Having gotten thoroughly fed up with the tasteless beer appetites of the Mountainhome, I decided to strike out on my own to where a brewer of my caliber would be appreciated. I'd heard things about a place called Armorstabbed, a relatively new settlement with lots of plants, so I packed my bags and went for a hike.
I almost missed the place. A single, solitary hole in the ground was the only sign that Armorstabbed existed. Clearly, it was still very much a work in progress.
"This is all just temporary, right?" I asked my guide. "There's plans for a grandiose entrance with spikes and castles and crossbows, yes?"
He refused to answer. I didn't realize how bad of a sign that was. We went downstairs, and out of the thrice-accursed sunlight.
The "fort" was a maze of twisty little dirt passageways, all alike... None were very wide, and there was a noticeable lack of... well... everything. Only a very few workshops, no kitchen, no dining hall, no meeting space, no bedrooms... It was a travesty. I saw a dwarf run by chasing a rat, and inquired about the food stocks...
Nothing. There was no food of any sort. There was no booze. There was no booze! These poor dorfs had been stone cold sober for I-don't-know-how-long, and now were out of food as well. Clearly, someone needed to take charge in a hurry.
And then I noticed that they were all standing around looking at me.
Crap.
First things first - we needed food and fast. I told some of the farmers to start finding edible food outside. ("It's just like farming, but everything's already planted for you!") The other farmers were pointed towards our tiny farm plot and told to start working harder. The grandiose mining plans were suspended as well, and a few of the huge dogs lounging around were butchered for meat. I also started building bedrooms - still dirt, but closer to real rock than the rest of the delve.
We also got a bucket-load of new immigrants. Twenty-two of the people - lots of fishers and farmers, just what we need. Fishers were told to start fishing, farmers were told to start farming. We built a second farm plot as well.
It wasn't until the 1st of Malachite - well into the summer - that I got a still up and running. Stupid carpenters not building barrels, stupid masons not making doors... My list of complaints got longer and longer as the summer went on. On the plus side, the rumors were right - there's lots of varieties of brewables here, and they all make tasty alcohol.
And then someone went insane in the dining room. He stood around ranting about skulls and pentagons and things for some time, until someone tried to build a bowyer's shop to start building weapons. The insane dwarf tossed him out of it and started working. We steered clear of that place for a good long while afterwards.
So, Iden Delethdakost (who has been drinking far too much of my work) came up with a silly idea - he said, "you know how when you hit something, it gets smaller? What if you kept hitting things? Would they keep getting smaller?" Someone else suggested we use a drawbridge. Having nothing better to do, we built one.
So, the insane bowyer finally finished his thingie - he insists it's a blowgun, I call it a small pipe.
6th Timber - Armok almighty, the drawbridge actually smashes things! We stuck a bunch of junk under it, pulled the lever, and there was nothing left. This may also have applications in fortification...
Surprisingly, after the massive wave of immigrants who showed up when there was no food and no booze, nobody else arrived for the rest of the year. Not sure where we would have put them, so maybe it's a good thing.
Anyway, everything was going all well and smoothly, we were starting to build up food reserves, and then in the middle of autumn, the kitchen filled up with a horrible stench.
It happened again. Twice. I figure it was due to both having the butcher's shop in the kitchen and the fact that the kitchen was the main run of traffic between the dining room and the store room, so I built a long hallway off into nowhere for the butcher, and a way around so people wouldn't tromp past my still.
Rotting food has become a problem a few times - both in the food reserve and the garbage dump. We've been throwing it under the drawbridge for disposal, which continues to do a surprisingly good job.
We tucked in for the winter with strong reserves of both food and booze, a welcome change from last winter. The refuse pile continued to generate the occasional stink, which we dealt with in the usual manner.
Anyways, at the start of spring, I retired. Handed the position of fortress leader off to someone who claimed to know what he was doing. Here's some sketches of how the fortress sits:
Aboveground, we've got the trade depot and the entrance about halfway walled off. I have plans to fortify the tops of the walls and add archery platforms up there. You can also see the base of the drawbridge.
The drawbridge itself is exactly what you'd expect - big enough for anything to cross, rises upwards to fill the gap it leaves in the fortifications. All the walls are built from good solid rock - I don't want my walls to burn down.
The main level of the fort - still too close to the surface, still too maze-like. It'll work for now, but I look forward to the day when I'm surrounded by good solid rock. The bedrooms are down a couple more floors, down in the random mine-works someone seem to have dug in dirt for fun. There's only enough rooms down there for half the population or so - having craftsdwarves who aren't lazy bums would make it significantly easier.
Ah well. I leave the running of this place to someone who wants to do it. It's back to the still for me - assuming I can find another barrel. (Stupid lazy craftsdwarves...)
