User:GhostDwemer/CityLions

The Story So Far

Nestled in a beautiful tropical high mountain valley, the Fortress of CityLions was founded in the spring of 1051 by the Holy Barricade of the Infinite Urns. Zefon Rithuthir, the expedition leader, was suited to the job, being strong, tough, agile, quick to heal, (but quick to tire) overindulges occasionally, can handle stress, open minded, candid and sincere, strives for excellence, great focus and willpower (but little linguistic ability. He had all the necessary leadership skills, a bit of combat skills, and no weird likes or dislikes, perfect for nobility later.

The fort focused on efficiency and timing, doing the most important things first, the things that would pay off later, and skimping on the things that could wait. The dwarves dug a large farming area under the loamy soil of the valley floor, next to the winding brook that snaked diagonally down the middle of the valley. They all agreed that the valley was beautiful and natural and did not look constructed out of great square blocks at all. And it was full of limestone, coal, and iron, great swathes of it exposed along the valley sides.

The dwarves built a basic set of four workshops a level down: mechanics, jeweler, mason and carpenter. Below that went a kitchen complex and dining area, and then a shaft down to z-level 9, where the living quarters were well away from any wood cutting noise in the thick evergreen forest above. The entire limestone layer was riddled with coal and iron, so much that they just left it in the walls of the living quarters without worrying about having enough to smelt. Initial immigrants trickled in, bringing the fortress up to eighteen by fall. Dwarves seemed inspired by the natural beauty to settle down and marry, with three marriages in the first year.

Poor but happy, the dwarves of City Lions welcomed their first caravan with open arms, buying up all the alcohol and food. Soon, they wouldn't have to worry about food anymore, the farming was coming along great, the brook proved full of fish, and the valley was home to a plethora of timid and delicious wildlife. But that first winter, they all worried about having enough variety in booze, and were starting to get sick of wine. Next spring and summer, with the food situation stabilized, less farming time was given to the plump helmet and more to the other brewables.

The main hall was designed with cage traps and a bridge to seal it at the end. A bypass tunnel full of cage traps then lead past the barracks to a defenseless kitten on a rope. Outside, the entire entry area was enclosed in a field of cage traps. "We'll catch those bastards, disarm 'em and let them loose amongst our recruits. But we'll leave them their armor, to draw out the inevitable. Let them suffer before they die, and don't make it quick," said Zefon. This strategy proved quite effective during the first raid, which came in the summer of 52 along with the well defended human caravan. The humans fought well, killing five and losing only one guard, for which the dwarves willingly paid a blood price in offerings. One human swordsman in particular was just a whirlwind of death, suffering only the loss of his pinky toenail before tossing his last unfortunate foe into a murky pond. This pond was later drained into a goblin holding cave next to the barracks. Not to kill them, they were placed there later after the water dried, but to give them some rotting goblin parts and drying blood to look at while they awaited their executions. It seemed the last goblin's leg had entered the pool separately.

Eight goblins were caught during that raid, with only one fatality, a wood cutter who panicked and refused to run towards the emergency warren nearby, instead running in pointless circles. Some warriors suffered minor injuries when the hidden bowmen showed up while they were guarding the entrance and one overzealous dwarf ran out to attack, but the commander quickly turned this suicide charge by one into an effective charge by twenty. The commander's careful training plan paid off as well.

Having had a little time to spare, the militia had been ordered to train up without weapons, and then without crossbows. This focused them on defense and melee primarily, and they defended well. Steel weapons and armor, as always, never hurt. Maces and hammer proved quite effective against the goblin foe, smashing heads, spines, and guts apart through armor with ease. The swords dwarves lopped off a few limbs and bisected one unfortunate. Fleeing goblins were shot and immobilized before being speared in the head. Only one managed to flee to tell the tale, and eight were captured, including two snatchers discovered inside the outer defenses.

A strange mood led to a wonderful discovery, although the possessed fellow did not get his thread in time (the fortress entire supply having been used up patching up the cuts incurred in the raid) the attempt to breach the caverns and find some spider silk led to the discover of a convenient magma pool. Priority of work was quickly switched to building a magma complex complete with living quarters, kitchen and dining area, storage areas, and basic workshops. The lower warren would be completely self contained if necessary, with duplicates of all industry save farming related.

More cave wheat farms were built, and a lovely covered water wheel installed to power millstones which began to produce dwarven flour. A Mayoral complex was built on the lower level when the citizens elected a gregarious immigrant as mayor. The huge mined out magnetite deposit was flooded briefly to encourage an underground forest to grow. Finally, in the winter of 53, all of Zefon's hard work and patience paid off, and he was made Baron of CityLions.

I really haven't kept up with the day to day notes, or outlined the overall development the way I planned to. Oh well. This fortress has been just enchanting, so cool, lots of good dwarves. It has almost everything. I've tried all the industries and set up some cool production lines, finally getting farming down, raising animals, making milk and cheese, dyes, flour, syrup, sugar, making leather. Decorating captured goods using green glass to make them 'ours.' Good engravers overall, one guy very interested in early history, one guy who does stuff about our fort a lot. Several guys who are good, but pretty random. Lots of topical statues, stuff that happened in the fort. A death due to a failed strange mood. A newly legendary clothier falls to Goblins because he runs past the emergency hatch. One abduction. Raids, raids, raids, with no deaths on our side. Sieges, getting worse as time goes on. We kill them all with ease. Zefon becomes baron, then count. Then the people elect him mayor, too. And make tons of statues of him. Adamantine, praise the miners! We dig out a lot. I go back in time a season to save Lolor, and knowing that, sans magma to fall into, we will kick Forgotten Beast butt, I breach the caverns they are in with my squads in a room right behind. The water beast is ludicrously easy to kill, severed limbs flying everywhere because, uh, it's made out of water. The salt beast requires lengthy hacking with adamantine weapons, but falls without so much as scratching any of my dwarfs. With the beasts gone, I drain a small section of the lower caverns to enable the mining of significantly more admantine. Hopefully, a cave in will allow me to seal off more of the water and drain it. I've made over 100 adamantine items, mostly armor, but some spears as well. I figure that spears, being thrust impaling weapons, would benefit the most from being made out of adamantine, and so far, I think I'm right. The weight shouldn't matter for a thrust weapon, like it might for a swung weapon. Fighting the salt beast was a good test, they took off its limbs in no time, and eventually severed its top half from its bottom :). That kills anything, I think.

The World of Ramul Alu

Just some notes about the world where Citylions calls home. The map is custom made using GIMP and Perfect World and is a 257 by 257 island, with about half land, half water. It's kind of Z shaped. The wind comes from the northeast. The south is cold. There are lots of forests on the windward side, where it is VERY rainy. Drainage is better than average overall, and I mixed up the volcanism so there are nice patches of volcanic and non volcanic biomes near the mountains, with good drainage. So it is fairly easy to find a site like I did, with a high volcanism biome next to a low volcanism sedimentary one. A quick scout found at least a dozen good sites, I picked one near a big, powerful looking dwarven civ, close to elves and humans, and pretty far from goblins.

• Our civilization is called The Infinite Urns. We were the first people. Literally, the first line in the chronology: In 1, the Dwarf Aban Gemeagle become the queen of The Infinite Urns. She was killed by a dragon three years later.
• We haven't been at war for 500 years. We really are a peaceful folk. But we didn't used to be, we were badasses before that, our history is a series of attacked... defeated... lines. After 441... nothing but a series of kings, queens, and generals up to 1050, when Citylions is founded and quickly becomes the target of numerous attacks. This means the context of the stories I'm writing is correct, Lolor would respect craftsdwarves more than warriors. I mean, after over 600 years of peace, you'd think finally getting attacked again would come as a shock to the whole civ.
• Everyone else, it seems, gets their kicks attacking one particular goblin fortress, Hexcrows. It has been raided over 2,400 times, and sacked nearly 900 times, by dwarfs, elves, and humans. Wow. Now I know why goblins are psychotic.

Notes

Oh, this site is beautiful. It has everything, even the easy magma I thought it wouldn't. Everything is going right, even getting a barony! We've had a normal amount of ambushes so far, but what we haven't had is any kind of giant critters. Maybe I should look more carefully at the Perfect World settings, I think it has its own ideas about the default number of titans/megabeasts/demons, which are lower than the regular settings. It's 54, we have 105 dorfs, and we have lost one dorf to Goblins, and another to a strange mood and a lack of thread. Two dorfs in five years, wow, unheard of for me. The Field of Traps is working, Gobbos make it to the entry tunnel, get spotted, and immediately trapped. The archer's towers work pretty well, too. We are a county now, using a warren to get the leader into his rooms with a stockpile of food and drink, and locking the doors as soon as the liaison shows up, it works pretty well. As my leader is also the bookkeeper, I just boost the settings to highest accuracy for a while to give him something to do.

The Count was just elected mayor, hehe. Half the statues the masons have made recently are of him. Zefon admiring a splint. Zefon being made expedition leader. Zefon being made baron. Zefon annoyed by flies. His people love him, what can I say?

Not Lolor!

Well I had a situation. A dwarf in a strange mood needed spider silk cloth, and I had just used up the last of mine. There were some spider webs on the edge of the magma tube. So against better judgment (it was a fey mood for stonecrafting, a legendary stonecrafter is pretty nice.) I breached my lower defenses into the rim of the tube. It was sealed up, things could only get in from the lava. What I did not notice was the single slope down in the far corner. The two forgotten beasts in the caverns, a salt monster and a water monster, started pathing towards it immediately. The first I knew of it was "Dwarven child cancels drink: interrupted by forgotten beast. It turns out two kids had slipped into the cave. One of them got smashed into the magma right away. The other fled deeper into the caverns, towards the water beast. My *steel door* held the first beast long enough for the militia to arrive. And who was first one the scene, again? Lolor, my bets militia captain. He fought bravely, and would have survived, had he not been thrown into the lava. The salt monster required complete hacking to pieces to kill. The water monster got in one swipe against a speardwarf with an adamantine spear, missed, and lost its head. Literally, a one hit kill against a forgotten beast. Monsters made of water, ooh, scary! Two forgotten beasts dead, and at least I can complete my plans to make the caver safe. But I lost Lolor. And about 80,000 in adamantine kit. I've never been more tempted to restore from a previous save.

A Slightly Less Pathetic Siege

This one had gobbos riding rutherers, cave crocs, and giant bats. Plus a particularly pathetic band of trolls: troll clothiers, troll farmers, sheesh. I bet the gobbos were like, "Look, just bash down the doors for us, we'll do the rest." My elite guards are so good now, the trolls didn't even lay a hand on their new adamantine. These goblin siegers seem easy to scare off, we took out the first wave with bolts, then slaughtered the trolls, and the rest hightailed it, except for two swordsgobs who had lost their crocs. They stayed by the edge of the screen until I sent the guards out to kill them. Kobold thief and goblin snatcher killed on the way out, another snatcher on the way back in.

Goblins and trolls zero, dorfs, about twenty. All told, in two sieges and a dozen ambushes, we have lost one legendary clothier, one recruit to an infected wound, and one kid snatched.

A Whirlwind of Death!

So I hit adamantine and had mined just enough for a full kit of armor for a full squad. Naturally, I used this opportunity to rearrange my military. The best got moved to the Guards and got the adamantine armor, other squads were adjusted. And that is when I realized that the Kitten Watch Post was unoccupied, and unthinkingly sent someone out to fit it with a new kitten. Realizing the poor dorf might get jumped, I sent my guards out. Changing uniforms, no one responded. I sent both my militia squads out. One dorf responded, my best militia captain.

In what follows, I can only suppose that the new 31.17 wrestling code made a HUGE difference. It was... awe inspiring. It read like something out of a freaking kung fu movie.

Because of course, the Gobbos were out there. The animal handler made a run for it, only a short way to the emergency hatch, aaaaaand right on by it in a panic. But never fear, anonymous animal handler, your militia captain is on the job. All by himself and surrounded by gobbos. I thought he was done for. And that was when Lolor Tusungdastot Rotik Okon, The Nettle of Burden (it even sounds kung-fu!) unleashed the sickest %*!^ I've ever witnessed in this game.

He beat the first gobbo to death with four blows of his steel crossbow. The next took one blow to the head and went down. Did I say he was alone? Two dogs are with him. Not wardogs, mind you, just two dogs waiting to be trained and following the animal handler out there. One goes down in an instant. The other earns a real name, Adil Uzolgigin. He plays interference beautifully.

And this is where it gets fun. Lolor gets knocked over but bites the gobbo on the toe. And rips it off. That gobbo runs for it. He doesn't make it. An axeman gets in a shot to the left arm, tearing muscle and bruising bone, but that barely slows Lolor down. He's back on the ground though. He leaps up and punches the axeman in both hands, one two, and shatters both his hands! The axeman makes a run for it. Lolor and the dog chase him to the edge of the screen. He hits the gobbo with a shot with his crossbow then, finally, as if getting bored, whips out his steel axe and finishes him off.

There was a gobbo crossbow squad around, too. I know this because they shoot at the poor kitten. Then they see Lolor deal with the melee squad by himself and they high tail it out of there. Wow. This fortress, it is not like others. Some dorfy god is surely smiling on it. I mean, I have seen similar situations before. They turned out much as you would expect them to. Dead militia dorf, dead dogs, dead kitten, dead animal handler. The kitten has a broken leg. The animal handler might have peed himself. Lolor has a nasty cut. I may have to unforbid soap, oh no.

Haha, the dread crossbow squad did not run off, they made a run for my bridge instead. And almost snuck in while I wasn't looking, but they were too slow. With an alert on, I had plenty of civilians right there by the levers, waiting to pull them. Both bridges retracted, dropping half the gobbos into the outer trash courtyard, where they make a run for the cage trap filled hall. One falls inside the inner courtyard, one is trapped on the wall. All quickly perish, or are caged.

The Pathetic Siege

Gobbos tried to siege me. Dorf caravan and diplomat had just shown up. They are on opposite corners of the map, it's a race! Militia, to the walls! Guards, to the bridge! Ah! A kobold thief! And a goblin snatcher! The gobbo stabs a merchant in the hand. The militia runs into the courtyard to deal with the obvious diversion, and the gobbos are upon us! Lead by a gobbo on a cave crocodile, flanked by spear-men lieutenants, and followed by a rabble of lashers, they advance on the fort. Back to the walls, lads! Guards, too, the merchants are inside.

Everyone gets onto the walls right as the gobbo leader and two spearmen come within range. They get a hail of bolts for leading from the front, crippling the leader in the left arm and right hand, and injuring the spearmen, and the croc. The whole mob begins to run off. I send everyone out to chase them off, the leader and his spearmen manage to recover a bit and limp off before we catch them.

Total effect of the siege: one merchant gets his hand cut. A gobbo snatcher gets killed, the leader and his henchmen get badly hurt. Pretty pathetic.

Plans

Okay, wow, I finally have a fortress I like and am not constantly embarrassed by. There is simply nothing that I look upon and go "Ah, crud. Wish I'd done THAT differently." Now I have over 100 happy dorfs, a county, a fairly skilled militia, and plenty of everything. I'm sitting on 200+ steel bars, this after fully equipping my military and creating a bunch of extra weapons and armor for sale. My food and drink situation is grand, I'm consistently selling the excess. I have a ton of married couples and kids, this is a happy fort! I feel comfortable that I now have a reasonably stable and productive fort in a realistic and pretty setting with no major regrets. So, what next?

• I've walled off a small area of the first cavern level. To do: wall off all the way up, to keep out that bats and swallows and stuff before someone gets killed by one. Extend the walled off area to cover all entrances into the first cavern level.
• I've got some simple towers near my entrance, but no unified structure. Build a nice entry building to impress the surface dwellers. Irregular spiky pyramid over entrance is nearly done.
• DONE: I muddied a mined out magnetite deposit and turned it into a park surrounded by noble dwellings. Make it nice: put in some paved roads (and high traffic areas), some nice statues, and some cages. Make it more than one z-level high.
• DONE: While the game considers my noble areas more than sufficient, I don't. Make them hella fancy.
• More architectural interest undergound. Spiraling ramps. Multi level dwellings. A street for the most highly skilled craftsdwarfs, each gets their own shop, with living quarters above. Make it two z-levels high, with windows looking down on the street from the housing.
• DONE:Explore the second cavern level.
• Set up a whole new fort, deep underground, surrounding the caverns and looking out into them. Wait until the cavern is totally secure from all threats including flying critters.
• I've not set up any kind of waterfall or reactor, and saved myself an extra 10FPS. Set one up, but leave it off for now. There is an edge connected pool in the second cavern level, an infinite water sink and source. Could use that.
• DONE:Create a well protected path from an edge to the depot, to protect those damn helpless elves. I am NOT sending my squads into danger to rescue your sorry elf-butts.
• Create more cave-in firewalls. Hook the two I've got up to levers for manual operation. Be able to seal off large portions of the fort if necessary.
• Boring stuff: get your piles in order! You always think you'll get around to this when you run out of actual fun things to do. Nope, get it set right with quality segregated piles. Get rid of those 'overflow' piles and make more and smaller specialist piles. Figure out refuse! How to actually use bones, horns, and the like.
• DONE: We've got the four staple crops going, including millstones for flour. Get sugar/syrup going. Get the dyes going.
• After setting up the protected above ground entry fort, get some above ground crops going.
• DONE: Make some proper sleeping & equipment storage barracks.