Update!
And the reclamation begins. Food and drink stores have been pillaged a bit by wandering wildlife, but there should still be a ton of munchables left.
Crap. We had a mason Mood during the whole trap construction saga. I thought we could resolve the situation before something bad happened, but I guess I was wrong.
And another dwarf snaps. ....I'm now a little worried about the situation. I've heard stories about tantrum spirals- I'm not sure if we're in danger of one, but two insanities back-to-back like this can't be good.
Know what else isn't good? A minotaur who wants to say 'hi'. Dumbass is stuck on the surface, just like the last 500-ish invaders. Get in line, chump!
Oh hey, what else is new? Migrants getting slaughtered helplessly by goblin killsquads? MY FAVORITE.
Except this time the goblins do something useful for me and kill off the minotaur. I'll add this little favor to my logbook, but it sure as hell doesn't excuse any of the headaches goblins have caused in the past.
Start trying to centralize all the readily accessible dead, get organized and get a grip on how big the Mortuary project will be.
More migrants. Shame for them I can't/won't help them out.
Well, crap. A Fell Mood is a special Mood- only really unhappy dwarves are eligible for it. The Mooding dwarf will claim a butcher's shop, murder the nearest dwarf, and make an artifact out of the victim's remains. At least we get a Legendary skill out of it.
Well, how about that? He made something useful out of his victim- a crossbow made of dwarf bones.
And apparently that's exactly how you motivate your voting base, because Erib Bundy over here got elected to be mayor right after unveiling his creation.
A trade caravan arrives. As I let them in, some shell-shocked migrant survivors slip in as well. Apparently that bunch managed to simply wait out the goblin killsquads and managed to survive.
Oh this is really bad how did this happen ************. The recent three deaths have seriously dragged down the morale of the fort, and at the moment most dwarves are pretty seriously pissy. Pissy dwarves I can handle, its...
...trollish violent dwarf ghosts appearing at this tense time I don't like. Once again, the term "battered" doesn't really fit- the victim neatly lost a hand.
.....aaaaand here comes the tantrum spiral. **** me, we were doing so well.
Basically, a tantrum spiral happens when most of the dwarves in a fort are friends with each other. The death of one dwarf will make many others in the fort unhappy, and already-unhappy or less-stable dwarves may be pushed over the edge to throwing tantrums or even insanity by that. Tantruming dwarves can start fights and accidentally kill other dwarves, and insane dwarves might go berserk. Mind you, everybody's still friends with everybody here, so the effects accumulate rapidly. Like we're seeing right now.
The situation deteriorates RAPIDLY. Before long, a significant fraction of the fortress is nigh-permanently tantruming, another fraction's gone insane, and a strong minerdwarf has just gone berserk. Dwarves are starting to die at an alarming rate, and almost everybody's really, really miserable.
In desperation, I identify the few dwarves that aren't contemplating suicide or murder, and try to herd them into Old Wallbones. All the food and booze has already been lifted from there, but there are a lot of shrubs and building materials available. If I can get a small, non-emo squad of dwarves safely over there, we might be able to wait out the self-inflicted carnage in the New Fort.
Long story short, it doesn't really work. Sanity starts to leave the fort with great rapidity, and the dwarves that did manage to get to Old Wallbones seem unable to really do anything productive.
The violence slows down in the New Fort, but now about half (I think) the fort is harmlessly insane. I order food and drink prepared for the survivors, but Dwarf Fortress refuses to believe that I have the necessary materials.
I'll be blunt: I think we're screwed. Further bluntness: I stopped enjoying this LP about the same time the Cobrabeast killed everybody, and I'm not really in the mood to go through another period of scraping by. Nevermind the fact that all the dwarves have apparently forgotten how to eat or drink (yes this happened, I think something that I can't diagnose has bugged, so we're more than likely totally hosed anyways).
I hate to yank y'all around like this, but this *is* how things went down. The "named-dwarf" initiative is presently on hold since I don't think it would be much fun to have somebody's dwarf go for about 30 seconds before getting killed or going insane. The game *is* currently saved, but unless there's a pretty serious outcry to keep going, I'm gonna call this a wrap.
