Grim Views

...of Perfection.

Ongoing projects:
- Extending the animal enclosure to move the refuse pile inside
- Moving the fishery to the room to the left of the hallway leading up to the kitchens
- Finishing the dining room
- More bedrooms!
- Other workshops we don't yet have

Save file here. Next!

ARGH! I wish I had more TIME.

I didn't write a journal since I just got in the zone and rocked the shit out of this thing, so here's all that I've done (it's a lot).

-The Unicorn Slayers are up. There were 10, but one died in a goblin ambush due to a lucky shot from a crossbowman. They still, however, have brought genocide to the wilds. I think I may have run out of bolts and forgot to make more, though.
-Ambushes have begun.. prepare for war! To that end I started creating leather armor for our marksdwarves, since there's 9 of them.
-There are two pastures, so grass can regrow between the two since, for some reason, the animals don't like to wander and take up the whole space.
-We have a farm above ground doing nothing but creating sun berries. Yay Sunshine!
-Food production was NAUGHT when I began, we're now doing very very very well. Araun, since you seem to forget about things like food, DON'T TOUCH IT! It's self-sustaining the way I have it set up.
-All the farms are producing pig tails in the summer and fall since our food is very stable otherwise, and we'll need the bags to create gypsum plaster for the hospital.
-Hextupled living space. Beds are in progress, I think. I have 2 dwarves who are allowed to do nothing but engraving smoothing it all out. Slow progress, but they're leveling up thankfully.

Things needing done or in progress:
-Leather armor for marksdwarf squad. Not done, but almost. I do think we have enough leather for the whole bundle, it's queued up in the manager.
-Hospital. Waiting on the mason to finish the floor for the well, then he'll start pumping out a LOT of stuff I have manager'd. Added the miners to mason duty since I'm not using them much right now. Watch for the coffers and tables so you can get them in there and the traction benches made. Chains and mechanisms are already finished, and the well should be done right when the save begins. Zone's created, it's an empty room right now, though. Oh, got soap too, but not too much I think. Didn't leave ash production on that long.
-Burrows. Haven't made any.


BOTTOM LINE:
Joyouscastle is in such good shape right now, DON'T MUCK IT UP!

(69 dwarves alive. 1 death this year, Cog the hunter to a crossbowgoblin ambush.)

edit: Oh, I left the refuse pile outside.. meh. No biggie, we can just dwarf atom smash trash if we get a seige.


SAVE!

Joyouscastles the Lovely Sparkles of Perfection.

I mispelled "perfection" three times trying to type that. I hope that's not an omen or anything. So, yeah, I am completely lost here and have no idea where anything begins or ends. I notice a lack of forges and a pretty poor necropolis, so I guess I can make those my priorities. However:



I am already in love.

Although there's a lot of materials, there's very little actual booze being made. But Aquizit said he set up a self-sustaining food industry! Surely I must - no, no, he set up everything just fine, he just forgot to actually enable anyone's brewing labours.

It's a good thing I am a soulless person who has lost the ability to trust others, that would've been a bad discovery to make in a few months.

--

Refuse pile moved inside. Outside is bad and dangerous, it is full of fluffy wamblers, and unicorns, and sky, and other deadly things. Let's not go out there.

--

Oh wait, found the forge setup. Oooh, lignite!

I go digging deep into the earth in search of valuable minerals we can melt down and make into glorious statues to honour my name. This bears fruit pretty much instantly.

What I discover is mostly brown. Where it isn't brown, it's orange or yellow. Sometimes there's some blue, but mostly it's brown and orange.

Basically I have tapped into a hitherto undiscovered deposit of the 70s. I seal up the entrance before bellbottoms can flood the fortress.

For some reason a mason keeps coming down and grabbing bits of horrible brown schist to make coffins with. I guess we hate our dead.

--

Second cavern layer yields silver and gold and magma! Oh, it is like Underdark Christmas. Magma forges ahoy!

--

Erm. So I built a wall to seal off the underground, and our militia commander builds the wall himself for some reason, but he does it from the wrong side. Then he's jumped from behind and torn apart by a blind cave ogre. Good news: ogre is sealed outside. Bad news: we need a new commander.

I am being interrupted every five seconds to be told that a baby has been born. Evidently I am not giving these people enough to do.

The gates are guarded by an army of puppies. This doesn't really make me feel safe. Luckily, with magma forges up and running, I can now produce a vast array of serrated iron disks for weapon traps. I think they'll be just a bit more effective than newborn puppies.

I don't know what I'll do with the puppies after that. I'm thinking brunch.

--

I call everyone inside, because having dwarves running around outside like this is making me nervous, and the moment I do the stupid elves arrive. Fine, maybe I won't shut the gates! I'd just figured out which lever does that and everything :(

And I will trade with the elves next time, for now I sleep.

ELVES.

The elves have brought me many marsupials in cages. I bought them all, because the most delicious animal is an endangered animal.

I immediately order them slaughtered, along with all the stray kittens and puppies in the fortress. I am not interested in Joyouscastle ending up featured on one of those animal-hoarder TV shows, with the mayor screaming "NO NO DON'T TAKE MY BABIES" while horrified elves in filter masks scoop dozens of cats out of the fetid depths of the fortress.

No, here we do the responsible thing, we slaughter and eat our pets.

--

No flux. I am full of sadness.

Also the arrangement of the dining tables offends me, because if you repeat the pattern it doesn't end up being symmetrical. So I disassemble the entire dining room and dig out a new one.

Meanwhile, I open the gates for the elves to leave, and a fisherdwarf runs out in a desperate bid to live up to his name. He promptly stumbles into a goblin ambush.

I shut the gates behind him and move on with life.

--

The slaughtered kangaroo and dogs almost immediately find a home in an incredible work of art.



See? Now they will live forever. As a legendary hat. The story had a nice ending after all! In Joyouscastles, all endings are happy endings.

For certain values of happy.

--

Humans arrive to trade. I buy cougar blood and wolf blood. I prefer my wolves fresh-squeezed but we don't have a proper wolf-press here.

I also set up the clothier to produce endless supplies of clothing. Socks, shoes, trousers, tunic, coat, gloves, cap, and cloak. So now all our dwarves will dress like WW2-era British factory workers. I approve.

--

It's autumn, everything is buzzing along nicely, I've built a garbage-crusher and a few other amenities, and we're churning out iron bars down in the magma forge.

And then I accidentally flatten half the human merchants with the inner gate as they are leaving. Well, it was after the trading, so I guess it's no big loss.

Hm, need more bins. I will make brass! And make brass bins! Everyone loves bins and alliteration!

We make five bars of brass and then run out of ore. Fine. BRONZE! Bronze bins!

--

Migrants arrive. I force them to gather all the wood scattered outside and pile it inside the airlock before I will allow them entrance to the fort. PROVE YOUR WORTH, SLAVES, BEFORE YE MAY ENTER HERE.

And now, dinner. It's early winter, so I should finish my turn after I get back.

Araun wrote:ELVES.

The elves have brought me many marsupials in cages. I bought them all, because the most delicious animal is an endangered animal.

I immediately order them slaughtered, along with all the stray kittens and puppies in the fortress. I am not interested in Joyouscastle ending up featured on one of those animal-hoarder TV shows, with the mayor screaming "NO NO DON'T TAKE MY BABIES" while horrified elves in filter masks scoop dozens of cats out of the fetid depths of the fortress.

No, here we do the responsible thing, we slaughter and eat our pets.

--

The slaughtered kangaroo and dogs almost immediately find a home in an incredible work of art.

See? Now they will live forever. As a legendary hat. The story had a nice ending after all! In Joyouscastles, all endings are happy endings.

For certain values of happy.

Unicorns arrive! I open the gate so people can go hunt them, and goblins immediately appear and kill the guard dogs, then shoot the outpost liaison and several others. The caravan guards don't lift a finger to help.

Erm. Oops.

On the upside, we've got several goblins in cages now, if anyone can think of a good use for caged goblins.

And as the final month of 128 draws to a close, a goblin siege arrives! At this point I note I never actually made any weapons, or armour, or trained and soldiers at all.

Well. The front gate is pretty sturdy.

Enjoy!

So due to Quiz's persuasion, I downloaded the files to try my hand at burning your fortress to ash and goblin siege. Get it copied and load it up into DF to find a HOLY CRAP messy crazy fortress. The layout offends me. Also rocks everywhere, can't have that.

No worries I think, I can fix this. Load up my trusty dwarf therapist and find even with a fresh install, its still bugged to hell and will only list the 20 dwarves from my newly embarked world. Nameless and unable to mess with their professions. Clear user settings and now I can see names and mess with professions. Deciding that my Windy Plain is the source of all my problems, I sacrifice the world to gods of trash can and restart the game to load up Joyouscastle. Load up therapist and $%@#$ it's still loading the 20 dwarves from my now deleted region and will not clear them. I've deleted dwarf fortress and reinstalled, I've cleared therapist several times and reinstalled but it still keeps pulling these stupid dwarves from the nether of complete annihilation and loading them.

If I get this fixed, I will begin the task of fixing the crazy that is this fortress, without starving them. Also the sad lonely coffin all by itself in a nicely smoothed hallway and niche amused me to no end.

IT HAS BEGUN, The new overlord and dark master takes the reins as of this very moment.