Stesokur Entry 14: Killer Croc

A cave crocodile, like the giant olm, managed to sneak its way into the back entrance of my fortress from the underground caverns. I'm quickly learning that I need to prepare for threats from the vast underground cavern as well as from above. There's more to destroying a fortress than elves and goblins, right?

You mean I discovered an expansive monster factory deep underground.

Well, OK, no problem. Mobilize the militia! I decide to send everyone I have after it. The Slaughters and the Canyons mobilize and rush it one-by-one. Personally, I'm hoping that my melee squad gets there first. I know the crossbows will just feather it with bolts and kill it in, like, ten seconds. I'd like the axedwarf or hammer lord to get a little combat practice in first. I was hoping to see Kumil do some badass dual-wielding, even! I knew they wouldn't get a chance, though, if the crossbowdwarves just killed it right away.

It's shit like this that proves I am not a clever man.

Melbil, the leader of the Canyons, my squad of crossbowdwarves, was the first to arrive. The cave crocodile closed the distance between them surprisingly fast:

Dear Armok, no! She lost both her socks!!

So, ouch. The cave crocodile goes straight for the feet for some reason. It first tears away one of Melbil's feet, then another. I'm proud of her for bashing it with her crossbow while it's literally chewing off her second foot, but, not surprisingly, she does not survive very long.

Then Kumil arrived.

He just had to follow the trail of blood.

Kumil is a highly skilled warrior, the equal of Solon Beridos. Unlike Solon, however, Kumil was very poorly armored. And the cave crocodile didn't go for the feet this time: it bit Kumil on the torso and shook, severing arteries and tendons all over the Hammer Lord's chest and abdomen. Gripped in the mighty maw of his reptilian foe, Kumil did exactly what I hoped he would. With one hand he bashed the crocodile in face with his silver hammer, with the other, he repeatedly stabbed the crocodile in the eyes.

After he killed the crocodile, Kumil dragged himself from its deadly jaws and slowly began the walk back to the hospital. He made five steps before he collapsed.

Stesokur Entry 13: Onwards and Upwards

I've made mention of Stesokur being a tower before, so let's take a look at how I'm actually trying to build everything in one direction: upwards.

Ground Floor.

I think I've shown off this floor plenty; it's the ground level and the entrance. Notice the Depot and the refuse pile flanking the gates, which I've covered in cage traps. The bottom of the Ground Floor is a hospital; I plan on actually dedicating an entire floor to the hospital, but right now I've got to have it somewhere. Similarly, above the main staircase in the center, I've got my barracks. I would like to give each military squad a floor of their own to train in, but that will have to wait for another day.

Second Floor.

The Second Floor is the dining room; you can see the sky bridge to the Cookhouse at the northernmost section. Right now the dining room is certainly large enough to feed all of my dwarves at once - it's actually far too big for my current needs - but I know that will soon change. I've kept the room above it empty because I fully expect to need two dining rooms of this size. Notice that the Second and Third Floors are the only ones with actual hardwood flooring. From here on up, it's all stone, baby.

Fourth Floor.

Here are the offices. I did the math, and I don't actually think I will need this many offices - there are fewer nobles who technically require offices than there are rooms available. So, for the time being, I'll use the spare rooms as private dining rooms. That's a temporary thing, though, until I dedicate a floor to private dining. I like the idea of several "important" dwarves, like the Hammerer, having an office, even if they don't strictly need it according to the gameplay. 

Fifth Floor.

The Fifth and Sixth Floors are dedicated to industry. The Fifth Floor has my stoneworkers on the northern half, and my woodworkers on the bottom half. It's also where I keep most of my finished goods and furniture stockpiled. I've also put my wood and stone stockpiles up here, which has most of my peasant dwarves in constant motion, hauling the raw materials up five floors. The Sixth Floor has a few miscellaneous but necessary workstations, like a soap maker or jeweler. The northern half of the Sixth Floor is my textile industry: dyers, loomweavers, and clothiers. The vast majority of Stesokur's wealth come from the pretty dresses made by my tailors.

Seventh Floor

I've set up a sculpture garden on the Seventh Floor. Dwarves enjoy relaxing around statues, and I figure it's good to have a place for them to hang out between the bedrooms above and workstations below. Unlike Datanerith, with its works of art celebrating the love between cockroaches, or mocking its dead citizens, Stesokur's statues are pretty cool. They're all designed by Kadol, the mason who got shot that one time. Most of them are of gods, such as Kun, the God of Luck, or Ertal, the God of Gambling. One statue is celebrating that time Kumil killed a kobold, and two other statues celebrate Fikod Imushbunem, the leader of the original seven dwarves.

Eighth Floor

Beyond the statue garden are my bedrooms. I'm pretty proud of this layout: I wanted to strike a balance between efficiency of space, and allowing my dwarves to have a little luxury. I decided to give each of them a cabinet (and later, a chest or coffer). I can fit forty-eight dwarves per level, set up this way. I plan on having four levels of this exact same layout. Right now, though, I only have the Eighth and Ninth Floors finished, with the walls put up and everything. The Tenth Floor is completely empty, but it at least has its walls up.

Eleventh Floor

Here's where we're at now. The Eleventh Floor, when it's finished, will be the last of the four "common dwarf" bedroom levels. Right now, though, it's just a roof: and a bad one at that. See those poor masons hard at work up there? They gotta do all their work in the bloody rain. And it's not like they'll be done once all the flooring and walls are installed; after that, I'm just gonna have them build upwards, and upwards, for as high as I can.

We're at eleven floors now. Wonder how high it'll go?

Stesokur Entry 12: Recursive Chests

Not to be outdone on the whole creepy artifact thing, a new dwarf has entered a mood. Iden Kivishducim, one of the masons I'd put to work building the wall outside (I'll talk about that soon!) took over a mason's workshop. Fortunately, this time I had all the materials I needed.

I guess it doesn't really matter. Iden's not that threatening. I checked her personality: she has a "profound understanding of her own feelings." Oh yeah she's a sissy.

So after a toy boat made of stone and a creepy as fuck sheep-leather veil, what are we going to get this time? A loin cloth made of spikes? A sword made out of mushrooms? She's a mason, so she's probably going to use stone. Ah, I know! A sock made out of granite! This should be fucking interesting.

Remrotig is dwarvish for "Dousedblenched." I hope Iden knows just how weird her profound feelings are.

That's... actually pretty cool. In fact, that's really useful! A coffer I can use to store, well, whatever in. More importantly, though, this can be put in some noble's room, or in some public place for dwarves to pass by regularly. If a noble gets it, it'll make him happy. If it's out in public then it, like a statue, would make all the dwarves who see it happy. Neat! Good job, Iden! In fact, let's take a closer look at it.

Alright, that's pretty badass! Encrusted with (cheap) gemstones, and leather and bone, and it's got an image of some suns, some mechanisms, and itself!

W-wait what

It has an image of itself? How is that possible? Does the image of the claystone coffer have... another little image in it? How far down does this thing go? I can't wrap my head around this at all. This is like... a mathematical impossibility. Iden, I'm happy that you have a profound understanding of your own feelings, because I have no fucking clue what you are all about!

Stesokur Entry 11: Stabbing Lizards

A bunch of my dwarves - peasants who were hauling stone for my skilled masons to continue building the tower upwards - started freaking out and quitting their jobs. Apparently a Giant Olm had somehow gotten into my mines. I had to look up what it was - a big ol' peach colored lizard! Looks like a snake with legs, which had me a little scared at first. But, it wasn't harming anyone, it was just scaring the peasants.

Is it weird to run into giant snake-lizards underground? I don't even know anymore.

So, of course, I had to kill it.

I have two militia squadrons to choose from: my melee squad, called the Blockaded Slaughters, and my crossbow squad, called the Blockaded Canyons. The shared prefix of "Blockaded" is actually an enormous coincidence, but I think it's really cool. I'll make a mental note to name all of my militia squadrons "The Blockaded Somethings" for this fortress. Anyway, we're indoors, and I don't see why we should waste any ammo, so I sent the Slaughters out to do some slaughtering.

Kumil, who wants very badly to be seen as the greatest soldier of Stesokur, is the first on the scene. Again. And what's the first thing he does? Before even starting the battle itself? 

aw yeah

He becomes a hammerlord! Like Solon Beridos of Datanerith, Kumil becomes the lord of his chosen weapon. And here's what's truly awesome about Kumil: the dwarf fights with two weapons. In one hand, he clutches the silver hammer with which he gained his title. In the other hand, he wields a silver dagger like a main gauche. You know where he got that silver dagger from? It belonged to the kobold he punched to death. Kumil pays the iron price for his weaponry.

The Olm doesn't last long.

Kumil likes his dagger, apparently. He stabs the Olm over and over again. At one point, the creature's lung is pierced, so Kumil twists the dagger in the wound. Once the Olm falls over, Kumil just kicks it to death. Can't wait to see this guy use his actual hammer.

Stesokur Entry 10: The Cookhouse

As part of my efforts to keep everything above-ground, I have emptied the basement of Stesokur of the few things it was still used for - kitchens and food stockpiles. Where did all this go, you may ask? The dining room? The empty floor above the dining room?

Don't be silly. I need all this empty space for my second dining room.

Well, as it turns out, there are some problems with building everything up. Mostly, it's a very very slow process. Even with over half of my fortress' population dedicated to hauling stone or masonry, it still takes a long time to finish a single floor - and I've got workshops and bedrooms to worry about before worrying about a pantry. Plus, I'll be honest; the single tower is starting to get a little... boring. So I installed an adjacent building:

I thought about how unsanitary it was to have the cooking facilities right there on the grass... then I realized that it's still way better than the ankle-high pool of goblin blood outside.

There's my still, farmer's workshop, kitchen, butchery, and a tanner's workshop. The tanner isn't, strictly speaking, thematically appropriate for a kitchen, but I figure it should be near the butcher anyway. Tanner's make leather from animal skin, and it's the butcher who removes the skin. See the upper right corner of the room there, the way it protrudes a little? That's my ventilation system! So when miasma rises from the dead bodies in the butchery, it won't bother anyone but the butcher. I'm a little proud of that.

Sharp-eyed viewers might have realized that there's no entrance there. At least, not on that floor. That's because I wanted access to come from the second floor:

Look! See the vent? All walled off from the rest of the fort, leading out into the open air? I don't know why I'm so proud of it, but I keep forcing my girlfriend to come look at it.

The second floor of Stesokur is the dining room, so it makes sense to have the pantry be right next door. I built a sky bridge linking them (covered, of course, to keep out that disgusting goblin rain). So my food storage is right above the kitchen area; you actually have to go through the main entrance of Stesokur, walk up the stairs to the dining room, and go down to the stairs in the back of the pantry to get to the kitchens. I think the placement there is actually pretty efficient.

There are two floors above the pantry that are currently unused; that way, when my fortress expands, I'll be able to add another level of food-related workshops, and another level dedicated to food stockpiles. I've added a roof, of course; I can't be having the goblin blood drip down on all my food, now can I?

That makes this building - which I have called the Cookhouse - four stories tall, each story approximately five hundred square feet, made of solid stone. The building I threw together for my larders and kitchens is larger than most houses. Of course, that's as it should be. This is Dwarf Fortress.

Stesokur Entry 9: L'hopital des Nains

Kadol and Meng were immediately rushed down to the hospital, located on the ground floor of Stesokur, by two nearby dwarves. I'd built a wall to separate the hospital area from the barracks/entrance, and had several beds and surgery tables installed. Still no traction benches, but it's good enough to handle most problems. Just getting them to the hospital ain't enough, though!

Avuz, the Chief Medical Dwarf, was called to the scene. 

His god is called "Fingerwalls the Silvery Holes." Does he know his deity sounds like a very interesting porno?

He's thin for a dwarf, with short hair and a long braided beard. Avuz is a very good doctor - his skills lay mostly in diagnostics - and he's been described as very modest. He likes toy boats (obviously), and he absolutely detests rats, which I guess is a good quality to have in someone who's in charge of the health of the entire fortress. He's also, apparently, a total dick. Look at him complaining about having to give somebody water. Stupid crippled patients, amirite? I don't know which attributes are worse for a doctor: the fact that he "does not go out of his way to help others," the fact that he "often does the first thing that comes to mind," or that he is "always tense and jittery." Thank Armok he's apparently been getting laid lately.

The first thing Avuz does is his speciality: diagnosing the patients. This actually causes two things to happen. In addition to allowing the doctors of the fortress to properly treat injured dwarves, it allows me to view the kinds of damage done to each dwarf under the game's health screen.

Knowing nothing about medicine, I am forced to assume that actual medical records are just as confusing.

It's easier than it looks to decipher. Kadol has suffered tissue damage in this leg, and therefore cannot stand. Meng's damage is worse; there is heavy damage to the kidney, and surgery is required. Kadol just needs his wound dressed.

My hospital has everything it could need - except powder, which is used to make plaster for casts. I don't really know how to make powder yet; I just buy it from the caravans whenever I need it. Fortunately, there are no broken bones here. We're low on splints and crutches so I get the manager, Monom, to queue some up. But we have soap, and thread, and cloth.

The first thing Avuz does is clean the patients. Dwarves were sent scurrying to the reservoir with buckets to bring back water, and the soap helped stave off infection. The next step is to dress the wound. This step required thread and cloth; the thread to literally stitch the cuts shut, and the cloth to serve as bandages.

Right now, Avuz is literally standing on Meng to treat Kadol. Like I said: dick.

Kadol was an easy fix. A splint was wrapped around his leg, and a crutch was fetched for him. He hasn't fully recovered yet, but he can work. The wound will heal, thanks to the dressing and splint, and the crutch ensures that he doesn't remain immobile throughout the entire healing process. After Kabol hobbles away, Avuz turned his attention to Meng's internal bleeding.

Well, actually, Avuz went to take a booze break real quick first. Because what doctor doesn't interrupt a surgery to go guzzle some wine?

Meng received largely the same treatment as Kadol, except surgery was involved. I don't honestly know what difference that makes - I don't think surgery requires any tools or equipment compared to other types of wounds - but maybe the doctor's skill in surgery impacts the changes of a dwarf surviving the procedure or not. Which would suck, since Avuz has a pretty low skill in surgery... but Meng survives. She doesn't need a crutch or splint, but she's suffered some pretty serious internal injuries that may never fully heal. Hopefully her liver heals up nicely. A dwarf who cannot process alcohol is no dwarf at all.

Stesokur Entry 8: Mortal Wounds

An Animal Dissector named Mosus Estantilesh fell into a fey mood one day in Stesokur. He gathered a bunch of leather, and -

Wait, what? Animal Dissector?? He's not a mason, or a shearer, or even a fucking soap maker, he dissects animals for a trade? Alright, I don't know if Stesokur is going to be haunted by a vampire or anything, but even if an undead abomination stalks the night, Mosus is still creepier. There's goblin blood literally falling from the sky, and Mosus is still the creepiest part of the fortress. At least he made an artifact.

"He's so creative, isn't he?" - the mother of Mosus Eshtantilesh, and every other weird goth kid

You're one creepy fucking dwarf, Mosus.

Cilob Eralurem, one of my best hunters, apparently inspired by Avuz's retarded toy and Mosus' incredibly disturbing mask, fell into a mood of his own. We'll never know what he wanted to make, though, 'cause it needed metal and Stesokur didn't have any. He went berserk.

Usually, berserk dwarves ain't that much of a big deal. It's actually pretty funny watching some Master Tailor throw a hissy fit and flail his little fists. But Cilob was a hunter, and a damned good one... and he had his crossbow with him. Most of the crossbow bolts in the fortress were made of wood or bone, but Cilob filled his quiver with the fortress' only ration of iron ammunition. His wrath was dangerous.

Cilob was indiscriminate in his targeting. He shot Kadol Dedukadril, a mason, in the leg: Kadol was on his way to the upper level with some stone to work on the top floor's outer wall. Zas Kogannoram, a peasant, was hauling a surgery table downstairs to the hospital when a single shot from Cilob pierced his heart and killed him instantly. Fortunately, my militia was nearby, and they rushed to the scene. Cilob got one bolt off - hitting a crossbowdwarf named Meng in the abdomen - before Iton, the militia commander, put the mad dwarf down.

You don't have to read that if you want, I'll summarize; Iton swung her copper battle axe and struck Cilob in the chest, puncturing the lung. Cilob, having trouble breathing, laid on the floor and bled to death while Iton punched him in the arm. Why did Iton not finish Cilob with her axe? Well she obviously wanted to see if he would suffocate to death first, or bleed to death first. Why did Iton punch Cilob in the arm while waiting? Spite, I guess.

Meng's wound had hit her in the kidney. She and Kadol, the mason with the damaged leg, were immediately rushed to the hospital. Kadol should be fine, assuming no infection and decent attention. Meng's wound, however, could be much worse. She may not survive surgery. It's been a rough day for the dwarves of Stesokur.

Some have had it worse than others.