Back at it. I'll start by saying that this is a content-light update despite taking a lot of time to run- I'll explain shortly.
So with the beast dead, Scotty's miner corps gets right to digging the gravity blender pit even deeper. And it suddenly becomes obvious why the pit was originally left at its earlier depth. It may not be terribly obvious from this screencap, but digging down on broken terrain like this is very time-consuiming and tedious. Because of cave-in risks, I have to make channel (dig down) deisgnations one strip of tiles at a time and wait for that whole strip to be excavated before marking the next strip. Dwarves being dwarves, all possible workers will descend upon a relatively small work area, each at their own pace. Nonetheless, I push on.
A human trading caravan shows up within a few minutes.
And like clockwork, a smelly Kobold ambush follows.
With some friends. I don't recall if I've posted any shots showing the "depot airlock" in action, so here we are. Basically, the Trade Depot is sandwiched between two sets of drawbridges, and the bridges cross over simple pits. Although some monsters can destroy buildings (like bridges), and some can also fly, no monsters are smart enough to combine those talents, so this is about as safe a front door as you can build.
As we do business with the traders (god-tier food for shiny things), a mook Digger suddenly gets rather shifty.
Badass cabinet. Made from wood to stick it to the elves, and decorated with some leather from that forgotten beast, among other dwarfy things.
Whoops. Looks like I forgot about the merchants for a bit too long. Fortunately, none of Peakwind's citizens were anywhere near that mess. Some merchants started killing each other, a couple others started babbling strange things, and I cycled the airlock and hastily bid the survivors farewell.
Stupid ghosts.... at least this guy doesn't cause any mayhem. The spirit in question is an old caravan guard who probably died to an ambush. Trouble is, he's not listed as a vaild subject for a memorial slab. Meaning, if I want to put his ghost down, I'll need to find his body and bury it.
Through some clever use of the "stocks" screen, you can locate individual corpses and... I won't be recovering that guy's bones any time soon. With the gravity blender unusable due to renovations, we'll just have to sit out this seige in our impenetrable fort. Oh well.
Nope. Still no idea what happened here. I don't think it was a vampire, since the guy's corpse would have been described as "drained of blood", and ghost shenanigans are always announced. Strange.
Apparently goblin sieges spur creativity.
Good. Artifact furniture is nice and all, but you know what I'd really like to see? Some artifact arms and armor or furniture made from gold. But your stonework is nice too.
Well, it was pretty much bound to happen. Despite my caution, a cave-in managed to happen somehow. Caiaphas and another mook miner are badly hurt, but will survive. Right after the cave-in occurred, I tried to reconstruct exactly what had happened, but I was never able to figure out exactly where the problem area was. Even so, I slow down even more, and mark excavation areas with even greater care, checking and double-checking tile connections and support.
**** just got real. A dragon has come a-knocking. I really don't want to play with her, but none of Peakwind's automated defenses will actually kill her. I hope I'm right about flying building destroyers not being smart enough to combine those skills.
This might be a good time to point out a couple of things. I mentioned at some very early point (if not on this LP), that I'm running with some modifications to dragons: they have a "classical" dragon morphology with wings and grasping claws, I made them "intelligent learners", and gave them a greater variety of eye/scale colors. Also note the dragon's procedral name: "Osna Brandflame the Spark of Heating". That's surprisingly coherent for a DF-generated name!
A human caravan shows up shortly after Osna does, and I ready some popcorn. What happens next astounds me.
Osna gets her scaly ass kicked back into the Age of Myth. At first I thought a couple crossbow troopers got lucky, but digging through the combat logs revealed the truth. A lone lashwoman. For those who aren't familiar with DF's weapon damage system, know this: blunt weapon damage is a function of "impact area", material density, and "impact speed". A whip made of silver has very small impact area (focuses force), high material density (greater base force), and a very high impact speed (light overall weapon), and naturally counts as a "blunt weapon". The thing would better be qualified as some kind of sci-fi monofilament blade. Despite wielding a NO-QUALITY silver lash, that lashwoman (whose name I forgot to note) all but soloed Osna, delivering a crippling strike with every solid hit!
Before anybody asks, I did try to recover Osna's corpse for dragon roast and dragonskin armor. Nobody tried to collect it. Sorry.
Moved by the lashwoman's display of over-the-top badassery, I decide the caravan survivors have earned the right to trade. We make what is becoming a classical exchange ("****cooking" for shiny things: gems, metal, etc), and bid farewell.
They then get jumped by a goblin ambush squad fifty yards from our front door. Trouble is, some of Peakwind's citizens were outside at the time since I figured the Dragon would have kept gobbo jackholes away. Not so! Mura in particular got hit with bad luck. He took a goblin arrow and passed out- I thought for sure he was doomed, but elsewhere in the skirmish the goblins got pwned and decided to fall back. Another dwarf dragged Mura back safely inside- this is why we wear armor, kids!
And THIS is what the miners are dealing with right now. Multiple "spires" of rock that need to be ground down to nothing, and some walls that need to be built to enclose the area. With about 5-to-6 or so z-levels left to go. This will be a tedious, nerve-shredding test of patience. Compare to, say, Minecraft where a miner could just hop onto the top of a spire and dig it all down in one pass. Dwarves lack both the intelligence and focus to work so efficiently. Ah well.
Speaking of dwarves, I finally got around to some recruitment/reincarnation requests. First, from IRC is qazwsx as a Weaponcrafter.
Hobbie's back as a child who unfortunately has no actual relation to Hobbie. So it goes.
FireSpawn has respawned as her oldest son.
redsniper also apparently never married, so I grab a random child and christen him reddersniper. Back in the game.
I do something similar with NuScourge; gotta say I was surprised at how many of the Fallen didn't actually have families!
Litany of the Fallen:
Scourgeson, slain by a goblin ambush
Polpolionson, drowned after falling through melting ice (body unrecoverable)
redsniperson, slain by a crazed fellow dwarf
Borin "Balrogbait", died of old age
Hobbie, slain by a goblin swordsman
Kobrarson, slain by a fellow dwarf with anger management problems