I've come into command of this outpost, Rosespears, at an early stage in development. My predecessor has been ambitious, and performed quite a bit of exploratory work into the caverns below this place, but there's much work to be done closer to the surface before we can truly be considered a fortress. Twelve of my seventeen dwarves are currently occupied with fighting some sort of malicious, animated parrot head; I trust they'll be able to deal with it but getting some better security should be a priority.
The fortress doesn't seem to have a functioning kitchen so I order one built, along with two small nearby stockpiles for efficiency - one for raw foods and one for prepared. Ard is designated the fortress' chef. I also begin carving out some more bedrooms - my glorious leadership will surely attract some migrants soon - and some larger offices so that we may perform basic bookkeeping and other administrative tasks.
Ironwood and our fledgling military are still working on that kea head when Rasix abruptly declares herself queen of the fortress. I could say more for her timing, and I'm not certain that 17 dwarves and an unfinished hole in the ground constitute a "queendom." But she's still willing to let me do the fortress planning, and nobody else seems to want to argue with her. Then again, that could be because several of our wrestlers have passed out during the fight, though it's more due to exhaustion than to actual injury. It's becoming clear they'll need some intervention soon. I have the few dwarves who haven't been pulled into the fight set up a horseshoe-shaped wall directly underneath the kea, which can funnel it into a set of traps.
I channel out from underneath the kea and the plan works - the foul thing evades my stone-fall trap but winds up caught in the cage trap. I erect the cage in the center of what will be the dining room, where it will be a testament to my ingenuity (mostly because I have no idea what else to do with it). Meanwhile, most of the dwarves get back to work, and the military resumes normal training.
Well, the military except for Kail, who proved to be just a little too dedicated to that fight. Kail, you will be missed.
A lot of dwarves are complaining about not being able to supply water to the wounded, since the local stream is currently frozen. I don't think anyone is in grave peril now that our soldiers are free to take care of themselves again, but I'd like to get a well set up for the future. I carve out a tunnel towards the river, and some stairs downwards into what will become a reservoir (which may also be useful for farming later). I'm hoping to get some floodgates in place before the thaw - though most likely it will take until next winter to finish. I also queue up a few extra floodgates for construction, since those can double as sturdy front gates for the fortress. We'll be wanting those before any more foul fowl show up.
New migrants arrive! At first I think it's only five, but then I realize there are fifteen of them and give up trying to be clever with name/occupation matchups. I did make sure to designate rk47 as our engraver, though.
I have them carve out a simple burial chamber and inter The Wooden Seal's first victi- I mean, casualty.
I then turn my attention to clearing out the area around the entrance so that I may get proper fortification set up, but, uh, too late:
I haven't spent any time developing our military or metallurgy facilities - we still have just one squad of mostly-wrestlers - so this thing is going to end us if it gets inside the fort. Our only hope is to pull as many dwarves inside as we can, quickly erect some solid gates, and yell names at it until it goes away.
K9 and Samwise, we hardly knew ye. K9 was apparently beaten to death with a woolen tunic. Oh, the dwarvenity.
We do manage to get barriers up, but there is at least one more dwarf caught outside - Paelos, who ignored my orders to get inside the burrow ASAP, and instead has chosen to take a nap outside. She gives no fucks about seeing her clanmates die, but is annoyed at having to sleep on the grass. Paelos, you monster.
I'm not about to dismantle the gate just to let Paelos in, but I'll try to rig it up to a lever so that we can open it briefly. Then I learn where the "were" in wereelk comes from:
The hideous beast turns into a goblin, gets tired, and quietly leaves the map. Huh. I release everyone from the burrow and return to improving the fortress. I plan to make Paelos wait outside until I finish mechanizing the gate, but then I realize - K9's not dead! I had assumed that I just didn't receive a kill message since nobody else was around to see it, but no - the wereelk simply saw fit to crush his arms, knock him unconscious, bludgeon him over the head with a tunic a few hundred times, then turn into a goblin and walk away. I take down the gate so that he (and Samwise's body) can be recovered. He's a bit worse for wear, but he's walking and our doctors will make certain nothing gets infected, I'm sure.
So now that we're safe again -
A necromancer and a horde of zombies are streaming towards the fortress. I don't have enough time to get the gates set back up, and even if I did that would mean leaving a number of dwarves stranded outside.
However, our military proves surprisingly able to handle the army. Either I was overestimating the zombies, or underestimating the amount of training they got from that interminable kea fight (which trained up most of the fortress to Legendary Observer, among other things). I didn't get a good shot of the fight but here's a ton of zombie goblin corpses laying around in front of the fortress:
The problem is that even with the necromancer dead, there's still quite a bit of evil magical energy coursing through this place - whether from her tower, or simply the evil biome, I'm not sure - and occasionally one of the goblins, or their bits, will reanimate and begin attacking again. This makes it hard to get any work done.
For a while the military is able to contain the zombie threat, and I construct a pit and a garbage dump where I hope to dispose of all the corpses before they can reanimate. But every time a foe (or friend) loses a limb, that's another piece to reanimate, and my haulers are having a hard time getting all the refuse into the dump without being interrupted. Finally, we meet an undead foe that is too mighty for our soldiers to fell.
Yep, our warriors are capable of holding off necromantic hordes only as long as those hordes do not contain any small animals, which are apparently nigh-incapable of being killed, no matter how much damage they sustain.
Much like the kea head, the rabbit is incapable of doing any real damage, but entirely capable of forcing my entire military to chase it into a corner and ignore all other duties. That allowed a few of the real zombies to get reanimated and come up behind my distracted forces (who are all clumped into one square in this shot).
Then, things get ugly. My troops are all laser-focused on the rabbit, nobody is watching out for the main zombie force, and, well.
With the entire military dead and zombies roaming through the fortress, I abandon Rosespears. Perhaps another day, these zombies will meet the righteous vengeance they so deserve. Until then, here's one punching all the teeth out of an alpaca:
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