Let's Play Dwarf Fortress - Skeletal WHAT?!

[Melfice]

Originally Posted by Thadius

I...

I'm stunned. Thank you all for building on my plotline that I pulled out of thin air; I figured you might discard it as the ramblings of a crazy man dwarf. Thank you for your contributions; I honestly expected this thread to die at page five. Thanks for including that demonic book; I expected you lot to ignore it due to the fact that you can't see it on any inventory screen. Thanks for making it a joy for me to check this thread every day; I'm honestly surprised when I come on and there's no talk of 'LOL DF IS GAY'.

Y'know, this is the best Christmas gift I've ever gotten. Thank you NPF. This is a gift without measure. In return, I will do all I can to keep my dwarfilizier list up to date, my succession list correct, and maybe later today I'll toss in a list that links you to things like what Corel's made.

... you're drunk?
I mean... yeah, I guess you could be genuinely grateful, but y'know.

Nah, but seriously. It's an interesting game! And the cat-book was funny. ^__^

[Wigmund]

We also have a one-eyed sheriff, a shitload of stairs, a soldier who breathes through a hole in his chest, goblins that have problems with undead goats, a HFS that's literally sealed off from the world because someone put a rock over the entrance, and we haven't started receiving nobles yet.

The fun at Workgill has just started. I hope this lasts long enough to loop back through the succession chain.

[Loyal]

Diary of Urdim {unintelligible}, Knight of Besmar Tarmid:

2nd Granite, 58
---
Now that my euphoria over recent events has faded, it's time to get to work. Looking over the blueprints in the fortress's logs and seeing what I can with my own eyes, it's obvious the last leader had a good head for city planning. Things are pretty well organized, and thanks to some creative channel-building the only way in or out of the fortress is through a massive chasm to which we control the keys.

Workshop organization is nearly flawless. I cringed a bit when I saw a mass-stockpile just a few feet below the surface, but it seems these are merely tertiary storage for things already finished and prepared for trade; additional, appropriate stockpiles with raw materials have been designated near the workshops themselves.

I say nearly flawless because the Butcher shops are out in the open air. Highly unsightly, not to mention unsanitary.

Food stockpiles are alright. Less than what I'd like, but with all those (albeit inactive) farms lying around it shouldn't be hard to scrounge up some good proper meals.

Forward warning systems are adequate; A single entrance with a wide-enclosed space will make defense easy -- once we get a good military going, more on that later -- and the foyer leading underground has wolves guarding it. I don't even want to know how the last overseer (I'm told his name is Wigmund) managed that.

However, there are a few criticisms I'd like to bring forward (though seeing as I'm the overseer now I suppose I could just as well address them without fuss, but... for the sake of record-keeping if nothing else). For starters, our military. Armok strike me down now, our military consists of some green recruit who spends most of his time looking ready to lop off the heads of our frightened craftsdwarves, and a slightly more experienced veteran with internal injuries who refuses to take bedrest despite orders to stand down. I recruited our wood burners (more on that in a moment) and a metalsmith and set them to work training in the barracks. I'll recruit some more when we get some more strong backs, but these will do for now. Maybe when they're experienced enough I'll have them clear out the goblins stalking out a few clicks southwest of here. I did mention the goblins, right?

Well, there they are. I don't know what they're doing or why they're here (besides the death of all dwarf-kind of course), but they aren't moving and don't seem to be too interested right now. Fortunately we won't have to worry about them too much in the meantime because the entrance is choked up with traps. I will say one thing now: I recognize the usefulness of dwarven engineering in the defense of a fortress, but give me a sword in a weapon trap or a sword in a dwarf's hand, and I'll take the dwarf nine times out of ten. There is no reason to rest the fate of our fair fortress on a series of machines that only work once or are prone to jamming.

Now then, apparantly our miners have been quite fortuitous. They've not only found a good deal of undead-infested magma under the ground to power our weapon forges, but also a deep chasm filled with various (undead!) nasties, and -- believe it or not -- adamantine (albeit in a pit of probably-undead demons. I suppose harvesting it will have to wait). Sadly, none of these things have been exploited to our benefit. While I'm happy to leave the adamantine in the hands of the foul pitspawn for now, and our military is too weak to clear out the chasm, there's no excuse for us to continue burning what little wood we have to fuel our forges when we've got the fiery blood of the earth itself at our disposal! I've ordered the selfsame miners to start digging some accessways. The sooner we get the magma flowing, the better.

Speaking of, I've been told that Wigmund designated a small pit over what would be flowing magma to be the destination of excess, "unnecessary" stone. There they would be cast into the boiling fluid and destroyed forever.

Perfectly good waste of rock, says I.

Finally, our jails, should we ever require them (as if a dwarf knows how to do anything but follow orders!), are a bit too small. Though the surrounding area was a bit cramped, I ordered a few of the would-be cells to be deepened a bit, so that we could fit a bed in there and any would-be criminals might come out of jail a little more content than they went in.

The rest... shall have to do without. Then again, perhaps a shared, double cell might give our dwarves something to do while they wait out their sentences. I'm sure nothing could go wrong with that.

---
3rd Granite, 58
---
Good-news-bad-news time: Good news, we've found veins of Galena and Sphalerite. Bad news, it's in the channel being dug out for the magma to flow.

Opening the channel may be delayed while we safely excavate the minerals, though I'm considering flooding the passage with magma anyway and just scraping out what we can from the surrounding rock.

I've been asking around about any other mineral deposits I wasn't aware of. One of the miners pointed me to a vein of "something glittery in the old fort".

In this case that meant tetrahedrite. While copper isn't anywhere near as good as iron, it'll do for weapons and armor till we find some or pick some up from the fall caravan. Why it was never excavated previously I'll never know, but I intend to correct that oversight as soon as possible.

Our farmers have been ordered to make use of the hundreds of seeds and dozens of farm plots at our disposal. As I figured we had more than enough farmers at our disposal already, even given the tremendous number of farms, one of them was added to the military in training. Joining him is the company dyer so he won't feel lonely; If someone ELSE wants to dip their socks in plant juices, they can do so on their own time.

---
13th Granite, 58
---
Excuse my blasphemy:

Fuck me, is that a unicorn!?

Apparently we have a whole HERD of them (is that the word for them? Herd? Pack? Pride? Husbandry was never my strong point, perhaps I'll ask Loyal if he knows) stored not far from the entrance. Perhaps this one was looking for its family?

I only find this ordeal worth mentioning because an elven caravan from Cata Ivi was spotted not five minutes after the news of the unicorn came to me.

Do you think the beheaded corpse of a mythical beast on our front lawn would upset them too much? Our food workers seem a little preoccupied with their own duties to clean up the carcass right away (though I do hope they get to it before it rots... no reason to waste it)

---
17th Granite, 58
---
While the elves took no visible offense to the creature their beasts had to trod over to reach us, they had considerably fewer goods than I would have expected... just a lot of logs (not complaining), some cloth, and a berry. I bought it all off of them for a single goblin's sock and some earrings.

Maybe they're holding out on us, but then I doubt they could have offered much useful besides the logs, and we have those now.

I don't think they're completely unshaken, and I think one of them tried to curse us, because shortly after we concluded trading and left them to pack up their business, I heard we had struck...

Yes indeed, graphite. The only rock in the world that bursts into flames without a useful product. Loyal assures me that the elves have no proficiency with the noble stone, for craft or curse, but I've got my eye on these seedy dastards.
---
3rd Slate, 58
---
The magma flows at last. Now it is just a matter of time before we can start equipping our eager recruits with more than their fists and their wits.

-----------

I'll be picking up the pace a bit more in later updates.

[Wigmund]

2nd of Granite, 58

New guy's here, seems to be spooked by the fuzzballs we have watching the main foyer. Just throw them some goat bones and they'll let you scratch their bellies.

And he's complaining about the butcher shops. Where else would I put 'em?
They have to be close to where we keep the puppies and kittens.

13th of Granite, 58

Traps finally got one of those damn unicorns stalking the trenches today. Seems that he was looking for his kin that we're planning to make into a Saint Urist McSaint Day banquet.

Elves also arrived. Disappointed new guy didn't drop 'em into the Grand Pit. Would have gotten more goods from them that way.

--------

I'm looking forward to more updates Loyal, keep up the good work.

[Thadius]

Diary of Thadius, 2nd Granite, 58

New guy is afraid of the puppies. Heh. Just wait until we figure out how to tame the unicorns. Ever try to fight one of those off ya? The teeth, horn, and hooves are a triple-threat that kill off most dwarves.

3rd Granite, 58

New guy seems to think the Tetrahedrite we found back at my place is valuable. Eh, I suppose it'll do for now. Seems intent on raisin' a military. Maybe so we can battle the demons? Not what I'd do. I'd just floor over their pits - cheap, effective solution that'd get us some Adamantine. Then we could make better armor and weapons, battle the demons more and more efficiently. But whatever works.

17th Granite, 58

Elves are back, this guy seems to like them better than Wigmund - sorry, Sheriff Wigmund - did. Actually traded with the pointy-eared sons of nature.

3rd Slate, 58

Oh Armok take me, it's so BORING around here. Doesn't anyone need a good wall? Everyone seems to think I'm too creepy carryin' around the Economicon all the time to do anything but mason. 's not true at all. Why, just the other day, I put it down for a whole minute!

[Geminex]

The more I read this, the greater the temptation becomes to download DF and try to play myself...


To dwarf or not to dwarf...

[Thadius]

Come play with us, Geminex. Forever and ever and ever...

[Geminex]

No! No! Your references to 80s horror movies shall not ensnare me! Noooooo!

Or, maybe, yes. Depends. How hard is it to pick up? And what're the time requirements? Consider that my playing PC will be without internet access, that is to say without the wiki.

[Thadius]

This guide helps you with half of the mechanics. The rest you'll have to learn on your own, or by using the wiki.

[Geminex]

Reading... tutorial...
Awesome... game...
Growing... beard...
Will... soon... become... dwarf...

Prepare... more... booze...