Their mission? To mine out the mountain, carve out a new town, and replenish the wealth of the kingdom. To seek out fortune and fame. Either they'll succeed, and the King shall rejoice in newfound splendor, or they'll die and the King is rid of seven troublemakers.
FAQ:
"What is this?"
A: Dwarf Fortress. Let's Play Dwarf Fortress is an AAR with SDN dwarves for added fun. Sign up if you want in. Semi-yearly updates will occur with the news from your virtual dwarf.
"What's the objective?"
A: To make a fortress. Of dwarves.
"What's up with the graphics?"
A: Get out.
"No, seriously? What's with all this letters and symbols?"
A: Old school gaming. Deal with it.
"I do not like these graphics. Er... ?"
A: That's fine, read the words or leave. I don't care.
The Dwarfs:
GuppyShark, Male Farmer
FordPrefect, Male Mason
HSRTG, Female Mechanic
Master of Cards, Male Woodcutter
rhoenix, Female Miner
Adrian Laguna, Female Fisherdwarf
Kuja, Male Miner
The Gear:
We have pulled a bureaucratic switcharoo on the King by packing so many types of meat we have gotten more barrels to store food than we should have gotten were it all one type. Thus the strange foods. Rhesus Macaw Biscuits all around, folks. Liquor, as you can tell, is the primary priority of this packing.
The Place:
WELCOME TO... PALELABOR (we are american dwarfs)
We immediately set down, unpacking the wagons. Then for good measure after he stops lounging around Master of Cards destroys them with his axe and stores the wood in a pile. No turning back. We set out, beginning to dig the main hall of our entrance. Almost immediately, Kuja and Rhoenix strike an ore used in Brass (Sphaelerite) and some Silver Ore (Galena). Quite auspicious.
However, the river freezes over, as it is Winter, and Adrian Laguna quickly becomes useless. We use her to move goods about, freeing productive dwarfs for mining and constructing.
The miners are given plans for two new rooms. First off, we are moving the wood inside once this room is complete, it will become our stockroom for that. Second, it will be the site that FordPrefect will build a Carpenter's Shop for Master of Cards to make beds out of. Even hardy dwarfs like the residents of Palelabor must cease work every now and then. The spiderlike room above will be the bedrooms. There are 12 small rooms, so as to have room for more when migrant workers arrive. They are not roomy, but dwarfs have no reason to spend time in their bedrooms doing anything but sleeping.
In other news, one of the cats we brought has adopted rhoenix. Yay! It promptly begins slaughtering and devouring small mammals, insects, and reptiles, within days carrying out a genocide of all pesty flies and so forth within the immediate work area. Good, but was the cat really worth the 5 and a half beers it cost to bring it?
Digging continues. Kuja has learned how to be a better miner from digging the workshop. Speaking of it, the carpenter's workshop is being constructed and soon excavation of the sleeping chambers will begin. The river ice is thinning and Adrian Laguna becomes useful again.
We continue excavation. Master of Cards produces 6 beds, which is enough for everybody but HSTRG. Mining to make room for an engineering shop and masonry to build stone structures continues, but suddenly work ceases. What is going on? Is it the plague?
i hate you guys.
Thus ends the first Dwarf Workday (43 days) ends. Updates will continue once the intrepid crew wakes their sorry asses up and finishes my damn outpost. The raccoon meat is out in the rain! Luckily, despite the rain we have not seen any critters in this scary wilderness. I was half expecting jaguar attacks the minute we arrived.
The next tasks for our intrepid adventurers will be to search for the underground water in the cave so as to remove dependance upon the river and begin irrigating the caverns for farming. This must be done quickly as it is already mid-spring.
Eventually, the Dwarfs wake up again. The mining finishes, and an engineer's shop is completed. The engineer, HSRTG, begins creating mechanisms out of the stone for use in the upcoming irrigation system. Ford Prefect churns out rock doors, which are placed in the bedrooms to give privacy.
However, something much more exciting occurs. Digging a tight shaft, rhoenix discovers an underground cave river. Had he hit a bit differently, it would have flooded into the room and drowned him. Luckily, he did not end up bursting into the river's underside but came out at the right level. Now digging to the aquifer doesn't have to happen, making irrigation far easier. Work is immediately centered around creating an immersion room for farming (it also can double as an execution chamber!).
Awed by his mining skills, another cat adopts rhoenix. She's apparantly a cat person.
Mining continues. We complete the first farming room next to the cave, install both floodgates, attach the floodgates to the lever, and then promptly pass out. I have assigned the GuppyShark to smooth the walls of the fortress. While it won't really do much, it's something to do in his spare time that will make the fortress more cozy.
Speaking of cozy, we now have a dining room. Sort of. There is a big backlog on the masonry production so it has no furniture, but we're building. The reason for the masonry backlog is the need of doors for the farming operation and the construction of a trade depot and a road. We hope to make the road done by the end of autumn, where it will attract traders. Hopefully. It's very slow to build.
Luckily for us, while the second workday is over (by now it is summer! Dwarfs are very efficient workers, even if they sleep for days at a time) and sleep continues, the cave river floods, muddying the floor. Looks like we won't need irrigation this time after all.
Food supplies are running low, so we need to start farming for food, but especially for alcohol. Who cares about eating, we can brew the Plump Helmets into a mean mushroom ale. Wah-hah! Palelabor!
As the work continues, a Metalsmith named Pick arrives! Pick's wife/husband [hard to tell with dwarves], General Zod, is also there, but Zod is useless so we assign him to polish rocks now that the farmer actually has work to do.
The first six months are over! Will Palelabor finally get its ass together and actually plant some food? Or will I never figure out what key does that?
Will we finally see the long awaited animal life that refuses to show itself despite being in dangerous wilderness?
When will the immigrants arrive, and how many shall we send into the death chambers to suffocate underneath the waves of the Cave River?
Find out on the next episode of...
Dwarf Fortress.
Sign up for your free vacation to faminestricken, potentially dangerous Palelabor today!
