barnabas_truman

Legolas and Gimli sat by the campfire, watching it sputter as the snowfall grew stronger.

"Alas!" cried Legolas, "It is a lonely thing to be the only elf for leagues around."

Gimli poked the fire with a stick. "Hm. At least you'll get to see some of your kin when we reach Lothlorien. Since leaving Rivendell I seem to be the only dwarf in this entire story."

Legolas tried to force a cheery expression. "But surely your cousins will welcome us to Moria!" It wasn't working.

"You've read the books too. You know as well as I do that they're all dead."

"Books? What books?" The elf glanced nervously left and right. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, shove off," said Gimli, rolling his eyes. "The narrator isn't watching us anyway. He's focused entirely on the humans and hobbits. As usual."

Legolas looked behind him to see the others pointing dramatically at different parts of the map and arguing excitedly, paying no attention to the two of them.

"I suppose you're right," he sighed. "We're nothing but Tolkien minorities."

1) Every automated system needs a manual OFF switch.

2) Every fluid intake pipe needs a way to be closed remotely.

3) Every fluid storage reservoir needs a drain that can be opened remotely.

4) All of these switches should be located at an elevation well above the fluid itself.

5) Anything that is going to be, or MIGHT be, anywhere near magma needs to be made entirely of steel or bauxite.

Everyone knows, of course, that Father Christmas gives presents and candy and oranges to good children, and lumps of coal to bad children. Children that are not particularly naughty but merely somewhat annoying get onions. And if you are really naughty, Father Christmas's henchman Svaarte Petter will come to your house at night, put you in a sack, and haul you off to SPAIN, where you will be forced to wash dishes in a second-rate paella restaurant.

Your only hope of escape is to be rescued by the Basque Resistance. To contact them, you must put extra spices in the paella when the head chef is not watching; the strong smell will attract the attention of Basque Resistance agents. If they succeed in breaking you out, they will help you flee to their secret mountain stronghold in the Pyrenees. You should return the favor by spending some time looking after their sheep and helping them construct hang glider frames out of aluminum framework and wool canvas.

Where do they get the aluminum, you ask? They trade mutton for aluminum with the Sub-Pyrenean Dwarves (whom they also hired to build their strongholds).

And now you want to know why the Basque Resistance needs hang gliders? They use them to swoop down from their mountain strongholds to steal Spanish sheep (and rescue naughty children).

This is the REAL TRUE STORY of CHRISTMAS and should be shared with all tinies you meet. Just in case.

Here's a list of the most recent updates to the upcoming new version:

• allowed skilled potters to make good crafts on par with other skilled workers
• stopped meat cleaver and other inappropriate tools from acting as containers
• stopped bees and vermin from being assignable to pastures
• made penned animal interface indicate animals' current situation the same way cages/chains do
• stopped dwarves from encrusting honeycombs with jewels etc.
• stopped mason from using clay for tables etc.
• stopped shearing/milking/pasture/cage jobs from fighting with each other
• hive product collection from removing the hive's building tag
• stopped megabeasts from coming back to life and continuing to kill people
• fixed problem where alpaca wool was not treated as wool
• adjusted overinflated bee values
• stone stockpiles now include a clay category and some irrelevant materials were excluded
• added wax cake to pressed material list in stockpiles
• added wax option to finished goods stockpile
• stopped dwarves from trying to clean up wax cakes in stockpiles
• stopped regrow from adding extra grass types on a tile
• made it select the zone under the cursor zone properly when you enter zone mode
• one of the text exports no longer lists 0 population domestic animals everywhere
• added egg yolk/white liquid densities, fixed name error there

What other game would include an "adjusted overinflated bee values" update? This is awesome indeed.

After a couple of weeks of experimenting with other colonies, I have returned to Leromrigòth. After two seasons of careful preparations I've cracked open the Hellpit once more, but this time my military is ready for it.

Especially Besmar the Champion Marksdwarf, who wields Holywraths the Legendary Aluminum Crossbow. She shot two well-made iron bolts at the first fire demon to emerge from the Hellpit. The first bolt hit the demon's right leg with enough force to tear it off; the second bolt severed the demon's head.

Yeah. Wow. I didn't even know crossbows could do that, let alone to a demon.



Edit: the next three demons have been literally torn in half by Besmar's crossbow bolts. Other than worrying that she'd run out of bolts, I hardly think I even need the rest of my military.

This isn't really important enough to go in the fortress logbook, but it's too cute not to mention somewhere:

The farm had a huge crop of sunberries ready for the picking, but the farmers were busy planting more seeds in the other farm, so I changed the settings from "only farmers harvest" to "all dwarves harvest," then went elsewhere to take care of some other business.

When I next looked at the farm I saw the farm area filled with 13 of the fortress's 20 dwarf children: presumably, having nothing better to do, they decided to scurry through the access tunnel, giggling all the way, grab a handful of sunberries each, and race back to the food stockpile to dump them into barrels.

Hazel comments that in the real world this sort of "harvesting" typically ends with barrels no fuller than they were before, children not hungry for dinner, and little shirts and faces covered in sunberry juice.

A legendary mask, the Baron arrives, the goblins fail at attacking, the Baron departs, a better new farm, axedwarves-in-training, and... legendary dwarven boxer shorts?

( Spring 1060 )


( Summer 1060 )


( Autumn 1060 )


( Winter 1060 )

Fikod has finished his project. It is Kel Gidur ("The Metal of Memories"), a pair of silk... braies?... which he explains is essentially a pair of lightweight knee-length trousers to be worn under one's normal trousers. Some sort of clothing popular with the humans, apparently. This "braies" is indeed very well made, dyed midnight blue, and adorned with hanging rings of silk. On the, um, front center there is an embroidered picture of the lobstershell mask that Èrith made last spring. Humans have strange taste in clothing indeed.

Tirist the peasant has given birth to another baby girl, Thîkut Óratír.

The new farm area is complete! It's a large rectangular room, big enough to fit four full-size farm plots, just above our main food storage area on the residential level. There's a large floodgate separating it from our artificial river, controlled by a lever--when the lever is pulled, the gate will open, flooding the room with water. A second lever will open floor hatches draining to the bottomless chasm, removing the water and leaving muddy floor suitable for farming.

In the meantime, our miners and engravers have carved out a lovely bedroom and dining room for the dowager baroness, complete with a masterwork bed and golden furniture. She is quite pleased. Likewise, the quarters for the hammerer and tax collector are carved out and properly detailed, and are only awaiting sufficient golden furniture to be manufactured. A rich vein of gold near the old farm site is providing plenty of gold at the moment.

The beverage crisis has been averted for now. Our brewers have made plenty of delicious wine from the strawberries, sunberries, and plump helmets grown at the old farm site over the last few seasons; we should have sufficient surplus to last us until the new farm starts production.