((This post is about quarantining. If you want to just skip to the story, the next story post is "Winter 266, Nutscaves"))
Everything in a safe DF2010 fortress revolves around the dwarven bathtubs. Dwarves must be funneled through a smoothed and engraved dwarven bathtub whenever they enter or leave the hospital, the soil layers of the fortress, or any cavern. These bathtubs are incredibly dangerous, in a way, because they gather contaminants off of dwarves and objects (which then emerge clean with a coating of water).
Coming in contact with contaminants is what causes plague. The engravings in the tubs help ensure the tubs get prioritized for cleaning regularly. I find they are usually cleaned within a week of contamination even with forty dedicated, stationed janitors standing in the tub. In sum, tubs alone will never save you.
The tubs do not prevent the plague. They just prevent infected substances from escaping the caverns and Nutscaves' contaminated soil (upper) levels. The contaminants cannot get into the rock layers where most dwarves live and work unless they are already there, or a bathtub fails by becoming dry. (Such as that incident when the well went dry*, and everyone decided to give patients water from the hospital bathtub until it dried up.) ((* That incident was told orally.))
Bathtubs do not get dry on their own once they have depth 2/7 or more water in them. This depth prevents evaporation. It's dwarven physics.
When a dwarf gets wet in the bathtub, his Water Coating seems to temporarily prevent him from getting contaminated further. I keep all dwarven forays into the caverns, which are full of forgotten beast poison, as brief as possible. This ensures the dwarves keep their protective water coating. When I chop cavern wood, I select very small areas and stop the wood cutters if it's starting to take too long. I don't let my wood cutters haul wood--the wood haulers can zip in and out and keep a water coating to do that bit safely, while I keep my eye on the woodcutters and minimize their time spent working. The less total time the dwarves spend in the cavern chopping, the less micromanagement I have to do.
When we haul a forgotten beast corpse from the spike traps in the caverns to the butcher, the hauler also gets the water coating. So far I haven't had any of them get contaminated with extracts or deadly blood. (Part of the reason I continue to keep my caverns open instead of permanently sealing them, is because I continue to test whether this water coating really works as contaminant prevention. So far it seems to.)
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Plague prevention measures: the 7-step program
So we had (yet) another dwarf contract the plague at Nutscaves. A learning experience ensued: he'd been assigned new shoes within the last two years, but his shoes had just rotted off, apparently moments before the illness kicked in. He contracted the blood plague, but the case was mild and he survived.
Previously I hadn't thought shoes would rot off so quickly. Perhaps it happened because we'd been doing a lot of long-range hauling recently--or he'd been assigned some slightly worn shoes to begin with. Each year I had been assigning ten new dwarves to wear shoes, assuming this would keep up with wear and not aggravate too many dwarves with "Enforced Dressing" (wherein I draft them into the military and make them stand around until their whole "squad" manages to get dressed. There are a lot of bumblers in my fortress and this takes a long time. There are tons of whines and complaints about hunger and thirst to accompany the process.) Each year I also check the condition of all currently assigned shoes, and decide whether to replace them.
After that dwarf contracted the plague, I did an extra check for glove-and-shoe wear, six months before the next one was due. I discovered a lot of other shoes had rotted off of other dwarves as well, much faster than expected! And so Nutscaves spent the late summer/early autumn of the year 266 doing nothing but reassigning shoes and gloves, to prevent more plague. It was a painstaking task on the part of Armok, and had to be done sloppily for speed (to prevent more plague contraction). Many dwarves are now walking around very upset as a result. We're in a precarious situation because of it. If anybody comes down with the plague and dies, or if there's a construction accident soon, we're already sitting on the precipice of a tantrum spiral.
Nutscaves is an unusual fortress. It has survived multiple strains and outbreaks of the worst type of highly contagious, deadly necrotic blood plague. It also has highly contaminated living and work spaces that can't be cleaned up safely. Many citizens also became infected with plague in less well-quarantined times, and they occasionally fall ill with recurrences of it. And yet, we have a population of about 155 dwarves, with 30 of them buck-naked children and infants. We have had only one plague death, and one other dwarf falling ill with plague and recovering, in the last few years.
Potentially, at any moment, if Armok stopped employing our strict quarantine procedures, then most of the population could fall ill and die. This fort has survived sixteen years so far, and Armok's procedures have evolved over time to prevent infection as much as possible within reason. Armok is currently using a set of procedures which seem quite effective in preventing the spread of plague. They're not 100% effective, but this quarantine procedure shows that a badly contaminated fort is not necessarily doomed. If I had started out with these procedures, the fort might never have become infected at all.
Following are Armok's current quarantine procedures, evolved over 16 years at Nutscaves.
Previously I hadn't thought shoes would rot off so quickly. Perhaps it happened because we'd been doing a lot of long-range hauling recently--or he'd been assigned some slightly worn shoes to begin with. Each year I had been assigning ten new dwarves to wear shoes, assuming this would keep up with wear and not aggravate too many dwarves with "Enforced Dressing" (wherein I draft them into the military and make them stand around until their whole "squad" manages to get dressed. There are a lot of bumblers in my fortress and this takes a long time. There are tons of whines and complaints about hunger and thirst to accompany the process.) Each year I also check the condition of all currently assigned shoes, and decide whether to replace them.
After that dwarf contracted the plague, I did an extra check for glove-and-shoe wear, six months before the next one was due. I discovered a lot of other shoes had rotted off of other dwarves as well, much faster than expected! And so Nutscaves spent the late summer/early autumn of the year 266 doing nothing but reassigning shoes and gloves, to prevent more plague. It was a painstaking task on the part of Armok, and had to be done sloppily for speed (to prevent more plague contraction). Many dwarves are now walking around very upset as a result. We're in a precarious situation because of it. If anybody comes down with the plague and dies, or if there's a construction accident soon, we're already sitting on the precipice of a tantrum spiral.
Nutscaves is an unusual fortress. It has survived multiple strains and outbreaks of the worst type of highly contagious, deadly necrotic blood plague. It also has highly contaminated living and work spaces that can't be cleaned up safely. Many citizens also became infected with plague in less well-quarantined times, and they occasionally fall ill with recurrences of it. And yet, we have a population of about 155 dwarves, with 30 of them buck-naked children and infants. We have had only one plague death, and one other dwarf falling ill with plague and recovering, in the last few years.
Potentially, at any moment, if Armok stopped employing our strict quarantine procedures, then most of the population could fall ill and die. This fort has survived sixteen years so far, and Armok's procedures have evolved over time to prevent infection as much as possible within reason. Armok is currently using a set of procedures which seem quite effective in preventing the spread of plague. They're not 100% effective, but this quarantine procedure shows that a badly contaminated fort is not necessarily doomed. If I had started out with these procedures, the fort might never have become infected at all.
Following are Armok's current quarantine procedures, evolved over 16 years at Nutscaves.
The curse of Nutscaves strikes again! Rampaging cave crocodile and plague!
In proper Nutscaves fashion, a cave crocodile escaped a cavern construction area unnoticed on this otherwise-fine autumn day. The cave crocodile silently raced up a vacant part of the stairwell and prowled around the fort's quietest beer stockpile, where a miner soon came along to enjoy a drink.
The cave crocodile charged into the oblivious miner. It knocked the miner over, and bit his foot right off and ate it. Then it got to work gnawing on the remaining intact portion of the miner's leg. Once he overcame his surprise, the miner managed to hit the cave crocodile in the leg once with his pick and chip the bone. The cave crocodile would become unsteady from bone pain within seconds, but it was already too late. The miner's open femoral artery was a serious obstacle to remaining alive, and he bled to death on the spot.
A soldier with an iron whip arrived seconds after the attack started, and brained the crocodile on his first swing, right after the miner died.
The miner's family is now tantrumming. Of course he was married with children. The wife is currently standing in the magma shaft (a relatively unsafe, non-OSHA-compliant 40-story air shaft which sometimes has magma at the bottom...or the top...or both). She is holding her infant and making threats.
How did they get so unhappy so quickly? Normally the dwarves don't tantrum at just one death, of one family member. Well, I'll tell you why! Because, right before the rogue cave crocodile attack, we had the plague. Again. Not any of the nice plagues. The blood plague. The one where people step in something bad and ten steps later, they die from gushing blood out their feet. None of them even make it to the hospital with that one. They go ten steps, faint if they're lucky, and die. Have lots of coffins at the ready at all times if you have that shit in your fort!
Preventing the blood plague is easy. Everyone has to wear shoes. That is all. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes! You'd think it would be easy, but no. Ordering them to put on shoes is an exercise in frustration as it usually results in dwarves-already-wearing-shoes taking them off, and walking through the contaminants and dying of the blood plague. Damn it! It also involves lots of otherwise-shoeless dwarves deciding to put on exactly one shoe, and then giving up, and walking through the contaminants in one shoe. One shoe is just as good as no shoes when it comes to blood plague. ARRGGHH! These dwarves! Don't they want to live?
The cave crocodile charged into the oblivious miner. It knocked the miner over, and bit his foot right off and ate it. Then it got to work gnawing on the remaining intact portion of the miner's leg. Once he overcame his surprise, the miner managed to hit the cave crocodile in the leg once with his pick and chip the bone. The cave crocodile would become unsteady from bone pain within seconds, but it was already too late. The miner's open femoral artery was a serious obstacle to remaining alive, and he bled to death on the spot.
A soldier with an iron whip arrived seconds after the attack started, and brained the crocodile on his first swing, right after the miner died.
The miner's family is now tantrumming. Of course he was married with children. The wife is currently standing in the magma shaft (a relatively unsafe, non-OSHA-compliant 40-story air shaft which sometimes has magma at the bottom...or the top...or both). She is holding her infant and making threats.
How did they get so unhappy so quickly? Normally the dwarves don't tantrum at just one death, of one family member. Well, I'll tell you why! Because, right before the rogue cave crocodile attack, we had the plague. Again. Not any of the nice plagues. The blood plague. The one where people step in something bad and ten steps later, they die from gushing blood out their feet. None of them even make it to the hospital with that one. They go ten steps, faint if they're lucky, and die. Have lots of coffins at the ready at all times if you have that shit in your fort!
Preventing the blood plague is easy. Everyone has to wear shoes. That is all. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes! You'd think it would be easy, but no. Ordering them to put on shoes is an exercise in frustration as it usually results in dwarves-already-wearing-shoes taking them off, and walking through the contaminants and dying of the blood plague. Damn it! It also involves lots of otherwise-shoeless dwarves deciding to put on exactly one shoe, and then giving up, and walking through the contaminants in one shoe. One shoe is just as good as no shoes when it comes to blood plague. ARRGGHH! These dwarves! Don't they want to live?
A note about the story
Caging Therapy: A dwarf is purposely captured in a cage, but he does not realize it was anything but an accident. He is left in the cage for any length of time—short or long. When he is let out of the cage, he is so incredibly ecstatic about regaining his freedom, that his other troubles seem very minor to him. Useful for helping to prevent a tantrum.
Nutscaves, the deathtrap, risen again
Nutscaves had become almost boring with its almost total lack of accidents and plagues in the year 262.
For the first three seasons in the year 262, we got a wave of migrants "despite the danger". Then in winter, we got a wave of migrants. Not "despite the danger". Just a plain old wave of migrants. "Uh oh!" cried Armok. Armok knew something bad was about to happen. The fortress' 13th year anniversary was just about to dawn.
So fortunately for Nutscaves' reputation as a deathtrap, the year 263 rolled in.
I suppose it all began with the giant hairy alligator and its poisonous secretions. At the very end of the year 262, the alligator finally found a floodgate to knock down in the cavern. This was a trap to alert Armok. Armok directed the soldiers to gather up and prepare to fight the giant hairy alligator and its poisonous secretions, while it knocked down the next layer of traps. The alligator's name was Quazi. Quazi Siga Bora.
Armok also ordered the upright spears in the second trap layer for that cavern to repeat. This is where it all began to go wrong. Dwarves pulled and pulled the lever, but nothing happened. Had Armok simply labeled this lever, and then forgotten to link it up? It certainly wasn't impossible. Armok tries to build too many things at once, and sometimes forgets things like this.
A quota of soldiers had gathered, so Armok ordered the inner floodgate opened, and the brave men and women to charge Quazi Siga Bora. They ran out into the cavern, through the quarantine bathtub, and assaulted Quazi with all manner of weaponry. Two mothers even carried their infants into battle, to show them how it's done.
Quazi Siga Bora, giant hairy alligator, beware its poisonous secretions, was a very powerful opponent. He picked up dwarves in his jaws and threw them left and right, like rag dolls. But the dwarves were determined, and most of them were also slightly seasoned in "battle" (against buck-naked goblin prisoners and the like) by this point. They kept coming back. They kept attacking.
A week later, most of Quazi's body parts were broken, including his spine and skull and all his extremities. One lung was pierced, and about half his organs, and an artery or two were open in his heart. But he felt no pain and fought on, ferociously. Only one dwarf was too wounded to continue fighting--the militia commander himself. He lay in the bottom of the dwarven bathtub, where Quazi had thrown him, miserable and with many broken bones.
Crafters heard about the cavern battle raging on beneath them, and some brave souls tried to come and rescue the wounded militia commander. But they had to approach too close to Quazi, and they ran scared.
Finally, just as Armok feared the soldiers would surely become too tired, hungry, and thirsty to continue, some lucky soul drove their iron morning star into Quazi's brain. Quazi had been doubled over in pain and not able to attack for about a full day by then, but he was darn difficult to kill. Armok quickly released the soldiers from duty, and the wounded commander was promptly carried to the hospital by a fellow soldier.
(And both infants survived unscathed. I hope they learned something about fighting. And, who knew they could go a week without alcohol or food, and no ill effects*?)
((* I later learned this is because dwarven infants draw all sustenance from their mothers, of course.))
Armok felt like celebrating, and the peasant Monom promptly started a fresh party at the statue garden. (Which of course is now pristine and shows no evidence of past carnage.) Armok sent his/her blessings.
Armok dispatched men and women to fix the broken floodgate and the defunct mechanical upright spears trap, and to construct some improvements to the cavern entrance to make it easier to fight the next forgotten beast. Then Armok turned Armok's attention to the magma pumps, the new sub-aquifer plumbing system, and the silk farm.
Armok made some designations and became distracted with working on three projects at once while also proudly monitoring the doctors' work in the hospital. And so Armok designated something incorrectly in the magma pump area. Armok still doesn't know what it was. Armok made an awful lot of designations, and due to the cleanup after the easily-defeated goblin siege from last night, and the soldiers' need for food, drink, and rest--the dwarves didn't get right on the new orders right away. Armok fired-and-forgot so many designations.
And so the year 263 dawned. The fortress turned 13 years old, and the dwarves started up a fresh party to celebrate the new year. The militia commander was still in the hospital, but the doctors were working on him very busily.
At the start of the year 263 Armok concluded that there was a problem at the silk farm, but Armok wasn't sure how to fix it. Weavers kept trying to walk over the hatches and go right into the giant cave spider's side of the room to collect webs, even though there were plenty of webs on their side of the room. Armok feared for both the spider's life, and theirs. (Giant cave spiders have a very poisonous, instantly paralyzing bite, and they're about 2/3 the size of a fully-grown horse, with a lot of legs for kicking.)
Armok was also having some FPS issues and pinpointed pathfinding as the root cause. Armok began distracting Armok, by making long-overdue traffic designations, which helped with the FPS problem immediately. Armok sat and gloated proudly, admiring the masterful traffic designations.
And so the dominoes began to fall.
A few weeks into spring, while Armok was puzzling over the silk farm issue (and foolishly still letting the weavers collect silk, despite the problem), everything came to a sharp standstill and Armok received a puzzling, frightening message.
"Some mason cancels Build Wall: Dangerous Terrain"
Then Armok saw frightfully large clouds of dust in the magma pump area, where dozens of dwarves were working. The mason and subject of the message had fallen into the deep cavern lake several stories below the work area. Apparently he'd gone off a ledge the builders had been sealing off.
Then Armok received another message. "A section of the cavern has collapsed!"
Armok's eyes grew large. Armok gasped. Armok couldn't think of any reason why there would be a collapse. And. What was collapsing?
Armok looked at the moment frozen in time. Dozens of workers were standing in the dust clouds of a truly massive collapse. Oh deities. Had the great magma piston somehow collapsed without Armok designating the lever to be pulled? The fully correctly supported magma piston?
The workers had been constructing a wall to seal off the magma pumps from the open air of the second cavern. The second cavern is mostly open air with a lake at the bottom, and the workers were up above the water level, on a ledge.
"Oh no!" cried Armok. Their fate was already sealed.
It wasn't the piston itself that was collapsing. It was most of the piston's support structure. I don't know how Armok messed that up so badly. It was truly...unmasterful?
And so most of the magma pump stack and supporting walls and floors went crashing into the deep cavern lake, taking dozens of dwarves down with it. This was a large number of stories collapsing.
Most of the builders...dozens of them... were hurled into the cavern lake. Most broke a lot of bones in the fall. Some of them mercifully died on impact with the rocky lake bottom. Others were unconscious when they fell, or unconscious from the impact with the water, and they drowned quickly. Two of the miners who'd been heading down the shaft had fallen a shorter distance to the water, and managed to swim to a safe ledge. But they were stranded. The entire support structure above them was gone.
The miners who had been working below this area were thrown dozens of stories down the shaft, into the magma tank. Luckily (?) there wasn't any magma in it at the time. None of them lived; they got hit by too many other falling objects, and the fall was too far anyway. Their severed limbs and heads and other body parts rained down in a heap, all over the bottom of the magma tank, painting it red with blood. Armok was horrified.
A builder was also hurled down the shaft with the force of the collapse, and he somehow managed to land on the piston support bridge. His legs were broken and his arms severed by falling objects, and he could not move. He lay on the bridge, praying someone would come for him. Unfortunately, that whole lower section of the piston was separated from the rest of the fort by the massive collapse.
When Armok was done being horrified and sorting out how to possibly save the three survivors (the two miners who swam to safety, and the broken builder lying on the bridge halfway down the shaft), Armok made designations for rescue.
When Armok was done, not a single dwarf sprang to build Armok's designations.
Armok realized this was because all the builders were either a) dead, or b) the armless dying builder on the bridge.
"You're all builders now!" Armok called out through the fortress, to the living dwarves.
The other dwarves didn't know how to build, and went about their tasks very slowly. Most of the dwarves panicked at the thought of trying something new, and went on break, hiding in the backs of their bedrooms, as far away from the building designations as possible. Armok sighed. The stranded miners and the dying builder began to dehydrate and starve. Armok told the miners to drink cavern water, and prayed it would be safe and that cave fish would not bite (or eat) them. Armok told the miners to start hacking out stones and building a makeshift bridge from their end.
A week later the miners were rescued, and a few days after that the low-quality scaffold extension was completed, to rescue the armless builder on the bridge. He must have made himself an awesome tourniquet with his legs somehow.
And so Armok thought the crisis was averted. Armok made further designations to seal the shaft away from the cavern. During the rescue, Armok had been noticing a lot of messages from the silk farm and the almost-complete well reservoir. Armok had been ignoring them. Who cares about the silk farm or the new water supply when dwarves need rescued?
Now Armok had a look at the silk farm.
A grisly scene had unfolded.
Armok's legendary weaver, who doubled as Armok's best suturer, was lying paralyzed on one of the giant cave spider's pressure plates. The giant cave spider was standing over her. It had injected its deadly paralytic poison into her blood four times, and was working on a fifth. It had her head in its mouth, and was shaking her around by it. So far, it had managed to break some tissue in her neck.
Apparently the weaver had greedily crossed a hatch for no reason, and then been caught by the spider as expected. It had injected her with its toxin to paralyze her immediately. Four other dwarves were in the room, trying to pick up the piece of silk thread she had gathered, and to rescue her. They kept approaching and then running away, frightened by the spider gobbling her head.
Armok put Armok's head in Armok's hands. This was all because of Armok's deficiency in learning ASCII symbols. If Armok understood all the symbols used in the drawing of the Completely Safe(tm) Wild Giant Cave Spider Silk Farm Design, then Armok would have built a safe silk farm instead of a risky one. The risky one is good, and had earned us an absurd amount of the world's best thread, and it had taken months for a real accident to happen--but it's not safe. Now the legendary weaver and creator of our artifact cloth short skirt, menacing with spikes of pig iron and named The Temptation of Monks, was paying the price.
Armok considered how to get the dwarves out of this situation.
Armok could send in soldiers to take out the spider, but the giant cave spiders are legendarily hard to catch and Nutscaves was very, very lucky to have won the lottery by catching this one. And this weaver was already dead--a single injection of the toxin is not survivable. Adding a dead spider to a dead weaver would not help.
Armok ordered the failsafe lever to be pulled. It would open a floodgate leading to a cage trap, to recapture the spider. Armok considered that the lever should also open all the hatches to speed the process, but Armok hadn't done that in the construction. The spider wasn't going anywhere until it was done devouring the weaver, anyway. Armok mourned the loss of the weaver.
Armok forbade the thread and stopped the silk collection process. And then Armok set about learning more ASCII symbols so that Armok could modify the silk farm to be Completely Safe(tm).
Armok now has the knowledge of some more ASCII symbols and knows how to add safety measures to the farm.
But the dwarves are mourning. Many dwarves are miserable. Armok had killed off 1/3 of the population with Armok's mistakes.
So then Armok finally noticed the trapped dwarves in the water reservoir they'd been building. They'd been starving there for weeks while all of this was going on, and Armok hadn't noticed during the chaos. They were all miserable and angry with Armok for leaving them walled up in the reservoir. Armok sighed and let them out. Luckily Armok had forgotten to start the pumps, or they would have drowned.
A few migrants arrived "despite the danger". We can't even blame the plague this time. Nobody got it in 262, and nobody got it in 263 yet either.
At least Armok learned a few things. And once Armok recaptures the spider, Armok is going to have to send some dwarves to the web room for Caging Therapy. The mayor will have to join them--he's getting less and less ecstatic about his delayed punishment for murder as time goes by. He's been making a lot of mandates recently.
For the first three seasons in the year 262, we got a wave of migrants "despite the danger". Then in winter, we got a wave of migrants. Not "despite the danger". Just a plain old wave of migrants. "Uh oh!" cried Armok. Armok knew something bad was about to happen. The fortress' 13th year anniversary was just about to dawn.
So fortunately for Nutscaves' reputation as a deathtrap, the year 263 rolled in.
I suppose it all began with the giant hairy alligator and its poisonous secretions. At the very end of the year 262, the alligator finally found a floodgate to knock down in the cavern. This was a trap to alert Armok. Armok directed the soldiers to gather up and prepare to fight the giant hairy alligator and its poisonous secretions, while it knocked down the next layer of traps. The alligator's name was Quazi. Quazi Siga Bora.
Armok also ordered the upright spears in the second trap layer for that cavern to repeat. This is where it all began to go wrong. Dwarves pulled and pulled the lever, but nothing happened. Had Armok simply labeled this lever, and then forgotten to link it up? It certainly wasn't impossible. Armok tries to build too many things at once, and sometimes forgets things like this.
A quota of soldiers had gathered, so Armok ordered the inner floodgate opened, and the brave men and women to charge Quazi Siga Bora. They ran out into the cavern, through the quarantine bathtub, and assaulted Quazi with all manner of weaponry. Two mothers even carried their infants into battle, to show them how it's done.
Quazi Siga Bora, giant hairy alligator, beware its poisonous secretions, was a very powerful opponent. He picked up dwarves in his jaws and threw them left and right, like rag dolls. But the dwarves were determined, and most of them were also slightly seasoned in "battle" (against buck-naked goblin prisoners and the like) by this point. They kept coming back. They kept attacking.
A week later, most of Quazi's body parts were broken, including his spine and skull and all his extremities. One lung was pierced, and about half his organs, and an artery or two were open in his heart. But he felt no pain and fought on, ferociously. Only one dwarf was too wounded to continue fighting--the militia commander himself. He lay in the bottom of the dwarven bathtub, where Quazi had thrown him, miserable and with many broken bones.
Crafters heard about the cavern battle raging on beneath them, and some brave souls tried to come and rescue the wounded militia commander. But they had to approach too close to Quazi, and they ran scared.
Finally, just as Armok feared the soldiers would surely become too tired, hungry, and thirsty to continue, some lucky soul drove their iron morning star into Quazi's brain. Quazi had been doubled over in pain and not able to attack for about a full day by then, but he was darn difficult to kill. Armok quickly released the soldiers from duty, and the wounded commander was promptly carried to the hospital by a fellow soldier.
(And both infants survived unscathed. I hope they learned something about fighting. And, who knew they could go a week without alcohol or food, and no ill effects*?)
((* I later learned this is because dwarven infants draw all sustenance from their mothers, of course.))
Armok felt like celebrating, and the peasant Monom promptly started a fresh party at the statue garden. (Which of course is now pristine and shows no evidence of past carnage.) Armok sent his/her blessings.
Armok dispatched men and women to fix the broken floodgate and the defunct mechanical upright spears trap, and to construct some improvements to the cavern entrance to make it easier to fight the next forgotten beast. Then Armok turned Armok's attention to the magma pumps, the new sub-aquifer plumbing system, and the silk farm.
Armok made some designations and became distracted with working on three projects at once while also proudly monitoring the doctors' work in the hospital. And so Armok designated something incorrectly in the magma pump area. Armok still doesn't know what it was. Armok made an awful lot of designations, and due to the cleanup after the easily-defeated goblin siege from last night, and the soldiers' need for food, drink, and rest--the dwarves didn't get right on the new orders right away. Armok fired-and-forgot so many designations.
And so the year 263 dawned. The fortress turned 13 years old, and the dwarves started up a fresh party to celebrate the new year. The militia commander was still in the hospital, but the doctors were working on him very busily.
At the start of the year 263 Armok concluded that there was a problem at the silk farm, but Armok wasn't sure how to fix it. Weavers kept trying to walk over the hatches and go right into the giant cave spider's side of the room to collect webs, even though there were plenty of webs on their side of the room. Armok feared for both the spider's life, and theirs. (Giant cave spiders have a very poisonous, instantly paralyzing bite, and they're about 2/3 the size of a fully-grown horse, with a lot of legs for kicking.)
Armok was also having some FPS issues and pinpointed pathfinding as the root cause. Armok began distracting Armok, by making long-overdue traffic designations, which helped with the FPS problem immediately. Armok sat and gloated proudly, admiring the masterful traffic designations.
And so the dominoes began to fall.
A few weeks into spring, while Armok was puzzling over the silk farm issue (and foolishly still letting the weavers collect silk, despite the problem), everything came to a sharp standstill and Armok received a puzzling, frightening message.
"Some mason cancels Build Wall: Dangerous Terrain"
Then Armok saw frightfully large clouds of dust in the magma pump area, where dozens of dwarves were working. The mason and subject of the message had fallen into the deep cavern lake several stories below the work area. Apparently he'd gone off a ledge the builders had been sealing off.
Then Armok received another message. "A section of the cavern has collapsed!"
Armok's eyes grew large. Armok gasped. Armok couldn't think of any reason why there would be a collapse. And. What was collapsing?
Armok looked at the moment frozen in time. Dozens of workers were standing in the dust clouds of a truly massive collapse. Oh deities. Had the great magma piston somehow collapsed without Armok designating the lever to be pulled? The fully correctly supported magma piston?
The workers had been constructing a wall to seal off the magma pumps from the open air of the second cavern. The second cavern is mostly open air with a lake at the bottom, and the workers were up above the water level, on a ledge.
"Oh no!" cried Armok. Their fate was already sealed.
It wasn't the piston itself that was collapsing. It was most of the piston's support structure. I don't know how Armok messed that up so badly. It was truly...unmasterful?
And so most of the magma pump stack and supporting walls and floors went crashing into the deep cavern lake, taking dozens of dwarves down with it. This was a large number of stories collapsing.
Most of the builders...dozens of them... were hurled into the cavern lake. Most broke a lot of bones in the fall. Some of them mercifully died on impact with the rocky lake bottom. Others were unconscious when they fell, or unconscious from the impact with the water, and they drowned quickly. Two of the miners who'd been heading down the shaft had fallen a shorter distance to the water, and managed to swim to a safe ledge. But they were stranded. The entire support structure above them was gone.
The miners who had been working below this area were thrown dozens of stories down the shaft, into the magma tank. Luckily (?) there wasn't any magma in it at the time. None of them lived; they got hit by too many other falling objects, and the fall was too far anyway. Their severed limbs and heads and other body parts rained down in a heap, all over the bottom of the magma tank, painting it red with blood. Armok was horrified.
A builder was also hurled down the shaft with the force of the collapse, and he somehow managed to land on the piston support bridge. His legs were broken and his arms severed by falling objects, and he could not move. He lay on the bridge, praying someone would come for him. Unfortunately, that whole lower section of the piston was separated from the rest of the fort by the massive collapse.
When Armok was done being horrified and sorting out how to possibly save the three survivors (the two miners who swam to safety, and the broken builder lying on the bridge halfway down the shaft), Armok made designations for rescue.
When Armok was done, not a single dwarf sprang to build Armok's designations.
Armok realized this was because all the builders were either a) dead, or b) the armless dying builder on the bridge.
"You're all builders now!" Armok called out through the fortress, to the living dwarves.
The other dwarves didn't know how to build, and went about their tasks very slowly. Most of the dwarves panicked at the thought of trying something new, and went on break, hiding in the backs of their bedrooms, as far away from the building designations as possible. Armok sighed. The stranded miners and the dying builder began to dehydrate and starve. Armok told the miners to drink cavern water, and prayed it would be safe and that cave fish would not bite (or eat) them. Armok told the miners to start hacking out stones and building a makeshift bridge from their end.
A week later the miners were rescued, and a few days after that the low-quality scaffold extension was completed, to rescue the armless builder on the bridge. He must have made himself an awesome tourniquet with his legs somehow.
And so Armok thought the crisis was averted. Armok made further designations to seal the shaft away from the cavern. During the rescue, Armok had been noticing a lot of messages from the silk farm and the almost-complete well reservoir. Armok had been ignoring them. Who cares about the silk farm or the new water supply when dwarves need rescued?
Now Armok had a look at the silk farm.
A grisly scene had unfolded.
Armok's legendary weaver, who doubled as Armok's best suturer, was lying paralyzed on one of the giant cave spider's pressure plates. The giant cave spider was standing over her. It had injected its deadly paralytic poison into her blood four times, and was working on a fifth. It had her head in its mouth, and was shaking her around by it. So far, it had managed to break some tissue in her neck.
Apparently the weaver had greedily crossed a hatch for no reason, and then been caught by the spider as expected. It had injected her with its toxin to paralyze her immediately. Four other dwarves were in the room, trying to pick up the piece of silk thread she had gathered, and to rescue her. They kept approaching and then running away, frightened by the spider gobbling her head.
Armok put Armok's head in Armok's hands. This was all because of Armok's deficiency in learning ASCII symbols. If Armok understood all the symbols used in the drawing of the Completely Safe(tm) Wild Giant Cave Spider Silk Farm Design, then Armok would have built a safe silk farm instead of a risky one. The risky one is good, and had earned us an absurd amount of the world's best thread, and it had taken months for a real accident to happen--but it's not safe. Now the legendary weaver and creator of our artifact cloth short skirt, menacing with spikes of pig iron and named The Temptation of Monks, was paying the price.
Armok considered how to get the dwarves out of this situation.
Armok could send in soldiers to take out the spider, but the giant cave spiders are legendarily hard to catch and Nutscaves was very, very lucky to have won the lottery by catching this one. And this weaver was already dead--a single injection of the toxin is not survivable. Adding a dead spider to a dead weaver would not help.
Armok ordered the failsafe lever to be pulled. It would open a floodgate leading to a cage trap, to recapture the spider. Armok considered that the lever should also open all the hatches to speed the process, but Armok hadn't done that in the construction. The spider wasn't going anywhere until it was done devouring the weaver, anyway. Armok mourned the loss of the weaver.
Armok forbade the thread and stopped the silk collection process. And then Armok set about learning more ASCII symbols so that Armok could modify the silk farm to be Completely Safe(tm).
Armok now has the knowledge of some more ASCII symbols and knows how to add safety measures to the farm.
But the dwarves are mourning. Many dwarves are miserable. Armok had killed off 1/3 of the population with Armok's mistakes.
So then Armok finally noticed the trapped dwarves in the water reservoir they'd been building. They'd been starving there for weeks while all of this was going on, and Armok hadn't noticed during the chaos. They were all miserable and angry with Armok for leaving them walled up in the reservoir. Armok sighed and let them out. Luckily Armok had forgotten to start the pumps, or they would have drowned.
A few migrants arrived "despite the danger". We can't even blame the plague this time. Nobody got it in 262, and nobody got it in 263 yet either.
At least Armok learned a few things. And once Armok recaptures the spider, Armok is going to have to send some dwarves to the web room for Caging Therapy. The mayor will have to join them--he's getting less and less ecstatic about his delayed punishment for murder as time goes by. He's been making a lot of mandates recently.
The shortest siege ever
So the goblins decided to send a siege to Nutscaves. (What goblin wouldn't want the plague! And we have a second plague now, thanks to a beast with a puking/nerve plague getting into the stairwell, while Armok was being forgetful about some cavern construction!)
The goblins realized that their last set of ambushes wasn't very effective, what with everybody standing on mechanical spikes or getting thrown onto spikes as the fiendish Stern Handles raised and lowered the drawbridge. This time the goblins had a new plan!
The typical sort-of-green (in more ways than one!) goblin lashers were led by a goblin spearman of middling skill. Spearmen are fairly new for these goblins.
And they brought along a new secret weapon.
A CAVE CROCODILE!
The spearman was riding it. Clearly if everyone could see him on the battlefield, the same slaughter by the mechanical upright spears would not happen a second time!
So the goblins cautiously approached the fort as a group, as they do in sieges. (Oh, how I wish I could order my dwarves to move like that--slow and orderly, a march.)
The goblins studied the mechanical spears. A few lashers were sent forward to stand on the first row of raising-and-lowering spears, to see what would happen.
For whatever reason, the current first row of spears are all wooden training spears. The goblins were unharmed.
The goblin spearman and leader, Zom Ghoulnightmares, became satisfied that it was safe. He guided his cave crocodile mount forward as well, and showed the group that the spears were completely harmless. His mount dodged them easily.
"Today we shall take this disgusting, orderly fortress, men!" he called out from atop his noble cave crocodile steed. "I will lead the way! CHARGE!!" he shouted, and when the spears next went down, he spurred his mount forward toward the bridge.
His mount was uneager. In the end it followed his command, but it balked left and right, and moved slowly, diagonally toward the bridge.
"Damn you, Azstrog!" cried Zom at his noble steed. He regained control of Azstrog just before the bridge and aimed him straight again, but it was a split second too late.
A menacing bismuth bronze spike of low production quality rose up out of the ground, tearing straight through Azstrog's stomach and into Zom Ghoulnightmares' heart, piercing a major artery.
Zom would have screamed in indignance, but he was gurgling blood. "Forward!" he tried to cry. "Forward!" But it sounded more like "fwghhghhh".
Azstrog's forward momentum carried them into the middle of the bridge, and in his dying moments Zom could almost see down the ramp into Nutscaves, the fortress he should have been set to plunder and rule over that day.
Azstrog the cave crocodile knew what was best for him. He threw Zom off his back, turned around, and raced over the spikes next time they went down, and into the horizon. The greenest lasher in the bunch took off running too. Zom lay on the bridge, staring up at the cold sky for a moment. And then he died.
The rest of the goblin lashers looked on in horror.
"Is it over?" asked a newer recruit.
Another lasher shrugged.
"It's not over!" cried the new recruit in reply. "Zom said the spikes were safe! Let's finish this!" And then, "And look--the spikes are gone now."
Meanwhile, in the dining room of Nutscaves, the lever puller's arm had gotten tired and she was swapping duty with another dwarf nearby.
"Hmm," said one of the more seasoned goblins, debating.
"CHARGE!" cried the goblin recruit.
The recruit stepped forward toward the bridge, and the same bismuth bronze menacing spike suddenly came up out of the ground and went straight through his stomach.
All the other goblins turned around and ran.
"Wait!" cried the recruit, hacking and leaning over. Between puking he cried, "I'm not dead!"
Nobody waited.
The dwarves would've gone out to finish off the recruit, but Armok decided to leave them working on trading for more spears. The recruit passed out and bled a lot, but he finally made it to the border of Nutscaves with the wilderness, and will never be seen or heard from again.
The goblins realized that their last set of ambushes wasn't very effective, what with everybody standing on mechanical spikes or getting thrown onto spikes as the fiendish Stern Handles raised and lowered the drawbridge. This time the goblins had a new plan!
The typical sort-of-green (in more ways than one!) goblin lashers were led by a goblin spearman of middling skill. Spearmen are fairly new for these goblins.
And they brought along a new secret weapon.
A CAVE CROCODILE!
The spearman was riding it. Clearly if everyone could see him on the battlefield, the same slaughter by the mechanical upright spears would not happen a second time!
So the goblins cautiously approached the fort as a group, as they do in sieges. (Oh, how I wish I could order my dwarves to move like that--slow and orderly, a march.)
The goblins studied the mechanical spears. A few lashers were sent forward to stand on the first row of raising-and-lowering spears, to see what would happen.
For whatever reason, the current first row of spears are all wooden training spears. The goblins were unharmed.
The goblin spearman and leader, Zom Ghoulnightmares, became satisfied that it was safe. He guided his cave crocodile mount forward as well, and showed the group that the spears were completely harmless. His mount dodged them easily.
"Today we shall take this disgusting, orderly fortress, men!" he called out from atop his noble cave crocodile steed. "I will lead the way! CHARGE!!" he shouted, and when the spears next went down, he spurred his mount forward toward the bridge.
His mount was uneager. In the end it followed his command, but it balked left and right, and moved slowly, diagonally toward the bridge.
"Damn you, Azstrog!" cried Zom at his noble steed. He regained control of Azstrog just before the bridge and aimed him straight again, but it was a split second too late.
A menacing bismuth bronze spike of low production quality rose up out of the ground, tearing straight through Azstrog's stomach and into Zom Ghoulnightmares' heart, piercing a major artery.
Zom would have screamed in indignance, but he was gurgling blood. "Forward!" he tried to cry. "Forward!" But it sounded more like "fwghhghhh".
Azstrog's forward momentum carried them into the middle of the bridge, and in his dying moments Zom could almost see down the ramp into Nutscaves, the fortress he should have been set to plunder and rule over that day.
Azstrog the cave crocodile knew what was best for him. He threw Zom off his back, turned around, and raced over the spikes next time they went down, and into the horizon. The greenest lasher in the bunch took off running too. Zom lay on the bridge, staring up at the cold sky for a moment. And then he died.
The rest of the goblin lashers looked on in horror.
"Is it over?" asked a newer recruit.
Another lasher shrugged.
"It's not over!" cried the new recruit in reply. "Zom said the spikes were safe! Let's finish this!" And then, "And look--the spikes are gone now."
Meanwhile, in the dining room of Nutscaves, the lever puller's arm had gotten tired and she was swapping duty with another dwarf nearby.
"Hmm," said one of the more seasoned goblins, debating.
"CHARGE!" cried the goblin recruit.
The recruit stepped forward toward the bridge, and the same bismuth bronze menacing spike suddenly came up out of the ground and went straight through his stomach.
All the other goblins turned around and ran.
"Wait!" cried the recruit, hacking and leaning over. Between puking he cried, "I'm not dead!"
Nobody waited.
The dwarves would've gone out to finish off the recruit, but Armok decided to leave them working on trading for more spears. The recruit passed out and bled a lot, but he finally made it to the border of Nutscaves with the wilderness, and will never be seen or heard from again.
And then the goblin what?
So, Nutscaves has been testing out various machines and constructions before the inevitable-looking future shutdown*. I had a bunch of migrants, so I made some new "Reserves" (soldiers) for the veterans to train. A bunch of naked mole dogs and those leftover goblins from the overly hilarious spiking incident last night** were slated to assist in "training" the new soldiers.
((* The fortress had seemed to stabilize at this point. Ha ha.))
((** Unfortunately this event was told orally and everyone who heard it tragically died of laughter, including me, somehow. If I find the record of it, I will post it.))
So I sent a military squad to the execution chamber. The squad consisted of one strong veteran, two fairly fresh recruits who at least vaguely know where the pointy ends of their weapons were (but could use quite a bit of practice), and two true newbie soldiers.
There were the usual complaints from the two total newbies. "Oh no, I've been drafted, WHY?! WHY ME?! Can't you pick someone else??? Someone else would definitely be better! /cry" I knew as soon as they got their blades really good and wet in the blood of about a dozen opponents, that they'd stop complaining.
Unfortunately their veteran captain was a little too veteran, and quickly finished off just about every prisoner the "Animal handlers" dropped into the room, in one strike of his beloved steel blade. The newbies didn't get much good practice. But they got a little.
As I train a squad I like to start with easy enemies, and work up to harder ones until the dwarves are too tired to continue (or until the dozens of corpses in the room are too close to rotting, as happens with veteran soldiers who don't get tired easily). So the naked mole dogs got thrown into the room, then the wild camels, then the (naked) goblin bowmen and crossbowmen. At that point the newbies were really griping a lot and on the verge of tantrumming, and the room was full of flies and going to generate miasma soon. The soldiers were hungry and thirsty, too. So I dropped in one final goblin, a naked lasher (they use whips normally). I figured the soldiers would finish it off fairly quickly, although it was the toughest opponent they'd meet today. And I decided I would let the dwarves have a recess after that.
Unarmored melee goblins tend to dodge around a lot and give a lot of valuable experience to my soldiers, as the soldiers try and fail to strike, and as the goblin punches hopelessly at the steel plate mail. Unfortunately, I sort of forgot that I'd never had many steel-plated soldiers in my military in this fort, and so there wasn't quite enough steel to go around. One of the newbies was wearing some alderwood high boots (as in, wooden boots) I'd bought from the elves, instead of metal ones.
The naked goblin lasher rolled and hopped nimbly around the room as the dwarves whiffed away at it. The captain soon hacked a hand off it, and promptly stabbed it through the stomach in one smooth motion before it danced away. This made its fate quite inevitable, but for a few seconds the goblin would still be going strong. (They start puking or doubling over from nausea shortly after any type of gut wound, and then they become easy to hit.)
So in his last few moments of free movement before the pain and nausea would kick in, the naked goblin lasher jumped across the room, probably did some kind of parkour on the wall, and then charged straight into one of the really irritated total newbies, Tobul Deepcraft. Tobul caught her steel axe blade in the goblin's elbow on the way down, but they slammed into the floor together in a tangle. The goblin promptly locked his jaws onto Tobul's right boot. She tried to shake the goblin off, but being inexperienced in combat, she failed at first. The goblin responded by jerking Tobul around by the foot, and she flailed wildly in a panic, trying to get away--
And then the goblin lasher bit her foot clean off. Alder wooden high boot and all. Quite violently.
The captain was swinging his steel blade down at that moment, and saved poor Tobul from further harm by immediately beheading the prone goblin, but the damage was done.
Armok, in quite a panic (and sort of amusedly horrified, in a way...), released the soldiers from their station and threw the switch to open the execution room door. Armok had never before seen a fully armored (admittedly her feet weren't in metal but...) soldier get so badly harmed by a naked goblin, when the odds were this much in the dwarves' favor--even with total newbie dwarves. (Five armored soldiers vs. one naked goblin?!) The goblin lasher wasn't even anything special--he was nearly as green a combatant as Tobul.
Tobul was immediately so relieved to finally be off duty, that she forgot about her bleeding stump and immediately went on what she felt was an overdue break, right in the heap of corpses in the execution chamber. She refused to let anyone rescue her. She said, "This is my time and I'm trying to calm down here. I've had a very bad day. You will have to wait," as various helpful pump operators and miners walked in, inquiring if they might escort her to the hospital for treatment.
After a few hours went by, Tobul managed to calm herself down, probably by getting weaker from all the blood loss. At last she relented and let one of the still-living murderers in charge of the fort, pick her up and carry her to the hospital. She left some pretty big pools of blood in the execution chamber behind her. Now her stump is being cleaned and dressed in the hospital, and she's being given a crutch as we speak.
I wonder if Tobul considers herself lucky, in a way, for losing her foot at this particular time. Word has certainly spread to the hospital that we currently have a forgotten beast breaking into the top cavern, and all military squads are being activated to deal with it.
((* The fortress had seemed to stabilize at this point. Ha ha.))
((** Unfortunately this event was told orally and everyone who heard it tragically died of laughter, including me, somehow. If I find the record of it, I will post it.))
So I sent a military squad to the execution chamber. The squad consisted of one strong veteran, two fairly fresh recruits who at least vaguely know where the pointy ends of their weapons were (but could use quite a bit of practice), and two true newbie soldiers.
There were the usual complaints from the two total newbies. "Oh no, I've been drafted, WHY?! WHY ME?! Can't you pick someone else??? Someone else would definitely be better! /cry" I knew as soon as they got their blades really good and wet in the blood of about a dozen opponents, that they'd stop complaining.
Unfortunately their veteran captain was a little too veteran, and quickly finished off just about every prisoner the "Animal handlers" dropped into the room, in one strike of his beloved steel blade. The newbies didn't get much good practice. But they got a little.
As I train a squad I like to start with easy enemies, and work up to harder ones until the dwarves are too tired to continue (or until the dozens of corpses in the room are too close to rotting, as happens with veteran soldiers who don't get tired easily). So the naked mole dogs got thrown into the room, then the wild camels, then the (naked) goblin bowmen and crossbowmen. At that point the newbies were really griping a lot and on the verge of tantrumming, and the room was full of flies and going to generate miasma soon. The soldiers were hungry and thirsty, too. So I dropped in one final goblin, a naked lasher (they use whips normally). I figured the soldiers would finish it off fairly quickly, although it was the toughest opponent they'd meet today. And I decided I would let the dwarves have a recess after that.
Unarmored melee goblins tend to dodge around a lot and give a lot of valuable experience to my soldiers, as the soldiers try and fail to strike, and as the goblin punches hopelessly at the steel plate mail. Unfortunately, I sort of forgot that I'd never had many steel-plated soldiers in my military in this fort, and so there wasn't quite enough steel to go around. One of the newbies was wearing some alderwood high boots (as in, wooden boots) I'd bought from the elves, instead of metal ones.
The naked goblin lasher rolled and hopped nimbly around the room as the dwarves whiffed away at it. The captain soon hacked a hand off it, and promptly stabbed it through the stomach in one smooth motion before it danced away. This made its fate quite inevitable, but for a few seconds the goblin would still be going strong. (They start puking or doubling over from nausea shortly after any type of gut wound, and then they become easy to hit.)
So in his last few moments of free movement before the pain and nausea would kick in, the naked goblin lasher jumped across the room, probably did some kind of parkour on the wall, and then charged straight into one of the really irritated total newbies, Tobul Deepcraft. Tobul caught her steel axe blade in the goblin's elbow on the way down, but they slammed into the floor together in a tangle. The goblin promptly locked his jaws onto Tobul's right boot. She tried to shake the goblin off, but being inexperienced in combat, she failed at first. The goblin responded by jerking Tobul around by the foot, and she flailed wildly in a panic, trying to get away--
And then the goblin lasher bit her foot clean off. Alder wooden high boot and all. Quite violently.
The captain was swinging his steel blade down at that moment, and saved poor Tobul from further harm by immediately beheading the prone goblin, but the damage was done.
Armok, in quite a panic (and sort of amusedly horrified, in a way...), released the soldiers from their station and threw the switch to open the execution room door. Armok had never before seen a fully armored (admittedly her feet weren't in metal but...) soldier get so badly harmed by a naked goblin, when the odds were this much in the dwarves' favor--even with total newbie dwarves. (Five armored soldiers vs. one naked goblin?!) The goblin lasher wasn't even anything special--he was nearly as green a combatant as Tobul.
Tobul was immediately so relieved to finally be off duty, that she forgot about her bleeding stump and immediately went on what she felt was an overdue break, right in the heap of corpses in the execution chamber. She refused to let anyone rescue her. She said, "This is my time and I'm trying to calm down here. I've had a very bad day. You will have to wait," as various helpful pump operators and miners walked in, inquiring if they might escort her to the hospital for treatment.
After a few hours went by, Tobul managed to calm herself down, probably by getting weaker from all the blood loss. At last she relented and let one of the still-living murderers in charge of the fort, pick her up and carry her to the hospital. She left some pretty big pools of blood in the execution chamber behind her. Now her stump is being cleaned and dressed in the hospital, and she's being given a crutch as we speak.
I wonder if Tobul considers herself lucky, in a way, for losing her foot at this particular time. Word has certainly spread to the hospital that we currently have a forgotten beast breaking into the top cavern, and all military squads are being activated to deal with it.
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