#9: Let’s get serious

“Miners, boys, come here.”  Feb’s a woman, but it seems fine to call a couple of dwarven miners “boys”.

“Feb, Sarvesh, when you came to these lands I provided you both with identical training in mining. Level 2 “Miners”. Our fortress has much digging that needed doing, and still does. This work was available to both of you identically. And yet, as Winter approaches, it’s time for your performance reviews. And, boys, it’s not complicated.”

“Feb, you have achieved the 7th rank of mining, an “Adept Miner” and have become better at mining than any dwarf is at any skill. You’ve amassed 5,880 XP in mining. Well done.”

“Sarvesh. Sarvesh, Sarvesh, Sarvesh. With identical circumstances, you are a mere 6th rank “Talented Miner”, with only 5,120 XP in mining.”

“But boss, that’s because I had to build that Trade Depot and the Masonry Workshop!”, he implored.

“No, Sarvesh. No. It’s because you’re lazy. And because you drink too much, and eat too much, sleep too much, and take too many breaks.”

“So I won’t be getting a raise this year?”, he asked sheepishly.

“Raises? I don’t pay you dwarves, what sort of fool do you take me for? No, Sarvesh, the consequence is simple. From this day forth you shall be known as Sleepy.”

As for everyone else…

Aware of my watchful eye, the dwarves labor for some time.

• We strike Turqouise, it’s all shiny and blue
• A lot more hauling gets done, including more wagon stuff
• Barrels, bins, booze and more get produced
• Dwarves are enjoying their beds, tables, chairs, and dining room
• This brings them from 70-80 happiness back to 100+. Sleepy even reaches “happy” vs. everyone else’s “content”. Well, that’s what being lazy will do for you, I suppose.

So, time for some failures:

• The spirits give me a vision that the hematite (which shows as a different icon than the stone) is not a gem, it’s an ore, an iron ore to be specific. Ooh, metal! That sounds like fun.
• The dwarves all have a “work dogs” menu, in which I can assign dogs to them. So Fatty finally loses her canine entourage, and Snipey gets two helpful hunting dogs! Watch out groundhogs and mountain goats! It just got real very recently.

Also note the little blue gem in the bottom left, the turqouise I struck!

The dangers of cooking:

I had the Kitchen cook one meal. It was raccoon meat biscuits, a combination of minced prickle berries and minced racoon meat (that we brought with us). Once it was cooked, it sat there in the kitchen, lost in all the other hauling that needed to be done. And instead of getting put in a barrel and stored indefinitely, it rotted, and a miasma arose. Barely any time at all passed between cooking the meal and it rotting, and every dwarf was assigned Food Hauling during this time as well.

Shameful.

Someone has to pay for this.

The dwarf who cooked it.

Shem Leddodok, farmer and dwarf of foodstuffs, I dub thee Steenky.

I designate the rotten meal to be dumped, and shortly after engulfing the entire workshop room, the miasma is gone.

Santa’s been a busy mason.

That includes building a Statue, which I thought would be nice for the dining room. As you can see, the walls of the dining room are being polished. Between that and some Statues, I figure the dwarves will be made happy every time they go in there, and they seem to go in there a lot. Of course, maybe rock salt wasn’t the smartest material for Santa to build a statue out of (even then it weights 610 lbs), but then she moves over to the bottom-right Craftdwarf’s Workshop and gets some work done there.

Now that’s a dwarf Santa. Making rock and stone amulets, crowns, bracelets, amulets, and toy boats for the hapless trader who visits our fortress. That’s a well-crafted claystone toy boat (note the hyphens on either side of its name). Soon the world will be clamoring for the stone boats crafted by my dwarves.

And just like that: Autumn has come.

I don’t know what Autumn holds, but I’m sure my dwarves are up for it.

Sleepy finishes smoothing the walls of the dining room.

The dining room has moved from Meager, to Modest, to plain (no modifier), to Decent. I’m proud. Later we’ll come back and polish and engrave the walls and smooth the floor and add statues, but I really should stop using my mining dwarves on that stuff when we have so much else still to do!

Resounding success! Our numbers have grown!

Ok, it’s a puppy, not a dwarf, but it’s life, not death! I think this one should be a war dog to guard us in case of invaders while our hunters are off in the distance. But I suppose it has to grow up first? And yes, the hunting dogs got full dwarven names assigned to them once they stopped following Fatty around.

And there’s the statue, actually placed, in the corner of the dining room.

Our fortress is still littered with the stone from digging it out, but I can’t imagine the time sink it would be to tell them to haul it all to stockpiles.

The miners finish the two new rooms.

I fill the left one with some stockpile space, as the above room is getting full (all that loose stone isn’t helping!!), and the bottom-right room gets the following: Carpenter’s Workshop (I’ll destroy the one outside), Butcher’s Shop, Metalsmith’s Forge, Tanner’s Shop, Jeweler’s Shop, Smelter, and a Wood Furnace (although this got stuck in the stockpile room for now).

I clearly don’t have enough dwarves to work all those places, but my curiosity and imagination simply exceeds the grasp of my small fat hairy beings.

Here’s the whole region.

(click get full-sized image)

Or just the nearby area:

(click to zoom)

Look at all the shrubs that grew back outside the entrace; I’ve designated them to be picked.

Well, we’re on the verge of a functional fortress…

So surely something bad is about to happen.

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