#13: Back to work

I pull Santa aside in the aftermath of the battle. She’s decked out in her new Broker outfit.

Very snazzy in purple.

“Santa, dear, here’s what I’d like to do”, I implore. “Lor, the hunting dog who saved our entire fortress (or at least that nice cup you made), should be recognized.”

I lay out my vision. “A hundred dwarves, in a vast chamber, with a triumphant symphony, as Lor makes his way to the stage, and standing on his hind legs, is awarded a medal by a beautiful maiden with a low-cut top.”

“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t have any medals. Nor do we have the chamber, the maiden, the symphony, or nearly that many dwarves.”

“What? Did you see how he trounced that kobold? He didn’t even get hurt. The kobold had a large dagger! Flawless victory!“

“Yes, yes, I heard, sir, but really, there’s nothing to be done.”

“A nickname, then, I will give him a great and mighty nickname. Not like these embarassing ones I give you dwarves.”

“Once again, sir, I’m sorry, but it is dwarven tradition that even though we give elaborate full names to our pets, they cannot have nicknames.”

“What?! Really? Oh. God! Didn’t you see what he did! Lor the Dog. Master of combat, savior of the fortress.”

I give him a mental medal. And the maiden has a really low-cut top.

In the following period of peace, it’s an industrious time in the fortress.

• A channel is dug and a drawbridge placed across it at the main fortress entrance. This causes a huge work stoppage due to the channel being an uncrossable until the bridge was built. All sorts of dwarves were either trapped inside or outside. And then, of course, no dwarf felt like actually building the bridge, instead they decided to take this moment to complain that they can’t plant the seeds they were planning to because the fields were unreachable. Yeah, right. Nice try. You were never going to plant those seeds until the moment it became impossible.
• Some of my dwarves are unhappy about the military draft I employed when the kobold came.
• Most dwarves love my “legendary” dining room (that’s what they call it, on my side it shows up as “Fine”, an upgrade from “Decent”). It’s clearly the centerpiece of what keeps my dwarves happy.
• The side path out to the farms was dug, and great walls to enclose the farms from the outside were begun.
• The miners dug exploratory stairs down 10 levels. On the bottom two, they found diorite, an igneous rock. Hoping to find some magma, I designate long exploratory tunnel digs.

• With all the digging, we strike mica, phyllite, orthoclase, and tetrahedrite. The latter is an ore and can be smelted into things like electrum, pewter, and billon.
• The extended Farmer team does great. A huge harvest of Prickle Berries and Dimple Cups (mushrooms), with 12 Plump Helmets (different mushrooms) currently planted for harvest later in the season.
• And here, across the bridge, a spiked ball is being moved to the designated trap location. In addition with a menacing wooden spike and an enormous wooden corkscrew, they will make up a 3-weapon Weapon Trap. I hope to lay several of these cross my entrance to safeguard my dwarves.

OK, back to work, everyone.

She doesn’t get too much attention, but Snipey is an all-star.

She’s a 9th rank Marksdwarf (and is currently sleeping). She’s racked up sixty-three kills. 24 groundhogs, 7 hoary marmots, and 32 mountain goats. Here’s the fortress’ refuse pile.

Have any doubt now? That’s not even showing all the bones put to use in helmets and crossbow bolts and decorations. And you shall know her by the trail of the dead.

But a new challenger arrives.

In the mountains, near several mountain goats, is a cougar. And it’s not after my young male dwarves, either (but it is a female cougar). There’s only 8 mountain goats left alive in the region (and no other animals), and there’s 5 goats next to that cougar. A confrontation may be inevitable.

But remember, Snipey has Lor and the lesser known dog at her side as well.

Snipey wakes up and heads off on the hunt. The goats are right nearby. But after a moment she’s face-to-face with the cougar!

The cougar flees in the opposite direction, but Snipey seems to be following it!

Sure enough, Snipey moves past all the goats and is clearly pursuing the cougar. It jukes left, it zigs right, but Snipey stays with it. The goats bleet out, unaware of the elite hunt before them.

A few crossbow bolts zip across the rugged terrain.

First blood! With two shots, it’s a minorly injured upper body and head, a mangling of both lungs, and she shot the right eye out completely! Note over on the right, a pile of broken arrows and blood spatters from another kill some time ago. Unconscious and winded, all that remains is the kill.

Snipey comes up and does it herself. And with that, someone will be having cougar for dinner.

Snipey brings the kill back to base and ends up butchering it herself. All sorts of chunks, bones and meat!

I finally designate the storage level (-1) to be dug out as an initial sixteen 11×11 rooms.

It’s as much digging as has ever been done in the fortress. Luckily, Feb has reached the rank of “High Master Miner” (that’s 13th rank). Sleepy’s living up to his name, with a paltry 8th rank “Expert Miner”. Feb mines only slightly slower than her walking speed, and twice as fast as Sleepy.

But part of being a good miner is extracting usable rock from the mining. This means that Feb leaves stray rocks nearly everywhere she digs. Which leaves few open places for the storage on this level to go. I will have to make an extremely concerted effort to use up the stone on the storage level.

While Feb is busy digging, her pet cat, Bim, keeps bringing her things.

The cat’s paws get covered in blood in the process, but there she is, catching birds out in the wild. That’s pretty bad-ass. Of course, I don’t think any dwarves were afraid of being accosted by blue jays, so this isn’t really helping.

What is Feb, now Grand Master Miner, supposed to do with this? Just what you’d expect. She’s a bit a frustrated, confused, and has to throw the thing out in the trash.

Just what I needed my best miner to be doing. Yeah, fuck you too, cat.

While watching Snipey hunt more poor goats amongst the remains of other dead goats…

Spring has arrived! That means we’ve been here a year! And not died! And only moderately embarassed ourselves!

Let’s take a look at the state of our fortress!

• You can see the entranceway has a drawbridge.
• The uneven walls of the natural cave entrance are being filled in with walls to create a uniform 3-wide entry way.
• 2 traps (in red) are placed, full of crazy sharp spikey things.
• The great wall around the farms is halfway done (or will be when Santa drops in that last piece)
• Those two wall projects have helped empty some halls of stray stone.
• The main entryway looks almost clean.
• Lots of stuff is organized into barrels and bins (the Xs)
• We got all the harvest done for the season (seeds planted, enough time passes for them to grow, and then harvested).

And here’s the basement.

All that fun looking stone in the top-left is magnetite, an iron ore. Sparky’s been making charcoal like a madman, so we should get more iron stuff made soon. But we’re a long way from having clean floors to store lots of stuff on.

I’m happy to see 100 drinks, 60 meat, 20 fish (we brought with us a year ago), and 40 plants to eat, with 100 seeds to plant. That means no dwarves should be dying due to lack of the necessities. We brought with us something like 60 food and 80 drinks, so we’re not losing ground, either.

Some of the fun things that got crafted this year that you might not know about:

• Finely-crafted kaolinite toy axe
• Well-crafted mountain goat skull totem (we will shake this at our enemies to make them fear us!)
• Ordinary kaolinite trumpet (yes, that’s a brass instrument made out of stone)
• Ordinary kaolinite mini-forge (for the little girls to play at being Santa?)
• Well-crafted cougar leather armor (hell yeah!)

And here’s what everyone’s up to.

The blue happiness marks “ecstatic” while the green marks merely “happy”.

I notice that Bembul and Fatty are the happiest dwarves.

Yes, you read that correctly. Bembul, the angriest woodcutter, and Fatty the hauling peon, are a couple. How fitting that she gets such an angry mate. I’m sure Bembul will take his anger out on his over-indulgent self-conscious woman. In honor of his deeds, I dub him Ike.

So, with Spring’s arrival and the need to plant many many seeds for the season, the number of jobs/tasks to be done is currently 141.

Back to work and get busy, dwarves, and we’ll live another year!