SPINEMACHINE - A Rough Start

The first year has passed and already 3 rulers sat in the throne. A rough start, but at least, the last ruler has solved the starvation issues.

And so the fortress is now passed onto me. As I sat my ass on my throne, I immediately started looking at the fortress design. About an hour and half later, here I sit with a few plans of my own. Let's start off by looking at this magnificent little message our dear friend left us:

Moving on... The first task I have decided to take on is getting rid of all the useless "construction" stones lying around or placed in stockpiles. I can achieve this by making a garbage dump. With a dump, I can basically stack items on a single tile, reducing a lot of clutter. Of course, I will keep some of the construction stones available in case I need some emergency walls and shit. I'm not sure yet where I will place this awesome dump, but fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?

My next plan involves adding security. I have decided to remove all the slopes around the mountain which allowed any creature to be able to move upwards to the top of the mountain. As of right now, this is MY mountain. No creature should be able to reach the peak of the mountain. Doing this should ensure that nothing is able to attack from above.

And finally, I want to finish off with some reorganization. For some reason, most of the workshops are placed in a single room with no supplies nearby. This means that the dwarf working at the station must leave his post and go across the fortress to gather any object he may need. I think simply mining out a large room, adding some stockpiles, and then adding some separations will be the best thing to do.

Hopefully, I don't manage to do too much harm to the Fortress.

SPINEMACHINE - Initial findings

It is Mid-summer on the 1st of Malachite, 1051.

The reign of the previous ruler of Spinemachine (henceforth to be known simply as "The Machine", or "Ol' Spiney") has been cut short, due I presume to a painful bout of Ocular Herpes Simplex. Though this is pure speculation, I think it reminds all of us that, like the sun, you shouldn't ever stare directly into a hobo's anus.

So the succession has been passed prematurely down to me, and with it an apparent food crisis. Am I ready to lead these dwarves into the black? To pull them back from the brink of starvation? I have only stepped into the fortress for a few minutes when the sight of anorexic dwarves makes me physically sick, all over myself. I make a promise to myself right then and there that I shall make it my personal quest to fatten these wretches up, and restore their beards to their once glorious sheen.

I begin looking around..

What must a desperate dwarf eat to survive in the Factional Forest? Perhaps the mythical Satinybursts the Tufts of Breakfast truly is made of liquid bacon and scrambled eggs .. Or perhaps we must dine on the abundance of half-finished furniture and crafts left strewn around the dining room:

Also of note are the creative mining plans left for the sub-basement of the fortress:


I can only assume that this is part of the aforementioned water irrigation system, so I shall endeavor to preserve this work for future generations, as our forefathers intended.

But this will all have to wait for now. Food must be found, perhaps we might create a giant underground straw to the neighboring civilizations so as to Drink Their Milkshake.

To be continued..

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part XI

15th Timber, 1052, Late Autumn: Assholes of Every Race

The year was mostly uneventful. The farms are now up and runnin and producing edible goods quite consistently. We're brewing a ton of alcohol and managed to slaughter some livestock to keep our meat supply going. We'll send out hunters soon enough, but for now trading seems to do the trick.

We were visited by humans, who were pleasant enough. We were then visited by elves who
happened upon us just as we started razing a nearby forest. They were dicks about it.

Still, wanting to keep relations civil, I agreed to their insane demands. The humans sell us wood for almost nothing, anyway. All those gems we found early on really paid off!

Meanwhile, a couple of dwarves were taken by moods and took over some workshops, but luckily they were able to find what they needed to build their insane things.

We now have a silver floor hatch covered in menacing spikes and a chain made of horse bone. Go figure.

The main upgrade to the arena is finished: a giant crushing wall that covers the entire field. Now, if a creature survives battle, I can pulverize it by lowering a bridge onto it. That should solve my problem from last time! My plan now is to capture Troglodytes with cage traps.

Here's how I'll do it:

The Troglodytes get lured in because of the Horse and walk into a wall of cage traps! Simple, yet efficient!

And while I was getting all this prepped, before I had a chance to open the door to the caverns below, a goblin snuck in from up above!

Damn her! Well, now she'll feel our hundred fists of pain! We've killed far worse than you!

Osta the Goblin:

Show no mercy, men!

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part X

1st Slate, 1052, Mid-Spring: A Year Already

A year has gone by and you can hardly recognize the fortress from when it started out. We went from 7 dwarves to 5, to 15 and then 14, and now with this latest influx of migrants we are 36.

What am I going to do with all these mouths to feed?

The obvious solution is to draft an army and wage war on the Troglodytes, but I feel that it wouldn't go in our favor and there might be a lot of blood. Arena matches are a definite must, as soon as I upgrade the arena a bit. I guess, for now, I'll keep them busy cleaning the rocks out of the fortress...

Current projects going on right now: building a farm and organizing the hospital.

The hospital is already doing well. Danielle is our resident Chief Medical Dwarf, despite having absolutely no relevant experience whatsoever.

Despite her inexperience, she patched up Kevin quite nicely! His agility is somewhat impaired because of the broken shoulder, but she set things straight! Hopefully, when it comes time for surgery, she'll be just as capable.

The farm project is nearly complete!

Here's what it looks like so far:

The grates will open up onto the caves below, where the water will drain. The tunnel at the top leads to the river, currently frozen, and just to make sure the timing isn't off I haven't built a channel to it yet. I've lost too many fortresses to flooding. We've come too far with this one to have that happen here, too.

Future projects: build a crushing trap for the arena to pulverize surviving monsters, and then build a lure room down below to trap monsters in cages and have them moved to the arena.

I guess I should think about getting some weapons for these dwarves...

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part IX

10th Opal, 1051, Mid-Winter: There Will Be Blood (More)

The arena is complete.

Well, maybe not as complete as I would like it, but it is technically functional. Here's what it looks like:


There are two prison chambers that contain cages. The Ogre is in the northern one and the Troglodyte in the southern one. Now, all doors are set to forbidden passage, which technically means people or creatures can only get through if they smash them down.

I don't think Cave Ogres can smash them down.

Anyway, in the control room, there are five levers. Two of them open the cages of each creature respectively, and two others open the doors to the rooms that contain the cages and open out onto the arena floor. It'll be up to the monsters themselves to wander out and maybe duke it out. At this point, I have no idea if they'll actually fight.

The fifth lever opens up a small compartment containing more cage traps, so that when the monters are done killing each other, or if they don't kill each other at all, eventually they may wander in and get trapped once more and I can start the process over.

Let's see how it goes!

ROUND 1: FIGHT!

The Ogre emerged from its cage as the Troglodyte ran out onto the arena floor! The Troglodyte ran at the doors a few times, but the Ogre just sort of sat there... Neither creature attacking the other.

Damn it.


... I don't like the way that Troglodyte is staring at those doors.

I think maybe it hears its brethren calling from down below. There's a whole squad of them just waiting for us:

Now here's the messed-up part. The one that killed Eric earned itself a name!

That's right! It is now infamous! And it bears the scars of battle to prove its superiority!

Damn you, Merrangod! DAMN YOU.

ROUND 2: FIGHT

Okay, well, at least the Cave Ogre is contained. I can just hit the lever and trap it once more. The question now remains, can my dwarves take on a single Troglodyte? It'll be 4 against one, but I have yet to kill one of these things.

All right, here we go. This one is for Bex, Mariko and Eric, whose tragic losses are felt every day...


The Troglodyte makes a break for it! It dashes out the door and the squad is on it in an instant! We unleash our fury with wild abandon, beating the living breath out of it! The thing never stood a chance! We literally tear the thing in two! Blood is evewhere! My god, the carnage!


And no sooner do we kill it does Nicolas run up and grab the thing's upper body. I hope it's to toss it in the refuse pile, but then again he is a tanner...

That only leaves us with...

ROUND 3: FIGHT

Time to take care of the Ogre.

Again, I feel kind of bad for these things. They're blind, slow and stupid, but they'd rip us in half if we gave them half a chance. So here we go. We open the last doors and release the rest of our anger...

The thing tries to run! It smashes into Kevin and Emily, breaking Emily's ankle and Kevin's shoulder as the rest of them pound into it. Bruised all over and bleeding profusely, it makes a break for the rest of the fortress while we give chase!

It stumbles through our furniture and stone stockpiles as even Emily, whose ankle is broken, continues chase! We corner it and continue to give it a fierce beating until it breathes its last...

... Man, that was messy.

Okay. This arena thing merits revision.

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part VIII

26th Timber, 1051, Late-Autumn: Oh God, The Blood!

Well, we have one less mouth to feed, at least. While he was out... doing things in the underground caverns, Eric was set upon by some Troglodytes and torn to shreds. Honestly, I have no idea what he was doing down there. My guess was he sought out the Troglodytes to avenge the fallen, but they got the better of him.


So naturally, I sealed the doors and left his body there to rot. We'll build a tomb and get his body once it's complete, but until then, I ain't risking no more dwarves!

Actually, his death wasn't for nothing. While he was down there, he found something... strange. An ancient passageway that led down...


Where could it possibly lead? As far as I can tell, it goes down several levels but I haven't been able to adventure down there just yet. We'll train up a military before trying anything too crazy.

So while all that was happening, we managed to get a Troglodyte in a cage and stick it with the rest. All the dying has distracted me from the pit arena, but I'll get back to that fairly quickly.

Merchants arrived from abroad. I managed to buy some cheese from them and ask them to bring more booze next time around. I also tried to sell them one of the Blind Cave Ogres I'd captured in one of my cages, but when Dee tried to move it it escaped!

I quickly recalled the squad that had earlier pummeled that Giant Olm to death to do the same thing to this Ogre. It was a bloody fight! Even the dogs got in on it!

It was brutal! But in the end, we managed to get it. First, we beat it to unconsciouness, then kept pounding away until there was nothing left.

I almost felt bad for it, but with Eric's recent death still fresh in our minds, our tiny stout fists smashed away with the fury of the mountain itself.

Then we had some cheese.

Oh, and the river's frozen again.

SPINEMACHINE - Bob Ross and the Awesomest Plan

Alright, time to start this thing! Now the first thing to do when starting any DF game is to set the mood. Yes yes, chopping down trees, building doors and trying to drown your dwarves is important too but first:



Hell yeah, that's how we roll here in Spinemachine. With some Bob Ross blasting in the background, we can get to work!

Simple enough start. I set Daniel Boone and Americuh to chop down trees, MC Hammer and Toothless McGee started mining us a flat, while the Rabbi and Meatcurtains gathered up stone and built a mason's workshop. Irish just kinda stood there until I told him to go pick some fucking plants or something.

First thing of note is that the place I picked is full of precious gemstones. WOOT! After an hour or so of work, we have some basics down:



Sweet! Except there's one problem: I'm farther away from the stream than I'd originally planned... and in DF 2010, you need water if you want to farm. Chanelling water down into underground farms is a tricky business. Hell, it flooded half my fortress the last time I tried it... but I think that I wasn't thinking BIG enough. I've learned from my mistakes, oh yes, and so I've devised a plan to build a gigantic underground reservoir using nearby ponds. BEHOLD!



In short, I will funnel the water from the ponds into a huge reservoir. Whenever the ponds refill with rain, I'll just hit a switch and dump it all into the reservoir. That way, we can maximize the amount of water we get from rainfall. I'll also build a channel to funnel some of that water to fuel underground farms.

My plan is to eventually have enough water to build this awesome underground river that will go through the entire fortress.

It can't go wrong!!!

Spinemachine Intro ft. Frigidbowels

Time for some Dwarf Fortress! And by that I mean time to build something up only to have it ruthlessly destroyed before our eyes. What will do it this time? Flooding? Goblins? The fever dreams of the deranged? Nothing is as impermanent as the ambitions of the stout mountain folk.

In an attempt to share the humiliation, three of us are going to manage this new fortress.
1 year for each tyrant. Every spring we will rotate and throw this mess of a hot potato to the next guy, for him to sharpen his cruel will on our past mistakes.

Being the least experienced of the three players, I will play the first year and construct the flawed foundation upon which all of our future blunders will rest. Straw-picking determined the rest of the order:

1. ME!
2. TheJamer
3. T.O.M.

First step is to randomly generate a world. Behold Xestsumon, The Enchanted Plane!



I've picked out a spot in the middle of the map. It's near some human settlements, it's near a brook called Satinybursts the Tufts of Breakfast, in the Factional Forest. Sold!

Now for our seven dwarves:

MC Hammer: Miner, wrestler, and lord of good times.
Toothless McGee: Professional biter, bone carver, but also a miner.
Daniel Boone: Tree expert, intrepid hero.
Rabbi Ephraim: Gem-cutter, stone-worker, appreciator of shiny things.
Irish: Brewer and cook.
Americuh: Farmer and fish cleaner.
Meatcurtains: Fisherdwarf and prankster.

These merry men are officially known as Frigidbowels the Garish Blisters of Anger, sent off to forge a new future in the fortress of Spinemachine.

STRIKE THE EARTH!!!

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part VII

13th Sandstone, 1051, Mid-Autumn: Blind Cave Ogres And Other Dangers Of Farming

So I asked Dee to set-up a few cage-traps in the tunnel that leads into the fortress from the caves, but about mid-way through setting up the last of them he was interrupted by a couple of wandering Blind Cave Ogres. He had the good sense to run back into the fortress, behind the other traps he'd thankfully had the time to set-up, and the two Ogres ran straight into them.

Fortress-death averted!

Of course, now I have two Ogres in cages I need to stash somewhere.

What to do, what to do...?

Can you say fighting arena? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan!

24th Sandstone, 1051, Mid-Autumn: More Migrants!

Well, this is a surprise! I guess news of the survivability of the fortress has spread! We have now jumped from 7 dwarves to 15, which is both a good and bad thing.

Obviously, the advantage is that we get all those extra hands at labour. The disadvantage is feeding, clothing, and sheltering all these dwarves. I think I'll draft a bunch in the military and send them off on suicide missions.

So, among the newcomers are: Romain, Steph, Meghan, Alanna, Danielle, Tansy, Nicolas, and Liisa. Geez, only two guys in the whole group. I'm running out of people I know. We have Brewers, Cheese Makers, Tanners, Buthers and Engravers. Gonna have to see about getting them to make themselves useful.

I've just noticed a real serious problem, besides the Ogres that might bust out of their cages and kill us all, that is: we're out of alcohol.

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part VI

27th Limestone, 1051, Early Autumn: Keeping The Faith

I have a plan.

As autumn approaches, so does the inevitably reminder that the river is going to freeze again. With all the cleaning and building going on in the fortress, I don't think now would be the best time to try and build an irrigation system, potentially drowning everyone in the process. We'll build it once the river freezes, to make it safe.

In the meantime, though, we're going to need to rely on those farms we abandoned in the caves below. Extremely dangerous, I know, but we are not without defense!


We have built a series of cage traps in the narrow hallway that leads into our fortress, thus capturing any Troglodytes or Other Monstrosities that happen to wander in. I just hope wood is enough to hold them in. Once we get a few of them, I'll build an arena and get us to train against them.

In better news, we now have a dining hall that contains a working well, several chairs and even tables!


There's still a lot of stone lying around, but any dwarf with spare time usually picks up a rock or two and stashes it outside. Eventually these halls will be clean, but in the meantime we'll have to put up with a bit of a mess.

I happened to notice that Mariko and Roxy's clothes had been removed and thrown in a pile on the floor when the ladies were moved into their graves. Since I now provide occasional access to the caves below, that means we can get some spider silk, and with Ros as our clothier we might be able to get a decent clothing industry going.


And just in case it all goes horribly wrong, I'm also going to build a Hospital for Eric.

And through it all, we keep finding all sorts of precious stones! Bex is having a great time engraving them!

Now, let's take a more personal look at the dwarves. From what I can tell, there's about four different deities being worshipped, although Mariko seemed to be the only worshipping her deity, Atim.

Atim is a deity of The Oceanic Inks (which is the dwarven civilization from which we originally hail). Akim most often takes the form of a mal dwarf and is associated with chaos, war and jewels.

Gatis Bugud Duthal is another deity, worshipped by Bex and the late Roxy.

Gatis the Tummy of Worth is a deity of The Oceanic Inks (again, a deity from our homeland). Gatis most often takes the form of a female dwarf and is associated with hospitality.

Kevin, our miner, is the only one to worship Ustir. This one is pretty weird:

Ustir is a deity of The Oceanic Inks. Ustir most often takes the form of a female naked mole dog and is associated with the stars, the sky, the weather, nature, the sun and healing.

The most worshipped deity is Laltur Ikallimar, also known as Laltur Healedwealth, and his followers are me, Dee, and Ros.

Laltur Healedwealth is a deity of The Oceanic Inks. Laltur most often takes the form of a male dwarf and is associated with trade, wealth and fortresses.

That's good! I'm glad our newest miner worships a god of fortresses! The last deity you can find in this fortress is Thetdel, worshipped by Eric and Emily.

Thetdel is a deity of The Oceanic Inks. Thetdel most often takes on the form of a male dwarf and is associated with family.

How does having these different deities affect the fortress? Occasionally, some dwarves might create goods or decorations associated with these different deities, and so any dwarf that worships them will be made a little happier at seeing them. Keeping the dwarves happy, as I've learned with past fortresses, is very important since downward spirals of madness and depression can be more damaging than a marauding squad of goblins.

Dwarft Fortress V: The Ageless Realms, Part V

6th Malachite, 1051, Mid-Summer: And Then There Were Seven... Again

Migrants have come! Two! With nothing!


I can't imagine under what dismal conditions they were coerced to come to this fortress, but now they're here and they're stuck! Suckers! The new-comers are Dee Onulsanred, a Miner (which is excellent) and Ros Lertethiteb, a Clothier (which is less excellent).


Having an extra miner around is going to be a big help with the expansion. We'll be able to move the Trade Depot deep underground, as well as all the workshops and furniture. My only worry is that it also means an extra couple of mouths to feed, but we'll see about keeping them busy finding food sources.

(Close-up of the furniture for some reason)

Again, that extra miner is also going to help with the construction of an irrigation system for farming. The kind of farming that doesn't involve getting murdered by Troglodytes.

Shit, we better get started on a well, too. Once the river freezes again, we're humped.