#7: Don’t get cocky

It’s a new day.

Surely there’s nothing but good things ahead for me and my dwarves.

The dwarves take not much more than brief naps. It took them longer to take a drink break to the wagon than to sleep. Of course, they’re all about 30% less happy, so getting a barracks to sleep in is a priority for today.  If we don’t have progress by the next drink or food break, I could have a riot on my hands.

Task recap:

• Snipey is hunting and hauling back kills (6 groundhogs, four hoary marmots, five mountain goats! Without getting wounded once! She’s a beast!). I think she’s been using her crossbow as a blunt weapon, as she’s gaining Hammerdwarf skill.  Dwarves.
• Fatty is hauling stuff around to the storage pile, be it lumber, completed doors and bins, or leftover items from our wagon site.
• Santa is making chairs and bins, and maybe some wooden crossbow bolts.
• The miners are still trying to get some initial rooms going inside.
• The farmer is finally planting some seeds in the farm plots (I suppose each day represents a new season?). One plot is for Prickle Berries, and the other is marked for Fisher Berries (I assume it’s Summer now since I assume we arrived in Spring). I bet both berries will make great booze.
• The angry woodcutter continues to deforest the region, he’s become a Talented Woodsman. No other dwarf is as good at any task than he is at chopping.

And here’s what the area looks like.

The black trees and shrubs are ones designated for harvesting/cutting. It’s all so idyllic so far. Not a worry in the world (except for the narcolepsy).

For fear that I’ll never let them live beneath the stones, the dwarves are silent and productive. Miners strike “Sardonyx” stone. Fatty begins training a Hunting Dog. I presume this involved putting a steak around her neck. The dog runs away at first but eventually comes back and graduates to Hunting Dog.

“This animal hunts at will” Bad-ass. Hopefully I never have to use that Slaughter option! I’d rather cannablize Fatty first.

Rewarding their productivity, I go and talk to the dwarves and see what they’re current thoughts are.

• Snipey is annoyed by flies (a bunch of those out in the wild, but better than tigers eating her), complains about having to sleep on rocks recently, and doesn’t like the lack of chairs.
• Feb the miner didn’t sleep well due to noise (I think the other miner was still going at it right next to him while he dozed off), had to sleep on a rough cave floor, and also misses chairs
• Sarvesh the other miner said the exact same thing (those two keep mining together, they’re going to get on the same cycle)
• Santa slept in the dirt, talked to a friend, was “accosted by terrible vermin” (there’s some rats outside, hopefully the dogs will take care of those?), and misses chairs
• Shem the farmer slept in the grass, “ate a pretty decent meal lately”, and misses chairs
• Fatty the hauler slept in the grass, talked with a friend (ah, so with Santa), and misses chairs

Ok, guys, I get it. We all miss our furnitures and our boozes. Beds and a dining hall will be made just as soon as the miners get two rooms cleared out. Right now, they’re working on the designated trade depot room, though. If only I could get some peer pressure applied to them to direct where they should be digging.

After a bit, my hunting dogs take off in action! A rat is right nearby them. But they do not go to the rat. They wander all about. Their path seems completely random. But then I see what’s going on. It’s Fatty. The dogs are following her around. Maybe because she still smells like steak, or she just looks like a good meal in general, or maybe she drops a lot of crumbs as she waddles about. But now I’m thinking I should have had the hunter train the hunting dogs. Until then, Fatty has her own entourage as she does her peasant tasks.

Booze time comes around, so I start to worry I haven’t gotten enough done.

I take the top-left room, that’s being partially dug out, and stick in all the beds and chairs and doors I have at the moment. They’re shown in black because Fatty hasn’t actually moved and placed the items yet, it’s just designated. Of course, wherever she goes, her two dogs are in tow. “Hunts at will” my ass!

Then right before my eyes, the season starts to change to Autumn, as the grass dries out and turns brown.

(click on the image to see it as an animated GIF showing the rapidly changing colors)

After not too long, it’s dwarf food time again. I don’t have a bedroom done yet, will today be a horrible repeat of the misery of yesterday?

But, lo, there’s Santa coming to the newly thrown together dining area with some Prickle Berries in hand! Hooray! Sitting in a chair, and everything. Oh, they’re going to love me now.

In fact, I notice no fewer than four dwarves all eating Prickle Berries at once in the dining room. Before we came to these lands we’d never even heard of a Prickle Berry, and now we’re eating them en masse! Of all the things to eat in this new land, my adventurous-eating dwarves choose the berries with prickles. I’m so proud. Now if only we can get some beds in the barracks room before anyone gets sleepy!

Some notables:

• Snipey’s got some crossbow bolts on her person now
• The farm grew some Prickle Berries and we harvested them (we can’t forever rely on just plucking them off wild shrubs!)
• Both the musk-ox and the horse decided to wander inside my fortress for a bit and then wandered back out

But sadly, when it comes time for the first dwarf to fall asleep, the sleep quarters are not done.

All the digging and all the furniture moving has proved too much for the time at hand. 2 chairs and 3 of 6 doors and no beds got moved into the bedroom. But this was Fatty’s job, and she prioritized dining tables (big surprise) over beds. So everyone, please blame her, not me!

Just when I was feeling blameless, I noticed these fleeting flashes of blue outside. I think it’s rain! And just as several of my outdoor dwarves fall asleep. Oh I’m going to catch hell in the morning for this, aren’t I?

Instead, I get “It is now summer“. Oh. Yeah. Earlier, about it turning to Autumn? Yeah, I was just testing you. You all passed. Man, why did they put me in charge of this.

Fatty finally places a bed (actually I think that right after she finished carrying the bed to the bedroom, she just collapsed down on top of it asleep instead of setting it down gracefully), and I assign the room as a communal Bedroom.

So here’s where we stand.

No, I don’t know why the ponds are turning brown. And yes, there is a fuckton of stones laying around in the fortress from digging. But I’ll try to put it to use soon.

Goals for our next adventure:

• Get a Kitchen and a Brewery set up next to the dining room
• Get a Masonry Workshop set-up inside and start making a bajillion whatevers out of stone
• Finish getting the designated digging work done
• Figure out if there’s some soil over near the farms
• Move the stockpile (or at least some of it?) inside
• Get the trade depot placed
• Don’t get blamed for anything