
I’ll have to delay a bit though, another were-whatever popped up:
So I’ll take the opportunity to drop another bridge: the one keeping the hammerer eerie mist zombies sealed.
Aban and Mistem pay no attention; they’re still locked in their tireless struggle. But the third one, Shem, rushes for the exit… and is promptly caught in a trap. Too bad s/he has no armor or weapon:
For the endless dancers, another plan is underway: a corridor was dug out parallel to the wall, and fortifications carved into it. The five crossbow-dwarves will eventually fire at the fighters. I’d expect all their shots to miss or get deflected; they’re relatively low-level, their bolts are carved from bone, and their enemies are clad in adamantine. I’ll keep track of archers’ levels progression, though -- for the record, we have one dude at level 9, three at 8, and one at 4. If they can’t kill the dancers, at least they can level up.
But that’s autumn stuff, let’s get back to summer. Dwarves are on the surface, rushing in all directions. Armor gets picked, cages are reloaded, occupied cages are hauled to the basement, and so are all the corpses on the surface. Dwarves seem to have a fairly strict priority about tasks that are in the same category, they pick them more or less in the order they’re listed in the {j}obs screen. So, traps were handled because they were their own separate job type, but the hauling jobs executed in order: first refuse and corpse hauling, then storing random food items in barrels, then storing in bins, in bags, and lastly in the hospital. Well, that was educational, but also annoying, since nobody got around to dumping a few choice items. And by now it’s nearing autumn, so the outdoor excursion is canceled. Back into the fort!
Oh, and the army is still not fully kitted out. Screw it, I’m going to carve out a proper smithy and bar storage.
And that’s where the end of autumn found me: with a mostly-completed smithing complex, and most dwarves hauling stone.
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Topic: The Fortress Of Friendlytreason | OVERSEERS WE NEED YOU (Read 39321 times)