It has come to my attention that in the previous instalment I neglected to name my fortress. Welcome back, therefore, to as-yet unglorious Roughrewards, newest colony of the Sunken Attic.
If you’re thinking the fortress name is pretty good and the civilisation name is a little underwhelming, you’re not alone.
When last we left our brave and stupid dorfs, they were busy attempting to punch to death a fully-grown if unconscious alligator and making little headway against its thick scales.
Fearing that they might expire from exhaustion and dehydration whilst flogging this dead horse, I created a second squad containing my miners, reasoning that they might attack it with their picks. Nope: they too joined the punching party. Presumably they also gouge rock and soil from the very earth with their bare hands.
Eventually I gave up, disbanded all military squads and set a burrow. This worked, in that the dwarfs stopped punching the poor reptile. After a short period, during which the alligator neither expired nor moved, I cancelled the burrow and marked the wagon to be dismantled. A few dwarfs got a little spooked by the beast but this didn’t seem to stop their efforts to fetch items for our new stockpile.
I spent a little while designating new areas to be dug out and watching as my dwarfs lugged items back and forth. As you can see from the above screenshots I’m currently playing the game vanilla – no custom tilesets or fonts – but it remains compelling just to watch the simulation tick.
When I next checked on our scaled friend, I paused the game in sudden horror. It was gone. Reassuring myself that there were no new combat reports, I tracked it down using the Units list and found the creature slowly limping southwards. I watched it as it exited the map, and felt a brief moment of regret for what might have been.
In retrospect, looking at the incident from the reptile’s perspective, it was wronged in all this. First our idiotic expedition leader sticks their hands into the river right in front of it, inviting attack whilst attempting to pillage the creature’s own food source. Then when it does what instinct compels it toward, it does little more than gash a dwarf in the leg and a dog in the… in the false ribs? Okay. Sure. And then in response it is punched at least 700 times whilst it fades in and out of consciousness. During all this three of its toes explode in gore and its neck is somehow ripped open.
Dwarf Fortress: never proportionate, ever.
Anyway, how about a few shots of the shitty hovel that is Roughrewards?
Here is the entrance with a ramp going lower, west of the wagon, river and memorial alligator bloodpatch:
The entryway tunnel precedes to an area I’ll later use for a trade depot, a stairwell leading down, a farm plot and a stockpile.
Two levels below we find an initial set of what will become bedrooms. I have plans for a grand hall to the east, which will be used as meeting area and dining room.
Whilst digging this lot out we struck chert and bauxite, two of the bajillion different kinds of rock that the game’s terrifyingly broad or deep – how would I know which? both? – geological simulation features. I also remembered to make a wood stockpile and to allow corpses in my refuse pile, which almost immediately results in this:
I have no more idea than you do. I guess the cats got ’em.
