Fortress update

Its Autumn year 2 and the title fight for the Devilhalls championship wrestler belt has begun in the barracks, my 3 militiamen have become wrestlers and are duking it out.

I'll use this post to show what my fortress actually looks like now.

Below is Z-level 143, decidedly outside, that open space is my courtyard, and the bit below is the ex-pond with a sparring yard below, and an archery range above (plans for a tower have been devised)

Next is Z-level 142, the first level of my fortress containing all my food production and storage, trade depot, and military. That lever in the barracks is going to be attached to the bridge. That tunnel to the left leads to the limestone mine.

Next is floor 141, This contains all my main economy, that empty room on the left will be turned into a custom stockpile for gold ore, and changed as my metalsmith plows through it. 3 of the cages on the animal pile have monkeys in them. God knows what i'll do with them

The living quarters are on 140, the great hall and a bunch of bedrooms, more are being carved out, the luxurious quarters at the bottom are for the Peasant-turned-Book-keeper.

There are two levels of just up/down stairways (one of which some dwarf randomly dumped gold ore on) surrounded by alumite. Then we come to the fabled BASALT MINES OF DEVILHALLS.

Floor 137:

Floor 136: This is where that excellent gold seam is.

Everything below this is just stairs (one of which I discovered some gems as I was constructing) down to level 127 where I couldn't dig any further.

flux capacity

Its still early summer, and a human caravan has shown up, hope they brought weapons, especially crossbows.

As I was outside because of the human caravan message, I assign some more trees to be cut down to the north west, and realise, what's that white stone on the floor? LIMESTONE. What an idiot. It took me this long to realize I've had limestone right next to my entrance all this time and haven't even noticed.

Gah, So I sent my dwarves mining away below the surface, hopefully I'll find some iron ore too, unfortunately leading the digging is my newly appointed miner who hasn't even been upgraded from 'Peasant' status, a crippled cat could mine loamy wall faster than this guy.

I set up some limestone excavation to dig some out and look for iron ores (along with some sardonyx), and will probably stick a stone pile for limestone next to my smelter, I may have to put down a couple more smelters. Perhaps the fabled magma pool is a few levels down.

I traded some tat for an iron crossbow, shield and buckler, also some iron bars, hopefully I'll be able to create the rest of my army's weapons myself. Pretty soon my 3 man militia will be ready for anything.

The human merchants are gone and now not much is happening, I'm going to carve out some more bedrooms, preparation for nobles.

I set my masons onto engraving the main hall, to see what exciting events were worth recording, they engraved images of "a horse" "three dwarves" "some mountains". As I thought... my dwarves are as bored as I am with this dull hole-in-the-ground. I think in future I'll go into less detail on the dull stuff.

Rifotidek Isholminbaz - Blockedbrain the Frigid Enchantment - a Willow Cup

As I was micromanaging and ensuring all the new migrants were busy, the Trapper migrant had a fey mood, I hope he doesn't kill anyone important.

Luckily all he wanted was 2 wood and a basalt rock, I think we can accommodate that.

Summer in year 2 of Devilhalls begins.

I set all the Peasants with nothing better to do stone detailing, one of them will probably become a full time engraver, we shall see, the great hall is looking nice though.

After a lot of fucking around, my metalsmith finally builds another copper pick for one of my peasants to become a miner, the next on the to-do lists is:

• Deck out my army, two of them with crossbows one with a sword - I guess I'll need a bowyer, fuck knows where I'll find a decent sword and shield from, but once he gets it, that dude will be a champ.
• Find iron ore and flux! - there must be some SOMEWHERE, I asked the traders to bring me some if this fails.
• Build a shitload of expensive crafts from that gold and aluminium I have lying around.
• Expand living quarters.

The trapper finishes his epic willow cup, I assigned him to wood and stone crafts since I realized the fortress was lacking anyone dedicated to crafting.

Back to the micromanagement.

Ask an thou shalt receive migrants... LOTS of migrants

The elves leave and my miners uncover some gems, I'm considering setting up a jeweler who can encrust gems into our crafts, they aren't worth very much at the moment.

GOLD! Time to build a forge. Ah ha, some tetrahedrite, now I have some copper, silver AND gold, all I need is some tin and I could host the Olympics.

FINALLY some migrants arrive, lets see what we got.

• A Metalcrafter - useful for our precious metals production.
• A Peasant - I'll turn him into a butcher, brewer and a cook.
• A Cheese maker - Well, it looks like he'll be doing a lot of jobs he's not trained for since we don't need any cheese at all.
• Another Peasant - See if I can find a pick for this guy and get him mining, its either that or the military.
• Thresher - Not sure what he'll do, probably military.
• Planter - Never can have enough farmers, though it looks like we will struggle to get through all this food.
• Animal Caretaker - Could turn him into a hunter maybe and get some meat for a change, or at least get him to train some war dogs.
• Another Peasant - Military or jewelry.
• Weaver - Useless, maybe I should set up some clothes production.
• Another Peasant - Military.
• Bowyer - Convenient as I was just setting up an archery range in my outdoor barracks area.
• Another Peasant - Maybe I'll just leave this guy as a peasant, can't have too many haulers.
• Lye maker - We currently have very little need for lye, I doubt we will need his talents.
• Another Peasant - I could make this guy a book keeper.
• Another Animal caretaker - He's going to be a hauler probably.
• Another Peasant - They just keep coming!
• Furnace operator - Hope he likes burning wood.
• Fisherdwarf - He's got a long way to walk to do much fishing.
• Animal dissector - lovely.
• Trapper - He might be useful against all these monkeys.
• Miller - Fuck knows what he'll do.
• Woodworker - Could use some more woody goodness.
• 2 Cows
• a mule
• a kitten

Holy shit thats a lot of migrants, better get to work.

Monkey-elf Alliance

Spring!

I've carved out a LOT of space 2 floors below the dining room, still no flux or gems, but some aluminium and useless yellow and white rocks.

The elves show up from the north and walk directly through the area I marked for deforestation... awkward. Maybe if I piss them off something exciting might finally happen.

It appears the elves are in league with the monkeys, they must have brought some magical pixie dust or something because as soon as they arrive at the depot all my dwarves suddenly go off to their bedrooms for naps, including the broker. As soon as the elves are finished unloading, a bunch of monkeys come and steal the steel bolts that none of my dwarves picked up outside my entrance.

Damn Monkeys.

Ah ha, hang on a minute!

You have GOT to be kidding, he just turned around? Well, at least he won't steal anything. The elves didn't even bring anything useful.

Precious metals... or maybe not

Some good news!
I can start smelting something now, though unless I can find some Tin or Zinc this will be pretty useless.

an update on my pond draining:

It's slowly evaporating and it should be ready by mid-spring or so. There's still a leftover monkey corpse who has been sitting there for nearly a month now, since I still only have my starting 7 dwarves, they have been busy making food, crafts and tables/chairs, not to mention digging for ores.

Managed to catch that crippled monkey, he kept falling in and out of consciousness with intent to adventure into my fortress, the dwarves mostly ignored him, but at least I won't be getting spammed with "interrupted by..." messages anymore.

I want some migrants! Winter arrives, nothing very interesting has happened. My woodworker creates a masterpiece, shame its a barrel. Digging for gems.

Found some aluminium.

Man this fortress is dull.

The monkeys strike!

So I got bored of waiting for migrants and started work on my barracks, this involved some risky tunneling...

Nothing too exciting happened except flooding my courtyard for a little while, once its all evaporated I'll move in and carve out an area for my future army to sleep.

Finally, some action! a bunch of monkeys show up, fortunately the trade caravan hasn't left the map yet and a slow speardwarf fends them off, eventually he remembers I'm not paying him to keep my fortress safe and he scarpers, leaving the monkeys free to wander all over my courtyard, I decide this would be a good time to destroy the ramps in my courtyard to separate them.

The bastards escaped with some steel bolts, I didn't think I had any, maybe they stole them from the caravan. I haven't decided what I'll do with this caught monkey yet, maybe I'll turn him into a guard-monkey. It also seems one of the monkeys managed to injure its foot and is now incapacitated, I'll see if I can catch him too.