Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode

I'm still playing Summitspear, as I have time. But I also wanted to check out a new Post-Apocalypse mod for Dwarf Fortress. Since I didn't want to start a new fortress, and since Adventure Mode would give me more of a Fallout vibe anyway, I thought I'd try that.

Unfortunately, the mod was just unplayably slow for me. I'm not sure why. But then, it's still in development, so I hope to play it... sometime.

Anyway, the attempt reminded me of how much I enjoyed Adventure Mode last time, so I thought I'd play it in vanilla Dwarf Fortress for a bit. None of my characters ever last very long, so it's a much quicker game than building a fortress (and a nice change of pace, too).

Enter Kasat Blazesword, human swordsman, member of the Nation of Flickering. He started in Dipfocuses, a little human hamlet in the Blockaded Hills, and quickly recruited some companions - a pikeman and two lashers.

Our first quest was to kill a bandit chieftain in the sewers of Pointycharmed, a nearby town. But I couldn't find any way to get into the sewers. I could see into the sewers from the occasional grate in the streets, but it was always a long drop down (usually into water - at least, I hope it was water - and I couldn't swim).

At first, I didn't realize I'd have such a problem finding the entrance, so I wasn't particularly deliberate in my search. And Pointycharmed turned out to be a very large town.

So I started over, trying to cover every bit of the city. Unfortunately, clearing the "fog of war" in Dwarf Fortress is always only temporary, so it's not easy to tell where I've searched and where I haven't.

At any rate, it was taking so long that I started to worry about my character starving to death. I could have sold some of my clothing to buy food, but I thought I'd just find a different quest. (There's always loot after a successful quest - and often, as you'll see, even when they're unsuccessful.)

So, in a nearby village, I got a quest to kill Obu Floorstokers, a vampire in the hamlet of Ferrymarked. Supposedly, she'd already killed 1217 people! Hmm,... that seemed a bit tough for a beginning adventurer,... but what the heck, I had several meatshields, er, companions, who could help.

When we got to Ferrymarked, it turned out that the whole town knew that Obu was a vampire, though they told us they didn't have any proof. I wondered about that, but they all were eager to point us in the right direction.

Obu turned out to look just like all the other villagers, and she seemed to be getting along just fine with them, too. Certainly, her house was filled with people. But when I accused her of being a vampire, she boldly - and loudly - admitted it. And then, all of her... friends immediately drew their knives and attacked her.

I kind of wondered why they'd needed an adventurer to do this, since I couldn't get through the mob to attack her, myself. But then the vampire quickly killed two of the villagers, so I guess they needed us after all. But she'd been stabbed a million times by the time I edged close enough to take her head off with my longsword.

The townspeople were appreciative, despite their losses. Indeed, they even let me loot the bodies of their poor dead neighbors, not just that of the monster we'd killed. And the vampire wasn't even their only problem, since they quickly gave me a quest to kill a nearby bandit captain, too.

So after selling our loot - and buying plenty of food - we headed to the bandit encampment. It turned out to be a piece of cake. There were only three bandits, none of them archers, and they attacked individually. So it was a simple matter to surround each of them in turn. None of us received even a scratch.

Well, at this point, I was feeling pretty confident, so I figured we'd finish exploring Pointycharmed for that sewer entrance. (I recruited another swordsman, too, just for extra backup.) But we still couldn't find it.

However, there were a couple of ruined temples in town. One of them was just a big hole in the ground, with no passages leading anywhere. But the second was different, with several underground passages. Unfortunately, it was clearly an old burial ground. There were skeletons everywhere.

Well, as long as they stayed dead, no problem. But I wasn't confident of that. Still, we just needed to find a way into the sewers, that's all. We really didn't want to mess with any undead.

But as we continued to explore, there didn't seem to be any real danger down there. There were a few traps, but my character was a pretty observant guy. So we just went deeper and deeper. And at the bottom, we found some really nice loot.

And yup, greed won out. I know that's been the death of many a young adventurer, but I just couldn't resist. I grabbed a few of the nicer items and made a run for the exit. And that's when the mummy ambushed me from the top of the stairs.

You know, I thought I had a chance, despite the curse he immediately cast on me. (Note that curses in Dwarf Fortress are permanent, apparently. I don't think there's any way to cure them, not yet.) I parried the mummy's attacks and counterattacked myself - to good effect, I thought. But then, it's hard to tell. Mummies don't look too healthy at the best of times.

Unfortunately, he'd caught me in a narrow corridor, where I couldn't dodge. He kept charging at me and knocking me down. I don't know what happened to my companions. I thought they were behind me, but I never saw them again after the mummy attacked.

There was a skeleton behind me, though, and the mummy reanimated it. That made it even harder to dodge his attacks (and the skeleton's attacks). I knew I wasn't going to make it when the mummy chopped off my left hand and my bronze longsword sailed off into the darkness.

But I still had my shield,... for a few minutes, at least. Then he chopped off my right hand. Yeah, I still had my feet, but there wasn't anywhere I could run. But I kept trying till the end.

It was lots of fun. I hadn't seen one of those ruined temples before. (Of course, it's been a year since I last played Adventure Mode.) And towns have gotten really big, too. But obviously, I didn't see much of the world. I was still a rank beginner when I died.

So I've started a new character. :)  This one is Bale Flyspell, a human maceman, a member of the Kingdoms of Rock, far to the north of Pointycharmed. And just to give you an idea of how different things go, I'll tell you about his first quest:

Right off the bat, I was asked to kill a bandit chieftain, so I grabbed a couple of good soldiers and headed out of town. But right at the edge of the encampment, we encountered four archers.

Immediately, Ithev, my lasher companion, took an arrow to the knee (any Skyrim fans here?), dropping her to the ground. That effectively put her out of the fight, since archers aren't going to get into melee range voluntarily. A few minutes later, Dether, a fellow maceman, took a crossbow bolt to the head, killing him instantly. Both of my guards were taken out of the fight before we'd even started.

One enemy crossbowman got too close, and I was able to kill him by staying to his northeast, where his own body blocked the aim of his fellows. (I still had to dodge a few missiles, but I was lucky.) But I couldn't get at the others. And note that we hadn't even seen the bandit chief yet!

So I looted the body of the crossbowman - and poor Dether's, too - then headed back to Ithev. She was in bad shape. The bandits seemed to be in no hurry to kill her, since she was clearly no threat. Every so often, they'd shoot her with another arrow or bolt.

Well, I couldn't defend her and I couldn't rescue her. She was dying in agony, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. So I crushed her head with my mace, putting her out of her misery. It had to be done.

And sure, I looted her body (always choose companions with good armor in your size!), but I mean to come back and get revenge. So I'm sure that's what she would have wanted, don't you think? After all, we were comrades. Only for a couple of hours, admittedly. (When she joined me, she said she wanted a warrior's death. But she probably wasn't expecting it to happen so soon.)

That's Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode. It's been a lot of fun. I'll probably play Bale until he dies, then jump back into Summitspear again. But I haven't had a lot of time to play anything, really. Or to get much blogging done, either. Well, it's summer, and that's a very busy time of year for me.

PS. Sorry, but I didn't expect that I'd be writing about this, so I didn't get any screenshots. (Here's a comic for you, though.) Well, there wouldn't be much to see, anyway. Dwarf Fortress is all about using your imagination.

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear 254

Summitspear trade entrance. Bridges can trap enemies in a killing zone, while three ballistas (southeast corner) will fire down the road through fortifications in the wall.

(click image to embiggen)

Year 254 has just come to an close in Summitspear, my current Dwarf Fortress game. My previous postings (they begin here) were all in first person, but nothing much happened in my fortress's fourth year. So I thought I'd step outside of the game to make a few comments.

One reason why little new happened is that we received very few migrants in 254 - just 10 dwarves arrived in the spring, and none at all in the summer and fall. Well, if you remember the previous year, we were besieged by goblins when the dwarven caravan was scheduled to arrive. It never showed up, and word apparently got back to Mountainhome about our troubles.

Note that we'd also lost a number of dwarves to that waterfall, and a couple to goblin bowmen. Those kinds of things impact immigration (which you must admit is pretty neat). Naturally, dwarves don't want to migrate to some fortress that's unsafe. But this meant that we didn't grow much.

We ended the year with 140 dwarves, vs 126 to start. In addition to the ten migrants, there were four babies born in the fortress. Now babies are born with the same random characteristics as everyone else in Dwarf Fortress, but I had to laugh when little Tobul Shakeboulders, only minutes old, was already described as "incredibly tough and very strong."

But that paled next to little Mistem Merchantrelease. Imagine giving birth to this prodigy: "She is tough. ... She has an amazing memory, great creativity, a natural ability with music, very good focus, a very good feel for social relationships, a good spatial sense, good intuition, and an ability to read emotions fairly well."

This image is misleading. Only male dwarves are bearded (though that includes infants).

(Alluvian_Est-Endrati)

Unfortunately, it will be 12 years before Tobul and Mistem grow up and can contribute to the fortress.

As you can probably tell, Dwarf Fortress is procedurally generated - proper names included. Sometimes, a name will seem eerily appropriate; in other cases, positively hilarious. But although they're random, I'm frequently tempted to see some kind of meaning in a name.

For example, take the tundra titan, Aweme Swampdash the Mirthful Tulips, which attacked my fortress in the fall. At first, the titan just loitered along the west edge of the map. I was beginning to wonder if it was even hostile.

Then it made a beeline to my fort's southwest entrance, as I expected. There was a pond in the way, and instead of walking around it, the titan just walked right into it. And never emerged out the other side.

Yeah, apparently it was amphibious, because it stopped and waited a bit at the bottom of the pond. Aweme Swampdash? I know that's just random, but it did seem appropriate. And what was it doing down there?

I wondered if it was setting up an ambush, waiting for the caravan that was currently trading with my fortress. But I don't think Dwarf Fortress creatures are that smart.

And in a little while, it turned around and went back to the edge of the map again. What the hell? That's when I started wondering about that "Mirthful Tulips" part. Was it just screwing with me? :)

A Dwarf Fortress titan?

(ForsakenGeti)

After waiting awhile, it charged into the pond again. By then, I had my military ready, but I really needed to watch the situation, while the titan waited at the bottom of the pond, just as it had before. (I closed the north gate, so it wouldn't surprise me from that direction.)

But after awhile, this time, it charged out of the pond towards the southwest bridge, and my marksdwarves quickly shot it dead. Unlike some titans, this one apparently wasn't made of any unusual substance, and there was no indication that it was poisonous or carried any nasty diseases, either. Rather anticlimactic, in fact.

But the young marksdwarf who put a crossbow bolt through its heart got a new name from it (and also, maybe, from the four goblins she's killed). She's now listed as Monom Razorcontest the Skinny Stranger of Phrasing. Heh, heh. Yes, there are some strange names in Dwarf Fortress.

Soon afterwards, we had a few goblins ambush the fort - six bowman and a maceman leader - but they were quickly dispatched, too. And that's it. Really, it was a peaceful year. I didn't lose a single dwarf all year. I didn't even have one injured.

Typical dwarf behavior.

(Urist McNausved)

We've still got four vampires locked up, and one of them keeps getting elected mayor every summer. (My dwarves don't actually know that they're vampires, since no one saw them at a kill. See this for the full explanation.)

One of them, a skilled armorer, went into a strange mood this year. Bembul Tickspaddled withdraws from society. (Yeah, she's been locked away without food or drink or companionship for two years. You can't get much more withdrawn from society than that!)

If I'd done nothing, she'd have gone insane. I don't know what trouble she could have caused, since she was already locked up, but I was curious what she'd make. So I built a metalsmith's forge in the neighboring cell (empty), then knocked out the wall between them.

I kept her confined until she commandeered the forge, then let her out (locking her up again once she started work on it). Well, she ended up making "Strapsclean," a lead gauntlet, decorated with glass and stone, and adorned with hanging rings of alpaca wool and llama bone. Lovely, huh? Well, I guess it's kind of what I'd expect a vampire to make.

And it joins other bizarre artifacts my dwarves have created, like "The Root-Sandal of Wetting" (a llama wool miniskirt), "Autumnhailed the Grasp of Coincidence" (a stone table, with spikes of rock salt and skunk leather), and "Tickruled" (a cave spider silk head veil).

And that's about it for 254. We spotted another "forgotten beast" in the caverns - a gigantic humanoid composed of tiger iron. Beware its hunger for warm blood! A stone creature would be very hard to kill, but it can't get at us, and we're not going in. At least, not right now. So it was a relatively peaceful year.

That's likely to change next year. Certainly, we're likely to see an upturn in accidents, since I've been working on a couple of long minecart routes to the bottom of the map.

Summitspear magma forges, smelters, and kilns, 161 stories underground. Note the minecart tracks (still under construction) leading up ramps at the bottom of the screen, starting the long journey up to the main fortress. There are natural caverns on both sides, and a magma sea directly underneath.

Note that minecarts were released in a recent Dwarf Fortress update. (I'd been waiting for the Lazy Newb Pack to be upgraded, so I spent most of year 254 playing an earlier version.) There are a number of changes in the new version, and I might have designed this fortress differently if I'd known. But I think I'll be OK. Indeed, I've been preparing for the new version for awhile. Still, I know that minecarts can be very dangerous. So I guess we'll see.

At the very least, maybe year 255 will be more exciting than this one was. Oh, I had a great time, still. But it would have made a very dull first-person report (and maybe it still is).

Dwarf Fortress in a nutshell.

(Urist McDrfruitloop)

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear 253

Fire sweeps across our trading post. (Click image to embiggen.)

This is the fourth in my latest Dwarf Fortress series (but just the third year). The beginning of Summitspear is here. If you're looking to get started in the game yourself, check this out.

253 was a year of triumph and tragedy here at Summitspear. It began just like the previous year, with a huge immigrant wave: 33 dwarves, ten of them children.

Several were highly skilled loners, and having learned our lesson, we immediately locked them up. As it turned out, though, none were vampires. Well, better embarrassed than dead, right? We apologized, and there seems to be no hard feelings.

(Note that our four vampires are still locked away, still healthy and even content, despite months without food or drink - or blood. Our dwarves even voted Ingish Touchedrooms mayor again, though none were foolish enough to let him out. Perhaps we should put a more solid barricade on his cell...

(Actually, I suspect that this was just a protest vote against Urdim Lovedmetal. A leader, after all, must often make unpopular decisions. She simply ignored the vote and continued as our mayor, but I think she was angered by it. At least, she had old Urist Quakecudgel beaten bloody for missing a production mandate, even though Urist had absolutely nothing to do with that.)

Mid-spring, a troll surprised us, suddenly appearing in the heart of our fortress (written up here). We must count that a triumph, despite our errors, as not a single dwarf was so much as scratched.

Then, just before summer, six goblin spearmen and a crossbowman ambushed us, and we came out of that remarkably well, too. Well, we were lucky. We recognize that now. But at the time, our soldiers got to feeling pretty cocky.

In fact, we didn't even see the goblins until the crossbowman was foolish enough to shoot at a badger, just outside our southwest gate. And then he proceeded to walk right into a cage trap, which eliminated our most dangerous enemy right off the bat.

The spearmen were smart enough to stay at a distance,... but not smart enough to stay quite far enough away. Apparently, they didn't want to leave their leader. Unfortunately for them, our marksdwarves crept out on top of the wall (we're still building our defenses), ambushing the ambushers.

It was a glorious triumph, again without injury to our own people. And another, smaller ambush in late summer was no more successful. Even the industrial accident, shortly thereafter, which knocked Mistem Craftedglides off the wall, two stories down into our (dry) moat, left her with just scrapes and bruises. At this point, it was looking to be a pretty good year!

Meanwhile, our miners kept digging, finding yet another cavern system - or the same one, perhaps - just above a vast lake of magma, far, far beneath our fortress. This time, we were very careful to keep any openings blocked up.

And it's a very good thing we were, because we discovered far worse dangers than trolls, deep underground. Several times our people spotted a Forgotten Beast wandering the caverns.

Fubag the Flood of Slivers is a gigantic three-eyed lizard with antennae sprouting from its head. When first spotted, it was covered in blood - not its own, unfortunately. Later, we discovered the scene of a battle where the beast had wiped out a whole tribe of serpentmen. We couldn't inspect the scene very closely, but it looked like Fubag had used some kind of chemical attack. It was really very gruesome.

We've spotted the beast several times, but never in the same place twice, so it will be hard to set up an ambush. We're pretty sure it can't fly, but we don't know if it can discharge its noxious secretions as a ranged attack (another potential problem with the ambush idea). Clearly, anything which can take out a whole tribe of serpentmen is a deadly danger to us.

We also discovered part of a smooth stone structure, obviously artificial, just above the magma. We haven't been able to get a good look at it yet. What we can see doesn't tell us much. Maybe it's just more serpentmen? For the time being, we're leaving it alone.

But we did carve out some rooms down there, so we can use the magma for smelting ore and forging metal. We haven't been able to find any coal here, so we've been forced to burn wood for charcoal. And even in a jungle setting, that's not very efficient.

Unfortunately, the magma is far, far below the rest of our fortress, and our iron deposits tend to be near the surface, too. We could move our fortress, of course, but that would mean abandoning what we've struggled so hard to build. Just to save us a little effort? I don't think so.

However, we've recently heard of new minecart technology which would let us haul large quantities of ore and other materials on a track. It's still experimental, but it sounds intriguing. [Note that minecarts have just been introduced in the latest Dwarf Fortress release, though I have yet to install that one. They do seem to be quite... challenging - and very dangerous.]

I mentioned tragedy, as well as triumph, so I suppose I should get to that. In late autumn, just when we were expecting a dwarven caravan (which never arrived), we were besieged by the goblins. This was no minor ambush, but a war party of 15 bowmen, a maceman, and a trained giant olm.

As I mentioned previously, our defenses were (and are) incomplete, but it was our own mistakes which really hurt us. The goblins came from the north, where their bowmen lined the far riverbank. So our marksdwarves were ordered to the second-story fortifications to shoot back.

But we'd gotten too cocky. Our marksdwarves apparently thought they were invincible. Instead of staying behind the fortifications, they kept moving into the open, where they could be shot full of arrows. Two died, and two others were badly injured.

It was a long battle. When we raised the bridge, the maceman and the giant olm (which, as an amphibian, was perfectly capable of swimming the river) fell into our moat. They were only stunned, but it let us concentrate on the bowmen.

With the bridge up, the bowmen tried to ford the river. Four goblins were swept over the waterfall. Several others were caught in traps. Our people finally finished off the last of them, then stood at the edge of the moat and used the giant olm for target practice. It was a victory, but an expensive one.

Then, in early winter, we were attacked by a dragon. Yes, an actual, fire-breathing dragon! Luckily, the creature couldn't fly (although it swam quite well). As I mentioned, our walls aren't complete. So when the dragon neared our fortress, it breathed a vast gust of flame far across the moat, roasting our livestock and setting the jungle inside our compound afire.

That initial flaming was absolutely incredible! With that kind of ranged attack, I don't know what we could have done. Luckily, the dragon stumbled into a cage trap - and thankfully, a metal cage trap, at that.

But meanwhile, fire raced through our compound, killing even more livestock. Unfortunately, this was the dry season, and the jungle went up like tinder. The image above shows the flames sweeping across our trading post. (The image below is just a little later, when the fire reached the west wall.)

Luckily, the walls, the stairs, the floor hatches are all stone, and wouldn't burn. But the fire raced through our cage stockpile, burning up all of our wooden cages - and the goblin prisoners inside them.

Stonesense image of our compound, covered in ash. Flames still burn to the west.

Again, we were lucky. The jungle will recover. We will recover. Indeed, fire wasn't our biggest danger this year. Water was.

The river to our north has always been treacherous. The banks are slippery, the current is swift, and it ends in a waterfall which drops down a tall cliff. We'd lost dwarves to the river in previous years, but it became an absolute deathtrap in 253.

In late summer, we lost three of our people in quick succession. In the fall, another two - and these among our most skilled. Warnings of the danger didn't seem to help. Prohibiting access to that part of the river didn't stop it, either.

We built floor grating at the bottom of the cliff, so we could at least collect the remains of our dwarves. (It's bad enough to lose a loved one. When we can't even recover their remains, when the bodies lie rotting at the bottom of a river, rather than entombed - returned to the stone - as dwarves should be, it's especially depressing.)

The river didn't just grab dwarves, either. All manner of creatures have plunged over the waterfall. With the grating, they tend to live, though they're battered pretty badly. But all of those goblin bowmen survived the fall well enough to still fight. Not any of our own people, though. It's a long way down.

Anyway, we finally decided we had to do something. We were just losing too many of our people. So we built a bridge over the most dangerous stretch of the river.

But even then, the river reached out for one more sacrifice. Endok Silverbristled, one of our original founders, skilled mason, mechanic, and architect, slipped as he was building the bridge and fell to his death.

Stonesense view of the new bridge over the waterfall.

We had only beginners left to finish he job, but it was finally accomplished, just before the year came to an end. It's a retractable bridge, so it will double as a trap - not a very safe trap, admittedly, since it will dump enemies down into our residential section (but they probably won't be too healthy by then).

We ended our third year in Summitspear with 126 residents, including 38 children and four vampires (sealed away in their little cells). We also have a memorial hall with a long line of coffins bearing our honored dead - and stone slabs memorializing those whose bones we couldn't recover.

Our miners are already working to enlarge that space. It's a dangerous land. We're only just starting to realize how dangerous.
__

Note: Part 5 is here.

Getting started with Dwarf Fortress

Lately, I've been posting stories about my latest Dwarf Fortress game, Summitspear, so I thought I'd post a newbie guide for those who might want to try the game themselves.

Dwarf Fortress is a great game, but it's still in development (and likely will be for years and years) and it doesn't exactly hold your hand. In fact, it's not the slightest bit user-friendly. The developer has tons of fans (he's received more than $23,000 in voluntary donations in just the first three months of this year), but I suspect that many people who've tried the game gave up before they really got started.

Certainly, the game isn't for everyone, but it's free, so why not give it a try? But note that you have to be prepared to give it some effort. Also, remember that there's no way to actually win the game. There are many ways to lose, but keep in mind the Dwarf Fortress motto: "Losing Is Fun."

OK, suppose you want to give it a spin. I posted the first clip of a video tutorial awhile back. That's still very useful, but I thought I'd just give some step-by-step directions here. (Note that these are for the complete newbie.)

Since this won't interest most of my readers, I'll put my detailed instructions below the fold:

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear troll battle

(troll drawn by Buttery_Mess)

This is the third installment of my latest Dwarf Fortress series (the first is here; the second here), but while the others are annual reports, this is merely a (true) story from early in our third year.

Deep underground are many fierce monsters. Our miners know the danger, that at any moment they may break through a cavern wall and come face to face with death's cruel grin and horrible hunger.

Our miners know the danger, and accept it, for we are dwarves. And the depths are also full of great wealth. But our greatest fear is of unleashing such danger on our families. So we try to block off those passages into the deep caverns, so the creatures can't follow us home.

But sometimes, we overlook one...

It was a beautiful spring day in 253. Sibrek Standardkeys, the eight-year-old daughter of Mebzuth Mergedpost, marksdwarf in the Triangular Planks, and Logem Wheeleddie, macedwarf and captain of the Posts of Weakening, was playing with her kitten, when they both got thirsty. So she ran up the stairs into our pantry.

As she was working to tap a keg of Dwarven ale, her favorite, Sibrek heard a noise and looked up to see a huge humanoid monster, with long grey fur, massive hands, and large tusks and horns - a troll! She screamed.

Eshtan Flagtwinkling, 16, was at the other end of the pantry, looking for some Longland beer, when he heard the scream. But he was too far from the girl to save her - not that he could do much, without weapons and even without training, against a creature more than four times his size. And they were the only two dwarves in the pantry.

We'll never know why the war dog, Dodok Primegalley, happened to be there. Normally, she stuck close to her master, Endok Silverbristled, our mason/mechanic. But he was sleeping. Perhaps Dodok had smelled the troll. Or maybe it was just a happy accident, that she ended up in the pantry right when she was needed.

But either way, she knew her duty. The girl's scream brought her running, and that caught the troll's attention, letting Sibrek escape. The huge creature charged at the dog, punching her cruelly and knocking her down. Each blow did terrible damage, then it gouged out her eye with a tusk.

Dodok struggled to fight back, but her teeth couldn't seem to get a grip. The troll gored her in the chest with its horn, then jammed it into her brain, killing her instantly. The troll wasn't even scratched.

(art by lizkay)

Sibrek's screams were bringing dwarves running, but they had no idea what was facing them. Rith Pagemastered, an 18-year-old farm worker, ran down the stairs to find herself face to face with a troll, blood everywhere.

But as the troll turned to face her, Monom Razorcontest rushed up behind it. Monom was only 18 herself, but she'd been undergoing military training. Unfortunately, she'd trained as a marksdwarf, shooting at targets from a distance, not in melee.

Even more unfortunately, she'd been off-duty, so she had no crossbow bolts with her. Undeterred, she ran up to the troll and began beating on it with her light wooden crossbow.

Her blows did little damage to the huge creature, but the ferocity of her attack seemed to surprise it. At any rate, Rith was able to escape down the stairs, and it was a moment before the troll followed - into our grand dining hall, crowded with our citizens, their children, and even a litter of puppies!

(Summitspear dining hall and hospital - click image to embiggen)

You have to realize what a shock this was. This was the secure heart of our fortress! This was precisely where our civilians were trained to come when danger threatened.

We had a moat all around the fortress. We had strong walls. We had bridges we could raise to keep danger away from our loved ones. We had war dogs stationed at the entrances, to detect thieves. Our defenses were all built to keep danger from this place.

Furthermore, this was the heart of our fortress in another sense, too. We dwarves love to eat. We love to drink. And we like to do both in grand surroundings. Well, this was our grand dining hall. This was the most glorious part of our fortress, the place we admired the most, a shining symbol of everything that is Summitspear.

And now a filthy, stinking troll, covered with blood (none of it his own, unfortunately), stumbled directly into our home, our safe haven, our heart.

Monom ran down the stairs after him, but struggled to get around the tables and overturned chairs, and through the crowd (of course, she still had no crossbow bolts). The troll still seemed to be confused. It took a wild swing at a young weaponsmith, 17-year-old Ustuth Helmedcrowns, but missed, luckily for him. But it wasn't likely to keep missing.

Among the dwarves and the puppies, there was one young dog in the room, still untrained and barely more than a puppy, himself. But his instinct and his courage were sound. He grabbed the trolls arm, just as Monom got through the crowd and started hitting it with her crossbow again.

Vucar Dentedshields arrived about the same time - another marksdwarf, but again without any crossbow bolts. But he joined Monom in beating on the troll with his wooden crossbow, as well.

Luckily for both of them, the troll again focused on the dog. Their blows still weren't doing much damage, but every time it grabbed the dog, they were able to knock its hands lose. And the dog, though untrained, was surprisingly agile. They were all buying time.

Eventually, the troll caught the dog with a tusk to the chest, but by then, other defenders started to arrive - some even with bolts for their crossbows! Mebzuth Mergedpost was the first, shooting an iron bolt into the troll's stomach, finally doing it some serious damage.

Mebzuth had been at the other side of the fortress, organizing combat training, when she heard that her daughter was in danger. She nearly flew across the compound!

By the time she arrived, Sibrek had escaped, but Mebzuth didn't know that. And at that point, it was immaterial. Dwarves were in danger and Mebzuth had been trained to defend our people.

The troll started to run. Unfortunately, away from his attackers was further into our fortress, in the same direction our children had been running. Mebzuth shot it again, then a bolt from Monom Tongspatterns, Captain of the Guard, struck the troll in the leg, causing it to fall.

Everyone attacked. Mistem Glazechampions, mother of four, even struck the troll with her bare hand, probably bruising her hand more than the troll's arm. But her children were there.

The wounded dog, though panting heavily, was still game, and he was joined by Tekkud Pagebolts, the trained war dog of our militia commander, Etur Focusedpicks. As the dogs grabbed the troll, more crossbow bolts struck it.

And the troll became enraged. We'd thought the troll a terrifying sight before this, but we hadn't seen anything yet! The troll stood up, shook off the dogs, and charged at them. It pounded on Tekkud, the war dog, knocking her down and then goring her with a tusk.

But this did draw the troll away from the stairs, away from our most vulnerable citizens. Monom and Vucar continued to bash at it with their crossbows - not doing much damage with each blow, but the damage was accumulating. They kicked and punched the troll, too - whatever parts of it they could reach.

Eventually, Sibrek's father, Logem Wheeleddie, arrived, with his steel mace. He bashed at the troll as the dogs kept it occupied. And although it was Monom who stunned the troll with a blow to its head, Logem is the one who finally killed it, bashing the troll's skull into its brain with his mace.

Or was it dead? We've all heard that trolls have remarkable recuperative properties, though it's hard to imagine anything repairing that kind of damage. Just to be sure, we had the body dragged out of the fort entirely.

When it was over, we had to praise our gods for our good fortune. Not a single dwarf had been killed, or even harmed. Not a scratch! We lost one war dog (we're entombing Dodok in our Hall of Heroes, in honor of her brave sacrifice), and another was bruised and battered, but looks likely to recover.

That young pup who flung himself into the fight seems to have lung damage. We'll have to see how that turns out. [Note that animal caretaking isn't yet implemented in Dwarf Fortress.] It would be a shame if he doesn't make it. But even so, we came out of this just unbelievably well.

And we're scrubbing the troll blood from our dining hall - and picking up the troll teeth that litter the floor (I think the children are already fighting over them).

Logem gets the kill, though he'd rather the honor go to Monom Razorcontest, the young marksdwarf who so bravely fought through the entire battle. For her part, though, she just seems embarrassed at arriving at a battle with an empty quiver. Well, the young are easily embarrassed, I think.

And maybe we've all learned something from this. I hope so.
___

Note: Part four is here.

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear 252

Stonesense* image of Summitspear trading post area. (This shows the initial construction of an army barracks above the trading post itself.) Farms to the northeast. Most of the jungle is already cut down for wood and animal pastures.

(Click images to embiggen)

This is part 2 of my latest Dwarf Fortress game (part 1 is here). The fort (mostly underground) is Summitspear. This is the report of our second year:

You may have heard of that ancient elven curse, "May you live in interesting times." After this past year, I think I'm beginning to understand that mindset.

The year started off well. We more than doubled our numbers when a whopping 30 immigrants showed up! Eight of them were children, and most of the rest were the usual young, poorly skilled, or just plain unsuccessful dwarves who typically search for a new start. But a few were highly skilled and, really, very impressive dwarves, altogether.

In fact, one of them was so impressive that we elected him mayor just a few short weeks later. Ingish Touchrooms was an older dwarf, tall, with a calm demeanor. He was skilled in a wide variety of professions, as well as being a great conversationalist and just a great guy to be around.

Even our previous leader, Urdim Lovedmetal, was quite willing to turn over her duties to Ingish and concentrate on mining. Well, more than anything, she wanted Summitspear to thrive. And our new mayor seemed like the perfect dwarf to lead us to greatness.

Shortly thereafter, though, tragedy struck. Rakust Summitspears, one of our founding seven, our carpenter and our armorsmith, was found dead in his bedroom, completely drained of blood. Ah, I remember how proud he was when Urdim named our fortress (not named after Rakust, exactly, though I guess it's fitting, now). It's ironic that he was the first of us to die.

Bembul Tickspaddled found the body and seemed to be very shaken up by it. Well, we all were. How could this happen? How could anything get into our apartment complex, far underground?

Summitspear bedrooms, underground. Noble rooms at bottom right. Cells at bottom left. Burial chambers between the two. Bridge crosses cavern at waterfall, letting dwarves enjoy the sunshine and the mist. In the middle is the bottom of our well.

Shortly afterwards, 16-year-old Minkot Steelsalves discovered the body of her husband, Tekkud Swallowblockades, a young macedwarf who'd been training to defend our fortress, in their bed. He'd also been completely drained of blood.

Well, we all started worrying then. We removed the doors to all of our bedrooms. (Since they apparently hadn't been any protection, anyway, we thought we'd trade privacy for safety.) And we started a military patrol up and down the hallways. This time, we'd catch whoever or whatever was doing this.

But we didn't. In late summer, little Alath Pagequests, only six years old, was discovered dead in her parents' bed. She might have been safe in her own room, but her father was Captain of the Guard, and noble quarters are more private. Oh, who knows? But three dead in such a short time? We were all terrified.

Ingish tried to keep us calm, but we dwarves could talk about little but this. It was clearly a vampire - if not more than one - and just as clearly, he or they were living among us. No one could get in from outside the fort, not without being seen - and certainly not three times. But who could it be?

After the first death, we were cautious, but after three, we knew we had to act. We'd had no deaths our first year, so we old-timers were confident enough in each other. But we started to look very closely at the immigrants who'd arrived in the spring, just before the first murder.

There'd been another 14 immigrants arrive in the summer, too - after the first two deaths, but before the third. But most of them had been in family groups. The exceptions were Eshtan Flagtwinkling, who was the daughter of an existing citizen, and Monom Razorcontest, who, at the tender age of 17, seemed unlikely to be a vampire.

In that big migration wave in the spring, though, there were four older dwarves who arrived without any family members. One was Bembul Tickspaddled, the very dwarf who'd found Rakust's body. (We'd never actually asked her how she found the body, either - why she'd gone into his bedroom in the first place. Perhaps she'd been seen leaving the room, and so needed to distract us?)

The other three were much older dwarves, highly skilled (so why come here?),... and one of them was our new mayor, Ingish Touchrooms! It was he who'd been urging us to stay calm. Was that just a coincidence? At this point, we were having trouble trusting anyone.

But we had to act. So we took all four dwarves and locked them up. Their individual cells contained a bed and nothing else. And we barred the doors. Then we applied to Urdim to lead us again. The fact that we'd just locked up our previous mayor didn't seem to bother her. At least, she graciously accepted the task.

It wasn't long before Morul Pagedpoints, a master fisherman who was apparently just something of a loner, began suffering from a lack of food and drink. So we released him from his cell, apologizing profusely. But the other three seemed to thrive on nothing at all. And the murders stopped.

We'd learned our lesson. In the fall, another 15 immigrants arrived, and we questioned them closely. Six of them were children, with their families. Moldath Woundivory arrived alone, but at 16, she was barely more than a child herself, so we left her free. (Poor girl. We should have locked her up. No she wasn't a vampire, but only a few weeks later, she slipped and fell into the river, then was carried over the waterfall to her death. We weren't even able to recover her body.)

But two dwarves - older, capable, well-skilled - arrived with no family members and no family connections here. So we locked them up. One of them, Likot Enterwhip, soon showed clear physical distress from the lack of food and drink, so we released him. But the other seems to be perfectly healthy yet.

Stonesense* image of the same bedroom area. Noble rooms at bottom. Burial chambers to the left. Cells, with four vampires inside, at the far left. The bridge crosses the cavern to the ordinary (non-noble) bedrooms. Note the lack of doors on the rooms.

Apparently, all four of the dwarves in these cells are vampires. At least, they've gone for months without food or drink - not even water. None of them even seem to be unhappy. They stay busy engraving the walls of their cells, and that seems to be all they need.

They still don't admit to being vampires. They plead to be let out, explaining that it's all just a mistake. But they can't explain how they survive on nothing. In fact, they don't even try. And we haven't had a single murder since we locked them up.

Oddly enough, they're still relatively popular among most of our citizens. Oh, no one has been crazy enough to release any of them. The evidence, after all, is clear. But I guess it's hard to avoid treating them as the dwarves they pretend to be, even after all this. Still, we try to keep the other dwarves away. (In that respect, putting the cells along a busy corridor was clearly a mistake.)

We've had a busy year in other ways, too. We welcomed trading caravans from the elves and the humans, as well as our fellow dwarves. We didn't need much from the elves (from the East Fords), but we gave them a good deal, anyway. And we bought a lot from the humans, of the Stormy Nation.

As to the dwarves, well,... our first year, the outpost liaison from the Fence of Dreaming left in a huff when our leader failed to greet him. This year, the liaison stumbled into a kobold thief as he was walking towards our north entrance and was stabbed in the leg. These diplomats are not having the best of luck, are they?

Luckily, he was close to the entrance and was able to escape his attacker as three of our war dogs chased after the kobold. The first dog grabbed the thief by his hand - his left hand, unfortunately - and the kobold stabbed her in the head with his knife, killing the dog instantly. The other two war dogs succeeded in killing the thief - well, chasing it into some caravan guards, actually - but not until one of them had been stabbed repeatedly. The dog still survives, but probably not for long.

And this was just a kobold - a kobold with no armor at all and only a knife for a weapon! Kobolds are supposed to be weak, cowardly little creatures. How much more damage would a goblin have done? Or a minotaur?

Yes, a minotaur - a giant humanoid creature with the head of a bull - attacked our fortress, too, last year. Luckily, he stumbled into a cage trap before he made it to the north entrance. But we're really worried that he might break free. Unfortunately, we don't have a safe place to put him, not yet. We're working on that, but everything takes time.

Stonesense* image of the Summitspear dining hall, with the hospital adjacent to it. The top of our well is just off the hospital. (Dwarves don't normally drink water.) Noble dining rooms, at the bottom right, are located just above their bedrooms.

Several of our dwarves fell into strange moods last year, as Urdim had done the first. I'm not sure I understand that, but it hasn't caused any harm, so far. Indeed, we've ended up with some beautiful creations, like a table made of rock salt, mule leather, and iron, and another made of gneiss and skunk leather. (I don't think these dwarves are thinking too clearly when they pick out the materials.)

But the oddest might have been when four-year-old Dobar Earthenlabors was possessed by a strange mood and claimed a bone-crafter's workshop. Afterwards - after creating sheep bone and cave spider silk greaves - she seemed just the same as before. Whatever it was, it seems to have had no permanent effect on the little girl, for good or ill.

Finally, our miners stumbled across a vast cavern system - or perhaps two - deep underground. They were looking for flux stone and coal. Eventually, they found some marble, but we still haven't found a source of coal. We might have to dig still deeper, down to where we might hope to find magma.

At any rate, the cavern seems to be a maze of twisty little passages. About 40 stories below ground, it extends a good 15 stories from top to bottom, but it's really too maze-like to tell for sure how far it goes. Some ways below that, we encountered another, similar cavern system - again, just twisty little passages. It might be part of the same cavern complex, but it doesn't look that way.

But the fact is, we've only begun to explore into the depths here. Urdim was determined that we create a proper fortress - at least, "proper" as humans consider such things - so we've spent a lot of time building walls on the surface (with very little to show for it, so far). And, of course, there are the everyday requirements of life, too. (Suffering through vampire attacks didn't help much!)

At the end of the year, we have 77 citizens, including 4 vampires and 24 children. (Note that Litast Fencewave, son of Mistem Glazechampions and Meng Merchantfocus, reached his majority - his twelfth birthday - during the year. With little self-discipline or focus, he was put on stone detailing duty, for now.) Even after losing four dwarves this year, our population has grown more than three-fold from the 22 we had a year ago! Admittedly, we could have done without the vampires...

Unfortunately, we've become increasingly worried about the nearby goblin civilization, the Cremated Hatred. So far, they've just sent thieves to harass us, and we've caught most of them, I think. But our defenses are still quite primitive. We have five masons working around the clock, but the walls go slowly. And we can't thrive with just a defense, anyway. Even if we could close ourselves off from the outside world, how would we grow? We need an offense, too!

And our military is still very small and poorly-equipped. We lost our skilled armorsmith to the vampires, and it took us a long time to find flux stone, anyway. We can make small quantities of iron weapons, and even smaller quantities of steel, but without coal or magma - or, ideally, both - we can't do much. We bought some iron weapons from the humans last year, but we can't afford to buy enough of them. Or of armor, either. That stuff is expensive!

Besides, we're dwarves. It shames us to buy weapons and armor from the humans - or even from our own people. But everything takes time. We've been here two years now, and we've come a long way. But we've still got a long way to go, too. Well, we'll see what year 253 brings us...
___

Note: Part 3 is here.

*Note that Stonesense is a Dwarf Fortress utility which comes bundled with the Lazy Newb Pack. Like everything else associated with Dwarf Fortress, it's still in development, but it's kind of neat to get a 3-d view of a fortress.

Pruning

I haven't been blogging much lately, and that probably won't change right away. I've got a million things to blog about - thanks for the links you've been sending me! - but I'm not sure when, or if, I'll get to them.

I've been pruning my fruit trees, and it's been such an incredibly warm March that everything is bursting out at once. I just can't keep up with it. I've got my trees and bushes pruned, and I'm starting on my grapevines, but they're already starting to leaf out, not just bud out.

And it will be the raspberries after that, and - sometime - get my garden started. (I wanted to plant some cold-weather crops weeks ago, but I just haven't had the time.) The grass is getting long, too, which isn't a big deal, but does take time away from everything else.

Anyway, I'm just behind on everything. (You should see my email Inbox!) But I'll still be blogging. I'll try to post some things without much commentary, because those are quick. As I said, I'll try. You know how hard it is for me to say nothing. :)

And I do want to post my second year in Summitspear, my Dwarf Fortress fort. It's been nearly a month since my first post, but I've had little time to play.

Yeah, I know those aren't popular here, but I have a lot of fun writing them, and my vote trumps yours. Heh,  heh. Frankly, just the fact that they're fun to write probably means I'll get to that before most of the rest of this stuff.

OK, I just thought I'd give you a heads-up. I don't want to lose the readers I've got (each one as precious as rubies, I assure you). I'm not dead and I'm not losing my interest in blogging. But I did say that I'd be slowing down once winter was over, and I'm especially busy right now.

Dwarf Fortress: Summitspear 251

(click image to embiggen)

This is the start of my new settlement in Dwarf Fortress, since I had to start over last week. If you're looking for a tutorial, you might check this out. The wiki is a big help, too (maybe even essential).

I'll be posting annual reports - from my dwarves' point of view - until... I stop. Yeah, no guarantees. I love the game, but I tend to get bored and move on. That's the case with all games, in fact (if you're wondering what happened to my last Minecraft game).

In the spring of 251, seven bold dwarves from the Fence of Dreaming set out to create a brand new outpost for dwarvenkind. Calling ourselves the Rhyming Towers, we confidently followed our leader, Urdim Lovedmetal, as she led us to our new home... a hot, humid jungle.

Standing there in the rain, panting from the heat, swatting flies and mosquitoes, we were all a bit dismayed. This didn't look much like a home for dwarves. Our flock of sheep hardly looked as badly out of their element as we did.

But Urdim insisted, and we had confidence in her leadership. The river to our north poured over a cliff, and the rocks below showed signs of silver and iron. And it did look defensible, if we just burrowed into the cliff-face.

But that's when Urdim surprised us again. We would dig, of course - that's what dwarves do - but we'd dig down from the top, in the middle of the jungle. And we'd create not just an underground dwarven lair, but also a sizable structure above ground, something to demonstrate to the other peoples of Ospazslzgo - humans, elves, and goblins - that we were here.

She called our new  home Kobellokum, "Summitspear." And swinging her miner's pick, she took the first bite out of the admittedly swampy, mucky jungle floor. Well, it was a start.

While Urdim dug into the earth, the rest of us unloaded our wagon, pastured the livestock, and started surveying the site. Our first priority was to dig a moat around our encampment. There were alligators nearby, and who knew what else might show up? Defense was our first concern.

But it was a miserable experience. Even in early spring, it was hot. And it rained pretty much all the time. We had to sleep on the ground - in the mud - and eat standing at the wagon. Well, we didn't expect a grand dwarven hall right from the beginning. But I must admit that we hadn't expected to be settling down in a steaming, stinking jungle, either.

By mid-summer, we'd made a good start. We'd dug the moat and put a couple of bridges over it. We couldn't raise them, not yet, but at least it let us concentrate our defenses. And we were very pleased when ten new dwarves joined us. Our first immigrants!

Truth be told, they weren't a very prepossessing bunch. Half of them were just children. And their parents were hardly more than children themselves. Poorly skilled and poorly groomed, they clearly wouldn't be missed by their former home. But at least they were willing to work.

And their leader, an older dwarf who'd led these youngsters to us, turned out to have some considerable skill at metal-crafting. That should be very useful, eventually, although it might be some time before we can take advantage of it.

In the fall, another young couple showed up, with their three children. What's with all these youngsters having kids at such a young age? Again, they were poorly skilled, but willing to work. And with 22 dwarves now - a full seven of them children - we really needed the labor.

I thought the year was going well enough - slowly, perhaps, but uneventfully - but Urdim became increasingly moody. Late in the fall, she fell into a strange mood, shutting herself up in our mason's temporary shop and refusing to speak to any of us.

As chance would have it, that was right when dwarven traders arrived, with an outpost liaison from the Fence of Dreaming. But Urdim, still in the grip of that strange mood, refused to speak with him, and the diplomat left in a huff. I hope that doesn't cause us problems later.

The caravan, at least, was willing to trade, with or without our leader. Truth be told, we didn't have much to trade them. They brought a lot of goods that we could have used, but we really hadn't had time to do much crafting, ourselves. But they seemed happy enough when they left, so I suppose it was a start.

Winter turned out to be not much different from the rest of the year - hot, humid, and buggy. But Urdim emerged from the mason's workshop with the most astonishing armor stand, made of rock salt and encircled with bands of rock salt cabochons and silver.

She called it Buzat Sanreb, the Twigs of Owning (whatever that means), and it looks as valuable as hell. Oddly enough, she's a miner, not a mason. And she's never given any indication of knowing much about masonry - still doesn't, in fact. But she's back to her normal self again. Whatever that strange mood was, it's over now.

So here we are. It's spring again. We've been here one full year. So far, everyone is healthy and happy, though our water buffalo somehow starved to death, standing in the middle of a lush jungle. The dogs had puppies, the ewes had lambs, and we've got quite a bunch of chicks and turkey poults running around.

We're doing quite well for food and drink, and we've all got decent bedrooms now - if nothing too fancy (but it sure beats sleeping in the mud!). Our dining hall is still pretty rough, too, but we've come a long way.

However, at the end of winter, we were plagued with goblin thieves. We caught four of them in traps. (I'm not sure what we're going to actually do with them.) If there were more than that, we never saw them. I don't think they were successful in stealing from us - certainly, our children are all still safe - but this is only the beginning.

Now that they know we're here, we can expect further attacks. And to be honest, our defenses are still quite limited. Our traps were set up to defend against the occasional alligator or other wild beast. Against goblins,... well, we were lucky this time. But we can't count on that. And if any archers show up, our moat really won't be much protection.

We need to build walls, but there just aren't enough of us, not yet. We need more immigrants - and adults, not children. Skilled adults, hopefully. Certainly, another mason would be really, really useful.

But we'll take what we can get. And if we don't get anybody, we'll still manage. Because we're the Rhyming Towers, and we'll do whatever it takes to make Summitspear a fortress of legend.

___

Note: Part 2 is here.