So I've been playing Dwarf Fortress, and like... the specific problems my fort is dealing with are a real ride. It's still continuing off the tutorial, so my fort isn't... particularly well laid-out or well managed. I ended up in a pretty peaceful area with almost no attacks by anything ever, and my starting dwarves almost all loved art but were conflicted about being bad at it or trying to feel emotions from art... Just a real bunch of tortured artists managed by someone who has no idea how to plan a hallway let alone a fortress.
So here's what I've been dealing with at Bridleboards.
Peaceful as it is... we have a lot of the standard problems, like managing food and drink (I am overflowing with fish but struggle to keep everybody drinking), making clothes has been an ordeal while I learn how farming works, and I've had a lot of different Fey/Strange Moods to deal with. Though with those, also I've never struggled to get them the materials they need, somehow, and get wild stuff like This:
The first Fey Mood was a kid who made The Sickest Toy They Could Think Of. Beyond that we've had 'Nice Cup' and 'Siltstone Earrings But Like Real Nice', just a lot of fancy treats by the art commune. Most of them will be stolen by monkeys.
We've also had a fair few scholar-types, so early on I built a library that started to attract outsiders to read our One Book, including lots of Humans, some elves, a couple Boarman Poets, and one Cougar woman scholar who I love. I hope she's doing alright.
But one of those humans was a guy named Cisli, a "Lasher". And this guy... he learned about something called "The Cunning Insights." And started skulking around. I had no idea what this meant, so I didn't immediately take action, and after a few days, Cisli walks up to the front door and declares "YOU SHALL NOT STAND BETWEEN ME AND THE CUNNING INSIGHTS!" before attacking the civilians nearby doing chores.
So, children.
Thankfully I had started a militia who, though they refused to use weapons on account of I had no idea how to make them equip anything, were becoming very good at wrestling, so they promptly punched all his blood out, threw his bones in a special closet, and left his gear on the front porch where it remains to this day.
At this point, the fort was getting pretty big, and I realized I would need, unfortunately, law enforcement if I wanted to be able to respond to problems with anything besides telling my gigantic dwarf wrestlers to annihilate it. I set up a little dungeon and assigned someone to handle law enforcement, which mostly gets used to punish people for not making enough toy axes for the Mayor. Eventually though, something goes missing. Our old friend, "The Cunning Insights", is missing, and I still had no clue what that even was. I set about interrogating the fort in hopes of any leads, and before long someone confesses... but though he did the deed, the dwarf in question wasn't the mastermind. No, that was a mysterious "Bir Breadwashed", who was nowhere to be found in the fort.
MEANWHILE, outside, a new problem has occurred. And that problem is blood. It's so much blood. Nobody is fighting, but it's human blood. It's not magic blood rain either, the rain is entirely normal. My fields are just LOUSY with human blood. And kiwi blood, but mostly human. This isn't even all of it:
After going back through the records, I realize the name on the blood is, in fact, our old pal Cisli. It has been TWO YEARS since his blood got punched out and, somehow, it's getting everywhere still. I can only assume it's just now coming down from the stratosphere after it got punched out? (or maybe it's being tracked around from his gear on the porch and washed off folks in the rain, but I know what I choose to believe)
But back inside, Bir Breadwashed has showed her face. A human traveller, and apparently, part of a massive spy ring against my fort's civilization. Why they stole "the Cunning Insights" I have no clue, but I do learn that it's an artifact. Hey, that means I can look it up and see what it even is! According to the list... "a limonite mini-forge"... limonite and gypsum cabochons... spikes of bituminous coal and turkey b-HEY. HEY WAIT
THIS IS ALL OVER THAT MINI FORGE?
THE CONSPIRACIES? THE THEFT? THE SPY RING? THE CHILD MURDERER AND HIS BLOOD?
All this for what is basically an Easy Bake Oven with some Sick Spikes.
Great game.