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Fortresses

Rubbedbodice

Founded by: Gladmoon the Friendly Coincidental Arch-Palisade of Doom
Embark    : Sand, clay, aquifer, chert, granite. River downhill to the north, large road passing trough the southern part of the embark, intersection of three biomes.

Founding and building.

I decided to embark in an area with an aquifer but with enough z-levels above it to drop a dug out staircase into it and form a tunnel trough it. I decided to dig the fortress down from one of the smaller hills that lay on the large slope down to the river that formed the embark. I removed all the ramps around the hill, to have a reasonably safe place for my farms there. Once the basics were set up, I dug down and found that I had been lucky enough to dig into a chert vein between the aquifers. There were aquifers located north-west and south-east of the fortress. This made building easier than anticipated. I noticed some valleys downhill, that seemed useful as lakes for fishing. I dug a moat in front of the gate that ended in the upper valley. I made sure to build a drawbridge across the I build a dwarven water reactor on the Z-level above the south-eastern aquifer. The advantage of such a DWR is that it always maintains a fixed water pressure and minimum amount of water. I connected the DWR to a pump stack that pumped out of another part of the same aquifer. The pump stack brought the water up beside my gate and created a waterfall into the moat. I walled in the both the upper and the lower valley. A dwarf drowned because of stupid pathing while working on this project. Since He was my first dead dwarf I decided to build him an elaborate memorial. I dug out the lower valley a bit to create a cliff protruding from the hillside into the valley. I then built up the walls of the lower valley two z-levels. The third z-level had a single opening that, through a vertical channel, drained into the north-western aquifer. The third z-level of the lower valley and the upper valley were on the same z-level. I constructed a twenty z-level high tower in the middle of the lower valley, accessible only by a tunnel from my fortress. I constructed a tomb in the cliff I dug earlier, only accessible by a tunnel that ended on the lowest z-level of the lower valley. I build a memorial to the dead dwarf on top of the cliff overlooking the lower valley and entombed him in the tomb below. I then turned on the pump stack. The water flowed trough the moat and into the higher valley, on to the lower valley. Because of the lazy pressure model and the underpass from the higher to the lower lake (both former valleys), the higher lake would fill to 7/7 water before the lower lake would fill to 1/7 and start overflowing and draining the excess water into the aquifer.

Ambushes

The first goblin ambush occurred. Since I had been busy constructing I had no military might at all. I locked my dwarves in the fortress and waited for the goblins to leave. A fisherdwarf who discovered the ambush died. The first ambushers hadn't left, or a second ambush occurred. This was quickly followed up by two more ambushes, and I had three ambush squads of goblins walking outside. A caravan of elves was murdered by them, as well as a group of arriving immigrants. Several dwarves died due to combinations of bad luck and terminal stupidity. During this period I constructed ten cage traps in the two wide hallway into the fortress. Most of the goblin ambushers where captured by opening the gate and closing it as soon as a few of them had run inside. Since I had no found no metal at all, I was more then happy with all their copper weapons and armour.

Forgotten Beast

During the triple ambush a forgotten beast came, and joined the goblins against me. He was captured in the cage traps with the rest of the goblins.

Defences

I build a wall around the pastures outside my fortress, trained some military units, dug catacombs and interred slain dwarves. Some dwarves' corpses had been inexplicably lost and I had to create memorial slabs to put their ghosts to rest. I build a large gate with drawbridge into this external wall. This drawbridge crossed the moat. I started the construction of a large DWR in the north-western aquifer and a pump stack upwards that emerged besides the new gate. I build a reservoir on top of the gate with four hatches and a second drawbridge behind the gate. I connected everything in a variation on the resettable one use pressure plate. This drowning chamber would kill the enemies for me, or so I thought.

Two sieges

When the first siege started, my defences where far from completed, and I prepared for another lock in and wait situation. However the two goblin squads seemed to be indecisive on what to do, and never ventured farther than 20 squares from where they entered the map. I continued building my defences but didn't allow my dwarves farther than a screen's width from my fortress, just in case. A few months later the goblins retreated, but a new siege immediately started. This time the goblins came from the other side of the map. These had brought trolls. I discovered a vital problem with my defences, the outer gate's drawbridge couldn't be raised. Luckily the enemy trolls started destroying the grates on the outside of the drawbridge, this way the enemies that had entered the pasture were trapped inside the outer walls and the trolls and others where locked outside. I used the trick of opening and swiftly closing the inner drawbridge, to capture most of the enemies in the cage traps in the entrance hall. After a while the trolls left and peace returned to the fortress.

Training

I tried to train more military in this period. For lack of better, I equipped my military with a mixture of bone, shell and leather plus the copper caps, shields and breastplates I stripped from the captured goblins. I made all of them wield a preferred melee weapon and a preferred ranged weapon. They refused to train their ranged skills at the archery range however.

Final siege

This time when the siege was announced, I looked around the paused embark and noticed that this was the full force of the goblin civilization. They had even brought their highest official, the law-giver Nonu Usmdasulu, a gila monster riding a giant rat. What was truly perplexing though was the fact that at the same time, a squad of trolls had spawned beside my trade depot. Since they were so close already, the drawbridge that separated the depot and the fortress failed to raise in time, and they happily ravaged the inside of my fortress. Prompting the dwarves inside to run outside to the top of my fortress, an area outside the burrow, where they were quickly shot by the two squads of goblin archers that stood around locked outside the wall of my fortress. Another squad of trolls ran into the drowning trap at my gate. Then I discovered a problem. Trolls have no problem with swimming. They simply swam into the almost completed reservoir and climbed out trough the last hole in the ceiling, into my fortress. My military managed to kill all but one of the trolls inside the fortress, in the process dying of terminal stupidity. Noteworthy was my Hammerdwarf/Marksdwarf military commander. Equipped with shield, silver war-hammer and bone crossbow, he refused to shoot at a troll. Instead of taking shield and war-hammer, he firmly held his crossbow with both hands and beat the troll while the troll transformed him into a bloody mess. Alas so many dwarves had died at the trolls hand that the fortress descended into a tantrum spiral. In the meantime, the last troll ran around hitting everything within sight and being attacked by all animals and berserk dwarves, he was bruised all over but sustained no dangerous injuries. Amid all this a single miserable legendary engraver was running along the walls, masterfully sketching every gruesome detail of what happened into the rock, recorded for a future visitor.

Inventions

Dwarven Washer Reactor

A variation on the Dwarven Water Reactor. Delivers less power than a DWR but it is safer for dwarves, especially the part that gets drained by the pump.
Note: lower z-level must be build (partially) into an aquifer, preferably with only the northern part (when oriented as shown in the diagram) in the aquifer.

Based on:

• Aquifers absorb water
• Behaviour of pressure's lazy model when using underflows.

This guarantees that while the northern part is always pretty dangerous up to 7/7 flowing water on the upper z-level, the southern part will, even when not being drained, never fill beyond 7/7 on the lower z-level. Because the southern part is constantly being drained by the pump, the water level is fairly low on that side. Any dwarf that falls or walks into the washer will be washed and flushed to the southern low water zone. If you normally channelled out the lower level, as you should do to dig into an aquifer, they can then use the ramps to climb to the southern floor on the upper z-level which is connected to your fortress. Because the water level of the southern part is dependent on the amount of drain the pump provides, this system becomes more safe when multiple pumps and wheels are placed alternating, creating a larger washer.

Bonus: Designate the southern lower z-level as a meeting zone to automatically clean your dwarves and train their swimming skill.

  Upper        Lower         Key:
  Level        Level

  #####        #####      %    = Screw Pump
  #~~~#        #~#~#      +    = Floor
  ##%##        #~#~#      W    = Water Wheel
  #W%W#        #~#~#      *    = Gear Assembly 
  #W*W#        #~~~#      #    = Wall 
  #W W#        #~~~#
  #+++#        #####