The Chronicles of FindersKeepers: the SV DwarfFort

[D]

At last, the goddamn valley! We’ve just hit our outpost, the wagon’s wheel’s busted, and I’ll be damned if I sleep without rock over my head one more day! I’ve set the two miners to work immediately, musing over the blueprints that the King sent us down here with.

First thing to do is get ourselves below ground. Yessiree. Only about ten minutes up to the north is a short little cliff face overlooking the river, I had the boys carve us some stairs down it and into the hill proper. It’s only clay, and the miner-boys cut through it pretty durn quickly, but I’ve had them carve out temporary sleeping quarters while we get everything set up.

Also had Lokum Atisular, that “wood” guy (I don’t trust carpenters. They’re not dwarfy enough.) Start chopping down trees so we can get some beds made. Sazir, that fisherman already started yanking fish out of the river, the weirdo.

So I had the boys divert their work and dig up a little loft just off the side of the living quarters, where we’ll set up some temporary workbenches for Lokum.

5th Slate, Mid-Spring:
Finally got some beds moved into the sleeping pens and we’re moving some stuff out of the wagon. We’ve moved all the food and booze into the work loft, and we’ll begin work on the grand dining hall as ordered by the Architect probably in the next two months. In our spare time I’ve had everybody grab a bucket and throw some water down onto what i’ve deemed to be our farmland. At least to start. We need to get food production going soon, or else I’m going to be up to my ears in whiny hungry imbeciles.

26th Slate: Found a magnetite deposit while carving out the temporary dining room. I’ll have the miners strip it out once we get storage space mined out. Also, due to workers complaining about distance to fill up buckets, i had the miner boys carve a small tunnel to the cliff face just above the river so we can get this going quicker.

19th Felsite: The damn miners work fast! I had to dig out the second page of the Plans that The Great Architect sent me with.
*The rest of the journal is smudged, as if splashed by water or rum. The ink is run, the dates are unintelligable. A few pages stand out in particular, but most are just snippets.*

@#$fe atite- DAMN MIGRANTS!!! They’r ehere already!? AAARGH-- *The entry tapers off.*


*another entry stands out*
Somehow, one of the dwarves, our fisherdwarf in particular, managed to get on the other side of the river. This is odd because you cannot actually cross the river. Or get around it. It is physically impossible.

How did he?


What? Either way, digign the emergency tunnel to get him from the other side got us a nice coal deposit, so we got something out of it.

*The rest of the pages in this book are heavily smudged and torn*

Journal Book 2: 2nd moonstone And so as winter comes onto us, we’ve carved a fair amount of the fort out, and even set up workshop areas. The dwarven caravan showed up and we set up our first trade agreement. I asked for massive amounts of booze and food, and they asked for armor an ammunition, prepared meals, and some miscelanious crap. Looks like there’s war in the homeland.

I’m hoping to have our furnaces up and making a vast amount of armor and metal crafts out of all the limonite we have before spring comes around. We desperately need to restock our alcohol coffers....

7th Opal: the alcohol drought is taking its toll. Nobody’s intent on drinking that nasty river water (ninjaing...fish are in it! Fish pee in it!!) I’ve ordered a still be made and we start churning out some booze asap.
7th Obsidian: nothing new. We finallystarted digging out the bloody hospital, but I’m going to need to set up new quarters for the migrants.

22nd Obsidian: Looks like we’re being bothered by a Fox. Apparently this fox is dangerous enough that the dwarves stop fishing and run away. Upon further inspection....

Well she’s a big ass fox.


1st Granite: Spring has arrived, and thus ends the first year of FindersKeepers. We’re almost self sufficient, but we should be fine once the trade caravans start up and we have ourselves ample food, and a full array of craftsdwarves.



And so the first, rather boring, year of FindersKeepers closes. Nothing very interesting, but I have included an image gallery of the fort so far, a world map, and below, a short Stonesense (a beautiful viewer program for the game) highlight reel of the fort's pieces.

Also, for your conveinence, i made a ninjaing spoiler button for the whole forum. Bow down to me, your god. Tour after the cut.

SPOILER: Click to show

Eventually these'll be turned into stockpiles.


Our extremely meager farming/fish cleaning operation.


The still temporary grand dining hall.


The grand storage house. Not pictured: All the crap in it.


The work house. Production central!


A pretty picture of the river valley at large.

Attachments:

[Oberstleutnant Insipid]

Awesome. I tried multiple times to get into DF, but it's very, very complicated. Looking to see what happens, the sheer amount of things you can do and weird programming makes it pretty awesome if you know what you're doing.

[Eco]

Wait, we have spoiler tags now?

[Geewoody]

Jul 28, 2010 9:45:50 GMT 10 Oberstleutnant Insipid said:

Awesome. I tried multiple times to get into DF, but it's very, very complicated. Looking to see what happens, the sheer amount of things you can do and weird programming makes it pretty awesome if you know what you're doing.

I suggest hitting up the DF forum and watching the tutorials. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it.

And D, I WANNA SEE SOME SLAUGHTERIN

[D]

Jul 28, 2010 12:28:32 GMT 10 Geewoody said:

Jul 28, 2010 9:45:50 GMT 10 Oberstleutnant Insipid said:

Awesome. I tried multiple times to get into DF, but it's very, very complicated. Looking to see what happens, the sheer amount of things you can do and weird programming makes it pretty awesome if you know what you're doing.

I suggest hitting up the DF forum and watching the tutorials. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it.

And D, I WANNA SEE SOME SLAUGHTERIN

Man the goblins won't come for a couple years Yolu'll get your slaughter. Trust me.

This reminds me I need to make traps!

[D]

YEAR TWO, MOFOS.

10th Granite: I’ve ordered my own personal office, finally dug out, smoothed and some doors installed. Meanwhile, the miners are carving out the hospital. I’ll have the entire wing smoothed and the walls engraved once we have a larger mason force.

26th Grantite: MORE MIGRANTS. AAAARGH I DONT EVEN HAVE BEDS FOR THE LAST ONES *The entry seems to taper off for a moment, as if the writer scribbled furiously with their pen until it broke.*

Some useful bastards, not very much. A bunch seem to have been recruited into the military somewhere, as they admit to having fighting skill. Should we ever need a militia, I’ll be sure to use them.
Among them was a third miner. YES!! NOW I CAN FINALLY make bedrooms for all these migrantsarararararg
And, shockingly, a high master surgeon from the homes arrived, and a doctor who must’ve been a goddamn general considering how well he can fight.

27th Granite: as the migrants were coming in, one of the bone carvers got possessed. Whoever wanted to possess a bone carver is beyond me....
One of the doctor dwarves came in was a diagnoticisan, so I made him chief of medicine for our infirmary, soon to be fully operational. Maybe. A third miner should help.

11th Slate; GAH! Inot Uzolkithin just dropped a newborn baby onto the dining room floor! Just popped right out!

19th Slate: we’re finally getting something done! Production is getting underway as we have a vast amount of dwarves with various skills. We’re a bit short on wood, however, so I’ve had some axes forged to get more dwarves chopping trees.

23rd Slate; aaaaaaaaaaaaagh. I’m about ready to go insane from this alcohol shortage! We don’t have barrels to put the crap in! And I’m chopping down trees as fast as i can, but...argh

25th Slate; I just noticed we have nigh 40 dwarves in the fort without nearly enough beds. KIPPERS. I put a halt to the hospital s production and got the miners digging out the proper dorms immediately.

3rd Felsite: this entire alcohol shortage is going insane. Dwarves...drinking WATER. We’re...aaaagh. We’re pathetic! I need a drin-DAMNIT.

11th Felsite: the brewer stopped brewing so he could drink......WATER. AAARGH

14th Felsite: The elven caravan from Sofiirene has arrived. Only two elves with a donkey and an ox, but I think the animals had barrels on their back. Barrels...? BOOZE!?!?!? I’ve heard tales that they’re very stingy, very....non dwarfy. They hate things done with wood. Thankfully we’d been churning out stone crafts out by the dozen.

19th Felsite; It took them a few days to unpack all their KIPPERS, but. They came with a bunch of cloth and stupid dumb KIPPERS, like wooden armor. WOODEN armor! Who the BLARGH wears wooden armor!? They brough tsome solid and some really bad booze, though, so I had our broker trade as much as I could.
SUNBERRIES!!! YES!! The one thing I could use after these EONS of lacking booze is SUNSHINE. Oh, god, if the elves are good for one thing, it’s the best damn alcohol in the world. I’m going to have an above ground farm built up, irrigated, and build a wall to keep thieves out. It’s going to be as large a farm as I can make. I YES. I. IM SO HAPPY. AH.

*the entry is full of squiggle3s as the pen jitters, clearly from alcohol withdrawl.(

1st Hematite: Been a long spring. Finally managed to get the dormitories going proper like, and I beleive we have bed construction going. Also, we’ve got above ground farms ready to go, and I’ve had that potash maker who’s been multitasking finally get som ereal work done.

17th Hematite: Work on the dorms continues. The elves finally leave, the prissy BLARGHs.

19th Hematite: Got word that we managed to not attract any migrants. That’s fairly good, in my book. I need to still prepare for more.

3rd Malachite: Our weaponsmith go ttaken by a fey mood and took over the forge. Shockingly he took some iron bars and...appears to be making something without even fuel for the forge. Words can’t describe it. He’s just hammering the iron and it shapes itself under his unbending will!!!

8th Malachite: He finally finished making his battleaxe using nothing but a single iron bar and his force of mind. It’s beautiful. One he was done he just walked off nonchalantly, and he seems...much better at weaponsmithing. Weird.

19th Galena: Nothing new to report. Finished the dorms, almost everybody has a bed.
19th: GOBLIN SNATCHER!!! The goblins know we’re here, and wish to take our children, and soon, our lives! A MILLITARY MUST BE MADE POST HASTE.

28th Galena; still nothing too interesting. All’s well, as fall comes.
3rd Limestone: Another damn snatcher, probably the same one. Thankfully a dog sniffed him out in the fields and scared him off.

I’m going to post some of those dogs out by the fields.

14th Limestone: Finally dug out all of that sea of magnetite by the dining room

, and decided to shift the dining room itself down a few floors so we can engrave it. Woudn up finding another massive magnetite deposit.

1st Sandstone: NnnnnNNNNNNNG we just hit a deposit of sapphires, and turns out there were some star sapphires. For the uninitiated, those things are worth more than your first born child and his entire life’s work.

7th Sandstone: one of my miners, Datan, suddenly stopped working and stopped talking to anybody. When I told him to get back to digging he just...ignored me and kept going. He took over a mason’s shop and took some coal and a bit of shell. Sigh. Whatever.

20th Sandstone; Well, he made a grate out of coal. Useless KIPPERS.

As well, I’ve had the miners dig down to the real dining room, and made plans to turn that giant magnetite strip mine into the barracks. Thoes goblins won’t get any of my dwarves!!!

3rd Timber, 1052: Datan organized a party in the dining room today. Considering we were so far ahead of schedule and I had to draw up more plans, I decided not to ruin the fun and cancel it. It’s been a great year, I figured we could all get KIPPERS faced,and half of us really know each other at all, so it’d be good to establish comradery.

19thy Timber: Another stupid goblin snatcher tried to get a kid.

20th Timber: THAT IS THE LAST STRAW.

The goblin snatcher killed a cat. THIS. IS. WAR.

27th Timber; the dwarven caravan arrived, and we traded all those useless instruments and some wooden ammo for about 6 tons of food and drink. I mean. I think they brought us well over the entire animal population in food.

We’ll be good for a few years.

27th Moonstone: No new goblin incursions. I’ve had our mechanic begin mass construction on such measures to trap and properly punish these impudent cat mudererss. This was slowed down by everybody moving all of the food we gained into the storage.

7th Opal: Had a blacksmith go fey. He made a really nice chair.




26th obsidian: Good god we have too much food! Our stockpiles are literally overflowing and work has stagnated to FIT THE CRAP.
(Note: every little fish symbol is a piece of food. Every one.)
Without much use for the miners at hte moment i had them start smoothing out all the tunnels they built.



1st Granite: Spring arrives once more, and a healthy baby boy is born on this day. A good omen, indeed. Our fort continues to expand incredibly, with the only issue being...those damnable goblins. I’ll get them. I’ll get them all.

Nobody kills a SMASHINGLY cat at FindersKeepers.


Some stonesense highlights:

SPOILER: Click to show

The dorms, fully setup.

On th eright, the entire living quadrant.

Workshops in full force

D's thoughts; this for'ts going obnoxiously well. 3 strange moods in a year with 2 instant legendary upgrades, in areas that are very useful. I've never seen something like that, and star sapphires? And this fort's literally drowning in iron ore. When the goblins do show up, we're going to be so loaded with steel and demonicly fueled military dwarves they'll die in beautiful ways.

The snatcher does indicate the next year could be pretty interesting. Hoping to update with gratuitous violence next time.

[Geewoody]

What kind of horrible monster murders cats? And as for war... I suggest using some of those useless migrants as meatshields.

[The Pletch]

What is a diagnoticisan and are they at all related to diagnosticians?

[D]

Aug 5, 2010 1:20:14 GMT 10 The Pletch said:

What is a diagnoticisan and are they at all related to diagnosticians?

Bite me.

But, to gee: Peon! Useless peasants are immediately sent into the gulag to dig for precious materials until they emerge from the deep, rippling with muscles on top of muscles, where they are then sent to turn a screw pump until they can lift a full grown cow with only their beards. Then they become heroes of LEGEND.

[The Pletch]

Except Fistbeard Beardfist, who abandons the fortress for adventuring and beard-based combat.

And has a bard chronicle his adventures.

[Geewoody]

Aug 6, 2010 11:06:43 GMT 10 D said:

But, to gee: Peon! Useless peasants are immediately sent into the gulag to dig for precious materials until they emerge from the deep, rippling with muscles on top of muscles, where they are then sent to turn a screw pump until they can lift a full grown cow with only their beards. Then they become heroes of LEGEND.

I am surprised by how deeply you've gotten into this game. This thread has actually been entertaining thus far.

[D]

A sad day, readers. All 2 of you.

7th granite: I know one of these dwarves knows how to set a goddamn gem. I just. Can’t. Find them!
Ah, it was the leatherworker.

26th Granite; Another wave of migrants. Thankfully I was prepared for this! Oddly they brought a ton of baby animals with them. I already have enough animals!

Looks like my butcher will be fairly busy.

Also, oddly, all of the dwarves have some martial training or war related skill. What’s going on at home...?
HAH. AHAH! V A USELESS PEASANT!!! I HAVE A PLACE FOR YOU, FREELOADER.
Upon further inspection, this dwarf was once a conscript. Who apparnetly fought oly with his teeth.

28th Granite; they’re still coming over the horizon...I need more beds.


[[D’s notes: Due to massive oversight of mine, a large chunk of spring went missing. Nothing really happened, though, so that’s...thankful. Ish? Ugh. Also i lost a large amount of screenshots.]]

1st Felsite; A rather interesting crossbow engraving. Quite a beautiful story, the tragedy of Eman.


10th Felsite: mason went possessed. Blah. No use.


14th Felsite: The elves showed up again, on the edges of the area. Had everybody start putting all our various “elf safe” goods into the trade depot.

23rd Felsite: GOBLIN AMBUSH! The bastards are here, and the war is afoot! We’re not prepared...dAMNIT ALL. I don’t have the arms to put my militia together without getting them killed! An entire squad of spear goblins... The ninjaers killed the axe dwarf they surprised easily.
25th Felsite: After killing a butcher and her child, the goblins approahced our front gate. They ran into our various traps, and we managed to catch many of them prisoner, while horribly wounding another. I ordered our military dwarves to go finish the job. The cowards began running once we broke their flank.

28th Felsite: SON OF A WHORE. Another goblin ambush...

1st Hematite: Things look grim. The goblins close in on our doors, and I can’t organize the military.
They’re inside the gates....

3rd Hematite: Blood covers the walls of FindersKeepers. We’ve lost 7 so far. I pray we can find some insane way to stop them...

I’ve moved everybody into the deepest recesses of the fort. People are slepeing on the ground, and this mechanic suddenlly makes a ninjaing workshop! What is he...??

6th Hematite: As we slowly became thirsty and awaited our fate, we began to organize our militia. Half of us can fight. However many will fall, we will not let these gobbos win.
We found somebody who was an actual goddamn marksdwarf, and by god is he going to save our asses.
Pray. Pray...I hear the elve’s screams...pray...pray...

11th Hematite: oh god they’re coming, they’r ehere...oh god...
Chaos. Suddenly, our ‘militia’ jumps into action, grabbing, breaking bones, slicing.......allislost....allislost...


The final entries are scrawled in blood, and are mantras of madness.




D's thoughts: So, that could've gone better. This was mostly my fault since I didn't properly trap the ever living fucck out of the above ground, and we would've been fine if I had any remote grasp of how the DF military system in the newer versions actually worked. My marksmen just...rushed in to beat people with crossbows. yerg.

I'm thinking of hosting a floorplan design contest, if anybody's interested, for the next fort. In a newer version. Where the bugs that killed me are fixed.

[Geewoody]

129 views... More than 2 people are reading this.

As for a design contest... I doubt that most of the people here play DF, let alone possess the skills to design a decent fort.

[The Pletch]

I assisted D enough with this fort behind the scenes, I'm sure I'll be consulted when the new one starts up.

[Geewoody]

Quick thought... If you're gunna make a new one, use a tileset this time.