Datanerith Entry 5: Tirist Withdraws from Society

I organized the migrants best I could, but this fortress just isn't equipped for its seven new members. The dorm is starting to get cramped, the dining room is packed to the brim, and, still, the food shortage problem looms. I didn't have enough to feed the population before it went up by thirty percent. I ordered the slaughter of my camel - my last large animal - and hoped that my hens would start to lay eggs soon.

In the meantime, I put my migrants to task. Several of them went straight into the military. Maybe they'll die before they get a chance to grow too hungry. I increased production of crossbows and training axes so they'd all be equipped, but for some reason, they're not practicing shooting. I've got archery targets, I've got a shooting range, and I've set the militia up to equip crossbows and train, so I don't understand what I've got wrong. Why aren't they training? I fucking hate the military in this game. So complicated.

This is literally the flowchat I use to manage my army in Dwarf Fortress.

The problem was somewhat mitigated/exacerbated when one of my recruits, Tirist, fell into a strange mood. He took over a bowyer's workshop and, thank god, went straight to work. See, in dwarf fortress, an arbitrary dwarf might randomly enter "a mood," like a secretive mood or a macabre mood, and take over a workshop. Once they take over the workshop, they start to demand specific items, like stone, or gems, or cloth. They might demand items that can be hard to come by for some fortresses, like shells. If the dwarves don't get what they want, they go mad - sometimes they just lose their mind and run around naked, sometimes they go berserk and kill everything they can. Either way, it's bad.

Fortunately, Tirist had all the things he needed. Very soon, he had created his masterpiece: Berdanlosis, or "Walkfaint" in English, a crossbow made of palm wood and chrysoprase gems. The first artifact of Datanerith! Here's its description for those interested in such things:

"Remember that time a goblin wounded some random dwarf's thigh in a war that happened years ago? That was so fucking awesome I'm gonna carve it on my crossbow!"

It doesn't quite address the rampant starvation, but it's still pretty cool.