User:Jellyfishgreen

Poemcrafter of A DF Night Before Christmas

Proud mastermind of "Fortress Paintrag" in v0.23.

my dwarves be dancing

Put that Adamantine back where it came from, or so help me (or so help me!)

If you could read my mind love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark,
Or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet -- Gordon Lightfoot.

The idea pile

1. legendary miners in sieging armies? Countertunneling, as in WW1
2. Shipyard (workshop) longships, oars from the carpenter
3. rail road = metal bar + wood sleepers; carts can convert to rail carts for ore haulers/wagons for reduced travel energy cost
4. Backpacks or slings for infants. Currently infants are hand-held, very much like weapons.
5. PICK UP YOUR &*&* SOCKS! I'd like this more than dwarves with boiling gold for blood.
6. Some way to put a squad on/off duty from the X squad menu, with +/- cycling through all squads in order.

Fortress 1: Ratman Island

A few notes on my current fortress, "PlaitTorches", set on a volcanic tropical island with an existing cave system crawling with ratmen. Thus, Ratman Island, Sept 2008-. Version '40d.

1. So I've set up home in a sandy hill above a magma vent. Down deep there's a layer of obsidian, and I realized that if I site all the noble rooms there, I have smoothable and highly valued walls, and an excuse to mine out all that obsidian for furniture and trade goods and swords. If there's an accident, the noble rooms will be flooded with magma. So, win-win all around.
2. Used the Full Plate+Shield+Wrestling training system. Quickly my Sheriff became an Elite then Legendary wrestler, and the cleansing of the ratman cave system was a non-climax as his wrestler squad was not significantly challenged. No dwarf deaths. We have, however, lost about 5 dwarves since introducing edged-weapon training.
3. Planning use of the surface magma vent was scrapped when we found a hidden subsurface pool. Magma furnaces working great, lots of glass production, lots of obsidian, but ore is rare. We were glad to find two copper veins but import everything else. Once the Mayor demanded Brass; I melted two zinc cages for alloy but a crazy dwarf nipped in and made hanging Zinc rings on his artifact out of my precious reclaimed bar...
4. Draining one vent into another to create a small magma-fall is inadvisable. I don't know if it counts as overflow but small 1-deep waves of lava formed on the surface and rippled around. Eventually some washed up on the wrong shore, burning down a kiln and we lost a craftdwarf. We reclaimed the vent with two controlled water floods, one to seal the magma-fall and one to counteract the waves by damping the furnace area.
5. More successful was our dining-room waterfall. Windmill-driven pumps bring seawater up 3 levels to an existing (saltwater) pond system; a manual pump brings it up one more level before dropping it into the dining room where grates lead to the ocean-return drain. The floor is permanently damp but the dwarves are permanently enriched.
6. Surprisingly we do have contact with the Dwarven civilization for trade (it's an island) but no other, and little wildlife except turtles and snailmen. Lots of trees for the taking, though, and no Elf retribution.
7. A titan showed up in our fourth year; I activated the military once its intentions were clear. It chased a craftdwarf then killed a peasant holding her baby, trapped by a channel. Combined wrestlers and marksdwarves brought it down seconds later. The baby survived, Very Unhappy.
8. 4th year stats: Pop.95. 5 Artifacts, mostly Crafts (obsidian + obsidian amulets etc). 8 Guards, half legendary.
9. Constructed a ten-tile-wide pattern of a Fat Crescent moon, "the symbol of the local dwarven government", in white rock and green glass on the flat tidal shelf. My first megaproject.
10. About the fifth year I got tired of glassmaking and abandoned the fortress. I now realize I should have changed glassmaking (and sandbagging) to be the principal industry, and created a megaproject of a five-story dwarf statue in green glass blocks and obsidian (with a clear glass beard) on a floating platform in the ocean. Maybe I'll reclaim and try that. Also "Orange Ruffy" - obsidian columns to the bottom of the ocean.

Fortress 2: Mistytowers

This one's on a mountain spur just where it meets the forest. Founded in 205. Pleasing features include the spur mainly made out of limestone and bauxite, and a small hill made of magnetite! Naturally, steel production is now our most significant industry. No coal or magma so I've got the Charcoal task on Repeat and a constant stream of lumber to the stockpile. Year 3, pop 41, 2 babies, 2 goblin ambushes, 3 civs trading, wild horses.

1. Founding civ is "The Friendly Tourists". My offshoot, looking for trouble, is "The Armored Toe-Tours". :)
2. Borrowing part of a lovely "cathedral" design found on the DFMA for the main living quarters.
3. First goblin ambush was dealt quite efficiently by the Masked Dwarven Wrestling Squad. Second ambush took out a puppy and a wardog before their owner (a quickly drafted woodcutter) showed up, quite upset. She beheaded one and be-halved another; I presume it was therapeutic. I assigned her a new pet wardog as additional happy thoughts. Poor gal loves her dogs for their loyalty.
4. Unfortunately the woodcutter was caught and killed in a third ambush before the military could arrive. She was one of the founding 7, too.

• Steel production on repeat, and carving part of the mountain spur into a limestone tower 20 squares a side. Still compensating for loss of woodcutter(s) and wondering how many ambushes it takes to make a siege. Setting up ballistas and steel spikes in anticipation of fun.
• 209: Sieging elite archers CAN take down your marksdwarves, even shooting up two Z-levels and through fortifications. Ouch. Patrol routes should not be considered safe combat positions. On the plus side I got a Legendary Armorer who produced an artifact Pig Iron Chain Mail. In real life, this would be near impossible due to the brittleness of pig iron. But it has spikes of steel and green zircon, bands of goblin bone, and an image of a bat in Ash wood. I want to try and draw this thing. It's obviously the BatSuit.

Fifteen dwarvish ways to die

(all hail [Dwarf Fortress], in which all of these are possible)

1. angry elephants after wounding
2. zombie elephants in the moat
3. mandrills at the harvest party
4. goblin invasions due to butterfly effect
5. accidental sparring decapitations
6. tantruming on bridge. Destroying bridge over chasm. Falling to death
7. standing in front of ballista
8. starving due to overwork; neglecting to harvest
9. burning from burning corpses
10. angering the forest people who sing to the trees and are excellent marksmen
11. making a cave too big; caving in
12. not getting the perfect materials demanded by your secret project. moping on the riverbank for days. Washed away by spring flood.
13. digging Too Deep. [Balrog][Things man was not meant to know] [At the Earth's Core: Chapter 1]