IronBeer's got a little something for all the good girls and boys of Hard Light's GamDisc! That's right, a brand-new bigass update on the status of Wallbones! This will be a pretty monster post, but I assure all involved that you'll want to read this whole thing! With no further ado, let's get into it!
Work continues on the seemingly Sisyphean task of memorializing all the dwarves slain in our vicinity. It may not be obvious, but Wallbones' workers are actually making some significant progress against the list of the dead now.
****! ARGH! DAMNIT DAMNIT DAMNIT! (Snarlsigh....) Grar. Wasteful and needless. Part of the Gravity Blender design necessitates a staircase running the height of the device, all the way down. Stair tiles can be constructed like walls or floors, but they can also be built from above (i.e. from an overhanging stair tile with no other support). Dwarf Fortress decided to forget this fact- a tile was being constructed from above as some other workers were digging out the floor beneath it, and the stair tile decided to drop.
Two other dwarves were killed in the accident as well, and all of the miners at the site suffered work-stopping injuries.
Patching-up took a while to start, mostly because I forgot that we didn't have an assigned Suturer yet. Now we do.
Oh boy, a mood.
The goblin siege finally decided to piss right off. Excellent news- there's a minor construction project I couldn't start with those idiots ****ting up our beautiful countryside.
First, I have to build a leather works for our current moody craftsdwarf.
And he gets right to work, how pleasant.
EPIC LEATHER PANTS!
As the EPIC LEATHER PANTS were being crafted, I had the second-line and serviceable first-line miners dig out a small alcove in a sandy area.
Oh look, babies. To think I used to hate babies being born. Well, I still hate the interruption factor, but we definitely need the population.
Since the gobbos are gone, I take an opportunity to scavenge some resources from the surface. Among a few other things, I manage to find a few bags of surface plantseeds. Wallbones' workers grab the seeds and a the few splinters of wood still available.
Just in case the previous screencap didn't make it clear, we had another child born.
Ok, so here's one of several cases where Dwarf Fortress' wonky simulation quirks works in our favor. New Wallbones can't recover seeds for several dwarven staple crops because of gamespace saturation. (Remember this, this is actually a serious problem!) There are many types of surface plants that we can grow, and none of those plants even have seasonal restrictions on them! But you'd think that these plants would need to grow on the surface, near the sun's warmth?
You'd be half-right. Surface plants do need a "lighted" tile, but they don't need to be on the surface. And there's a funny thing about "lighted" tiles- once they're exposed to sunlight, they count as "lighted" forever after. Here we see workers building a roof over that alcove I had dug out a few screencaps ago. The roof will keep hostile arrows out, but let our farmers grow delicious surface crops in the safety of our fort!
A side benefit of this project- a long-dead caravan pack animal falls into our domain during the project. It carries a number of useful goods, which we shall claim at our leisure.
Excellent. We still need to replenish our ranks. The newcomers rapidly scamper to the safety of our tunnels.
Shortly after our newcomers start getting settled in, some elves drop by, wanting to trade.
And an all-too-familiar screen follows them about thirty seconds behind.
We wall ourselves in, and try to block out the sounds of battle and goblin occupation.
Wallbones' craftsdwarves really have made progress. The "master list" for deciding the order of potential memorial subjects appears to be in reverse order of death. Most of our named dwarves perished early in the First Sack, so we're getting close-ish to the end of the list.
Oho? What have we now?
He gets right to work.
A rather plain, but exceptionally-crafted mica crown. What's not to love?
And now, out of friggin' nowhere, I begin taking actions to solve our seed saturation problem. The solution to that problem? Kill the Cobrabeast that STILL haunts Old Wallbones, and start pulling supplies from the still-intact stockpiles there.
I want to minimize risks, so that means the solution will require a lot of work and dwarfy engineering. It's anything but obvious here, but I'm planning on building a king-size rockfall trap to kill the beast. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING in Dwarf Fortress can survive a cave-in, and this time, I've actually got a well-planned design and scheme to go along with it.
FFFFFF. No big deal, I'll just shift where we're putting the trap by a small amount.
Consider the oh-so-eager-to-kill goblin army outside our walls. So close, and yet so, so far. This area will be the top of the trap.
Cave-ins only occur if a tile or block of tiles become completely orthogonally detached from the larger mass. Mass of the block doesn't matter, so I'm going to dig out a big stone pancake and have it held up by a single support. I'll draw the beast in, have another dwarf break the support via lever a safe distance away, and KER-SPLAT! ...at least, that's the plan. And we all know just how well my plans work. This one's got solid fundamentals at least, I promise!
Dig, dig, dig....
Luuuuurvely. Whatever, we're busy.
And this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. This level will be loaded up with retracting bridges and a series of wall baffles to ensure beast entrapment. Some brave SoB is going to need to dig into Old Wallbones, get the Cobrabeast's attention, lead it back here, and (ideally) get out of the kill area in time for the beast to get trapped. More likely said SoB is going to need to go down with the beast. We'll see, however.
Excellent, more migrants. This puts our population back at around 50.
We're out of food. How did we run out of food. Ok, this *is* bad, and really drives home the need to reclaim the old fort. However, I do have a minimal grasp on this problem. The plants that we can grow have been steadily processed into cooking-ready materials. I conscript all the qualified cooks in Wallbones and build an extra kitchen. Cave Wheat Flour biscuits may not be the tastiest food ever, but they sure beat starving.
Oh teh noes. Something's messing with the levers in Old Wallbones. No matter.
Oh, goody. Dwarven caravan. Our surface trade depot got wrecked by the last group of gobbos and trolls, so these guys are SoL.
Progress on the deathchamber. The bridges are setup such that if they retract while the Cobrabeast is still on them, the beast will fall to the lower level and be trapped. Unsupported floors provide no protection against cave-ins, so we'll still be able to crush the accursed thing.
I forgot about the new trade depot. The footslogging merchants barge through New Wallbones to reach the new trade depot. If I can't step up food production, we'll be circling the drain really soon. I hock all the valuables we still have (aka scaveneged from other unfortunate caravans) in exchange for all the food this caravan carries. I don't even care that I'm "wasting" a lot of trading potential- this might be the only caravan that reaches us for a long time.
Kay. Another mood. Starting to get a little trite now, and that's kinda sad.
Ironically, a bed's "comfort" is dictated by its value. A marble bed would be fit for a king.
A couple of goblin childsnatchers are chased out of the fort, but the snatchers are only a prelude to an ambush! Only one dwarf gets caught on the surface... unfortunately it's the most-skilled grower in the fort! Goddamnit. (Sigh) We can survive without him. With the food from the caravan, we'll have time to train up a replacement.
It's almost time. I now direct our workers to begin disconnecting the "kill block" from the surrounding stone. A lone support in the middle of this block will hold it up, and a lever in the safety of Wallbones will detach that support when the time comes.
The next level down. The channeling and isolating continues.
I choose a volunteer to dig into Old Wallbones and provoke the Cobrabeast. Ilral here will not be expected to kill the beast- he will get the beast's attention, then flee like wildfire back to Wallbones proper. The moment of truth approaches.
I pre-designated digging jobs to break into Old Wallbones, and set up a special "suicide" burrow to access them. Ilral will be on his own from this point forward.
He begins working. I ignore whatever other distractions may be going on- nobody's hurt or mooding, we have food and booze, and a group of migrants is getting killed on the surface because I can't/won't evict the goblin ambush squad. We have bigger game to kill at the moment.
My original plan hinged on the beast going aggro as soon as a path the New Wallbones became available. That didn't happen. Ilral stalks closer to the ugly beast, trying to get its attention....
....and he does, in the worst possible way. Ilral panicked, and didn't run straight back home. The beast caught him, and slew him.
The smug, ugly bastard doesn't press on, however. It could be something to do with the widespread and critical injuries it's suffered. This is interesting to me- I didn't realize the Cobrabeast had suffered that badly from its wound infections. Either way, that thing's still a mortal threat to the fort. I'm going to take another crack at the "bait" strategy. I conscript a fast-looking dwarf into a military position- maybe the military AI will work better.
It doesn't, unfortunately. Volunteer #2 moves just like I tell him to, but he doesn't disengage. The nutty gung-ho beardman attacks the beast with his bare hands! For a while, it looks like the volunteer might actually manage to defeat the Scourge of Wallbones, but his strength ultimately proves insufficient. Volunteer #2 didn't die in vain- while he didn't do much real injury to the beast, he revealed that the beast is much weaker than it used to be. Since the beast is staying passive even with a nice path into the heart of New Wallbones, I decide to try another tactic- one that I normally wouldn't consider.
Direct confrontation. While I haven't managed to scavenge any dwarf-sized armor, we do have a small number of decent weapons available, not the least of which is the deadly artifact spear Okilitred. I find six dwarves with military skills and match them to their best weapons, and march them into the festering heart of Old Wallbones...
...and the beast falls. And the beast falls! AND THE BEAST FALLS!
The fight wasn't terribly exciting- everybody just jumped on the Cobrabeast and started stabbing/slashing/chopping the crap out of it. One brave soldier did suffer significant injuries, and I can't tell who got the killing blow despite reviewing the combat logs extensively. But, we are free! We walk knee-deep in the dead, but we are free of the Cobrabeast's reign of terror!
We will endure.
