What a day.
Since Wallbones is no longer in immediate mortal danger, I've thought about the ASCII vs tiles thing and come to a conclusion. As a matter of better presentation, I'll switch to Ironhand's tile pack from this point forward. Unless there's an absolute uproar over it (which I don't anticipate in the slightest).
So here we are, picking up from last time. It's still going to take me a while to adapt, but I'll bear with it for my audience.
I'm not at all keen on making luxuries at this stage, but Wallbones' mayor simply won't be happy until he gets 'proper' housing arrangements. Our current tantrumer, Mr. Febthob, is not the mayor. Nerves are frayed, but things should definitely start improving.
*Sigh*. At least he didn't go berserk. Down to 9 dwarves now.
Can't even go four minutes without tripping across a god-forsaken AMBUSH! FFFFFFFF. Oh yeah, I'm building a stone palisade around the pile of seized goods so we can at least hold those supplies for the time being. For some reason, the caravan pack animals and the guards won't leave. Good for us- they can chase off these kobolds.
Two of our dwarves take hits. Their wounds aren't serious, but they need to be cleaned pronto. Unfortunately, I'm near certain that the surface is no longer safe. Like even a litte.
Seeing the need for water, and the fact that I mis-judged the food situation a bit (we're not going to starve, relax- supplies are just lean)- I order a new well dug out. This one can actually be refilled with clean, clear brook water. Since the fortress is below the level of the brook, an actuated floodgate system is needed to manage the flow. Our mason is also a modestly skilled mechanic, and I set him to work.
Oh, good! We can hock some of the war scraps left around the fort for supp...
Goddamnit. Just.... goddamnit.
The elven caravan is dispatched in very short order. As the goblins march on Wallbones' stone palisade, a sneaking suspicion suggests that I should wall off our surface access.
Walling completed.
And not a moment too soon. Trolls are a common sight in mid- to late-game golbin seiges. Rather than spewing inflammatory comments over the internet, these trolls prefer to be a little more direct. Trolls love smashing up dwarves and buildings- these powerful building destroyers will happily bust down doors and open paths for their comrades. Too bad they'll do no such harm to us.
Verily, **** the surface. We can still get fungus growth on exposed subterranean dirt, and we still need new farms anyways, so I direct our cadre of novice miners to hollow out a large soil area.
It's a massacre outside. The trolls bust down the palisade doors, and the caravan has no chance against the seige. I think they managed to kill one or two gobbos. The remainder of the seige absolutely can't get in, but they aren't leaving any time soon. They'll camp out by the fort for a few months, and eventually they'll get bored and leave.
Remember when I used to get bent out of shape over births? Haha, those were the days. As of now, children may very well be our only chance at population growth. Also, not the large amount of job cancellation spam- our injured dwarves *are* OK, but without any wound dressings, the doctor I've assigned won't let them leave the hospital. I over-estimated the available resources from the trolled caravan; apparently there was zero cloth in that big pile of trade goods. Since we have only Plump Helmet and Dimple Cup seeds, it'll be really difficult to get some thread-bearing Pig Tail plants. There's a chance that dirt tiles will spawn usable plants, and Pig Tails are a possible spawn.
So, the insane dwarf finally died. Interesting note- the new baby's mother is currently in the hospital and can't properly take care of him. So the baby is just randomly bumbling around the fort, more or less fending for himself. If he matures before his mom gets out of the infirmary, he's going to be one tough kid.
So.... apparently some ghosts are malicious. Like this disgruntled former Marksdwarf who decided to kill our current star Mason. Ghosts have been floating around Wallbones Mk2 for a while, but they haven't really done much. This changes everything! These ghosts must be eradicated!
...by laying them to rest. Since there's no way in all the hells that I could recover and bury their remains, I order a number of Memorial Slabs made. At the very least this will let us quickly put down any dwarves that get uppity with their afterlives.
An unknown dwarf from Old Wallbones has come back as a smartass poltergeist. Since I don't know just WHO has decided to not stay dead, I can't specifically make a memorial for them. Of course, I could just make memorial slabs for all the 150 dwarves of Old Wallbones so we'll never need to deal with their cranky spirits again, but we don't really have the spare manpower for such a task.
Instead, I prioritize those that are known to have returned. Ah well. There's only so much we can do with fvie able-bodied dwarves.
(sigh) Make it *four*. In the process of digging out an indoor fishing pond, a section of floor fell loose, taking the mayor with it. As you can see, the mayor has a massive lower spine injury. From this point forward, he's going to be paraplegic, and infirmary-stuck for the immediate future. He can potentially return as a useful worker since he still has both hands, but he's going to have some quality-of-life issues even after getting put back together. Stupid and wasteful- I should have been more careful when designating the dig job.
Another child! At least this one's mother is healthy and can take care of the little tyke. And in just ten short in-game years, we'll have another able-bodied adult! (Ten in-game years is a long time! All of Wallbones' history is less than five!)
This is why we don't go outside anymore. Human caravan shows up, they get upset that our Trade Depot is still smashed by trolls. Less than a minute after I re-open Wallbones Mk2 to the outside world, two friggin' gobbo ambush squads appear.
....Aaaaand of course, one of our VERY limited dwarves is off prancing around on the surface trying to collect some pointless irrelevant object from the other side of the map. We're now down to THREE able-bodied dwarves.
Despite the incomprehensible nightmare that is Wallbones' recent happenings, a group of migrants arrives. While a gobbo kill squad is still on the map. I figure these migrants miiiiight have a chance at killing the gobbos. I mean, if they do, I'll let the surviving migrants in, since it'll be a relatively safe time to do so.
Silly me- the new migrants all die.
Here's our current roster. I'd give just about anything for a Pig Tail plant and/or some seeds so I could finally get the injured dwarves back on their feet. I did see a soil tile spawn a Pig Tail plant, but the dwarf I sent to pick the plant blew the skill roll and came back empty-handed. Frustrating, but we have all the time in the world. Everybody's doing OK mood-wise, and it's not difficult to feed only nine dwarves.
We're still scraping by, but not by much. Oh, and regarding requests for reincarnation- I don't think this would be a particularly fair time to honor those requests. Perhaps later when we have healthier population numbers.
So Hard Light, are we having !!FUN!! yet?
