akhra

🏴🚩⚧️⚢♾️ΘΔ⚪

  • &🍯she/her 🐲xie/xer 🦡e/em/es

wenchcoat system:
🍯 Akhra (or Melli to disambiguate), ratel.
🐲 Rhiannon, drangolin.
🦡 Lenestre, American badger.

unless tagged or otherwise obvious, assume 🍯🐲🦡 in chorus; even when that's not quite accurate, we will always be in consensus. address collectively as Akhra (she/her), or as wenchcoat (she/her or plural).

💞@atonal440
💕@cattie-grace
❤️‍🔥(not#onhere)
🧇@Reba-Rabbit


Discord (mention cohost, I get spam follows)
@akhra
Discord server ostensibly for the Twitch channel but with Cohost in hospice y'know what let's just link it here
discord.gg/AF57qnub3D

akhra
@akhra

I enjoy scanning the slope/elevation overlays when picking an embark location so I find features like this pretty often but they're usually, like, 4 to 6 layers. sometimes stone doesn't even start until below the lower river. this plateau looks to be about 80% dolomite (Bender would be so proud!) and there are visible veins of hematite, magnetite, malachite and bituminous coal.

plan: residences on one side of the waterfall, everything else on the other. only way between them is grate-caged, suspended walkways through the mist. many dwarves may die in the construction of this ludicrously unnecessary water feature, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. if the fortress survives to complete this hubristic display, am I likely to lose it to the first flying threat to happen by because there's little way to keep them out when my dwarves are constantly opening doors to the outside? obviously.


akhra
@akhra

oh haha I was so busy gawking at geology I forgot about the extra fun. this is a 5-year-history world; I was looking for a civ without iron because I wanted to do the scenario where my fort is the prospectors who go and find some. (Armok graciously bequeaths steel anvils to His doomed creations, that they might have the means to make more in such a contingency; it's only sporting, after all.)

anyway my entire Mountainhome consists of a single four-tile plot. it's not a dead civ — I could tell because my embark options included strawberries — but there was very little else outside the automatic-access stuff, and I think there's a chance it could die out during play, meaning no more primary immigrant waves. and, uh, I may have lightly scummed my embark group specifically to yuri up the place, so babies might be sparse too lol.

all of which means I should probably hedge my bets by going all in on a swanky tavern, to attract non-dwarven immigrants who can fall to their deaths constructing a pointlessly ornate shower enrich my burgeoning urban center with cultural diveristy!

(actually looking forward to that, last time I played regularly taverns weren't in yet.)


akhra
@akhra

the wide-open falling hazard seepage drain will be replaced with fortifications, but it would take far too long to carve them (i.e. dwarves would drown and I would have no drain) so I'm starting with just a hole and they'll be constructed after the fact. (I'm also going to temporarily cut the designations off to guarantee just that one side of the ramp and the drain exit are dug before anything else, because dwarves have impressive ADHD.) the simple trap layout here takes advantage of knowing how the pathfinding works, but that just saves me having to make friendlies zig-zag around as much. drawbridge at the trade post gets pulled at the first sign of intrusion, and if a few raiders manage to slip through before I notice them, they have to go through the barracks to reach anything else. most of this I've done before, but I'm particularly excited to see how that marksdwarf nest in the middle works out!

the start of Shower Tower planning can be seen here; the walkways will be a tile out from the waterfall to minimize dwarves being swept to their doom before the full cage is built at each level, but there should still be plenty of mist at that range for copious happy thoughts. (hm, does mist entertain all races equally? that might help with the tavern plans!) debating whether I'll dig back up into the aquifer or not, as long as I manage drainage well there are definite upsides to infinite clean water (and nowadays with light aquifers it almost feels too easy lol)


akhra
@akhra

turns out I was able to smooth and carve natural stone (magnetite! swanky!) fortifications without even reaching 2-depth water pooling. and some mist comes in through them, too!

the bad news is I just plain forgot that aquifers also seep down so there will need to be some revisions lmao, I need to move everything down a level and dig in to the prior depot level from the entry ramp, to floor over the ramp up to the planned gauntlet so it doesn't drip into the new planned gauntlet and eventually the depot, barracks, and anything else I don't put a proper drain in front of. (mechanically, shallow water won't actually damage anything, but it perpetually creates mud and dwarves like clean spaces.)

the entry ramp will also need to move one tile back to fit everything (which basically means it's two layers tall now, a nice cavernous entry), and I'll have to toss in a few constructed walls (including replacing the already-carved fortifications, sigh, they too will put mud in the depot) which reduces the overall splendor of the entry but maybe I'll eventually make them platinum or something. edit: wait no shit I have sand, giant waterfall window in the depot!


akhra
@akhra

re-do nearly done! one wall left to construct on the gauntlet floor (I temporarily left it open and connected to the main ramp for easier access), and in these screenshots the final entry, barracks and marksdwarf nest aren't fully dug yet, but the entire gauntlet is otherwise ready, the water on that floor is evaporating, and the trade post is designated. the mud will get cleaned eventually, lol.

dropped temporary beds in the gauntlet entry just to avoid dwarves sleeping outdoors, and I may actually stage them to the barracks (and possibly move most of the currently-outdoor stockpiles and workshops into the gauntlet space?) before digging real rooms, because I kind of want to build one proof-of-concept bridge across the waterfall gap and get immediate access to the north side without relying on temporary bypasses. I'll probably do this one with stone grates: wood is relatively scarce, and I haven't gotten into a coal vein yet for smelter fuel; but I've got an embarrassment of iron ore and flux stone (all the rocks you can see in the gauntlet space are one or the other) so the permanent construction will be steel. (there's supposed to be silver here somewhere, but it's only worth a third as much in the dwarf economy, and lest we forget: the goal is decadence!)

but that's all gonna wait until next session, because the first-summer migrant wave arrived and that seemed like a good place to pause! a huge one too, more than doubling my population. this'll let me start specializing more dwarves, and put at least a couple on dedicated military training before anything nasty shows up.


akhra
@akhra

played just a bit yesterday, mostly just doing the migrant assignment and moving-stuff-indoors I mentioned before, but ran into a pair of snags with the waterfall construction: grates can't support each other, and fortifications won't pass water vertically; which means my initial plan of building those in the actual waterfall path to support the grates and minimize dwarves getting shoved around by water is a no-go, since they'll actually divert the water directly into bridge-goers. I quit right after verifying this, because the autumn caravan showed up (and also the sun was rising lol).

so after sleeping on it, let's just embrace the deluge! move the whole plan one tile east (a few more adjustments to existing rooms, but nothing major). put floor grates directly in the waterfall's path, against the cliff face; assign them as low-traffic so they're only used as a passing lane, minimizing tide-tossed dwarves. the second (main-use) line of grates will be supported by an outer set of fortifications (or maybe just walls?), far enough from the main waterfall that they won't cause any flow diversion. I'll need to build temporary solid bridges for access to put in the support fortifications, which means more time of dwarves facing a catastrophic fall with a torrent immediately at their backs, but nothing's gone wrong yet and I'm sure that's a trend I can safely extrapolate from!

(wonder if I should dig down first, and set up a bottom platform to catch deconstructed materials... later it could double as a fishing pier...)


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