Hi, I’m hoodie hair and this is the story
of how I built a thriving dual purpose toy factory/coal mine fortress in the frozen tundra,
and how the whole operation came crumbling down. Part 1: The Rise I embarked in the tundra, where the snow would
be falling year-round, herds of reindeer would be roaming to and fro, and we would, hopefully,
be distributing the finest coal and toys to children throughout the realm. To start we dug down through the snow and
started mining out the beginnings of a fortress - revealing some caverns in the process. I quickly got that patched up before any weird
cavern creatures could crawl, fly, or slither their way in. Once the room was dug out we put in 2 large
stone stockpiles, 6 crafting workshops for toy production, a trade depot where we could
give our goods away, and 2 finished goods stockpiles where the toys would be kept. Other, less important, workshops were also
created - just outside of the toy production area where visitors wouldn’t see them. We also dug out some bedrooms so that the
workers of the fortress would have somewhere to go and relax after their long days spent
either carving stones into toys or mining for coal. We had embarked in the autumn but by the point
that we had all of this set up it was already summer and we had attracted our first migrants. Such lovely summer weather. Now with enough dwarves that a few could be
spared I created a work detail for stone crafting and named it “Elves” - after the north
pole type, not the tree loving kind. My dwarves still didn’t really have anywhere
to relax other than their bedroom, so in quick succession I added a tavern, a kitchen area,
and a generic temple. And then we took a small but calculated risk
to dig into the cavern and wall off a section of mossy ground to use as a farm. Luckily we had no problems. The fortress started kicking into gear not
long after, with my elves producing toys and my miners hunting for coal or lignite that
could be used to make coal coke. I thought I had covered all the basic necessities
of the fort and was just watching my dwarves at work when I began to notice that they were
all getting thirsty. I’d obviously been settling in warm climates
too often because I’d completely forgotten that there wasn’t an infinite source of
freshwater freely available on the surface, and that I actually had to make a well. Dehydration bullet dodged, we soon ran into
a new - less deadly - problem. We had run out of stone to make the toys with. I had obviously underestimated the amount
of mining that was necessary for both toy and coal output to remain optimal, and so
I redoubled our miner’s efforts in clearing out vast swathes of stone. While the raw lignite and coal that we were
getting from mining was good, I wanted to refine it before we sent it off to any misbehaving
kids, so that they would be receiving the finest coal coke in the world instead of some
lumpy non-furnace-ready stones. With that in mind we set up a coal refining
area on the level below our toy production. With that done I could just sit back and watch
for a while as we accumulated stone and turned it into toys and coal coke. One of the advantages of our setup was that
the caravans would be coming to us and handling end-point distribution, so there was no need
for sleighs or reindeer or anything like that. Still, when I saw a herd of reindeer wandering
around on the surface I couldn’t help but want some reindeer of my own, just for fun. And so I started producing mechanisms and
iron cages to create cage traps. But before I could place them I was interrupted
by the yearly dwarven caravan. They hadn’t brought wagons so I knew they
wouldn’t be able to carry too much but I had to give them a good sampling so I made
sure to include as many different toys as I could. Obviously I didn’t get into the gift creation
business to make a profit so I sent my toys along for free. It wasn’t until a couple minutes after trading
with them that I remembered I had coal to give them as well. I tried to load them up but the weight limits
restricted me to just 3 pieces of coal. It was a shame but at least 3 children with
coal in their stockings is better than none. With my distraction now taken care of I started
placing cage traps on the surface - extending to the east and the west of my little stair
shelter. We soon had more muskox and stoats than we
knew what to do with, but eventually all the cage management was worth it as a herd of
reindeer wandered into the danger zone and managed to get themselves captured one after
another. They seemed pretty amiable and were easily
trained - which made me think that they were great little mascots for our bustling little
fortress. We weren’t some 200 dwarf behemoth but we
produced our coal and our toys and got on with our (mostly) happy little lives. It seemed like we could keep this up forever. Part 2: The Fall But sometimes staring down forever drives
a person to do crazy things. Like trying to find out how fast a minecart
would have to slam into a fortification before it would fling all of its coal at the two
necromancers trapped inside. It started as a simple experiment, but something
stopped me from preventing the cart from being pushed while dwarves were still on the tracks. And when it resulted in a dwarf being horribly
injured and squeezed through a fortification into the necromancer prison, I felt nothing. I barely even felt anything when a dozen dwarves
took the opportunity to wander into the cavern when I breached it and were then killed. And then, when my necromancers began reanimating
cave swallow people and dwarves alike, I simply watched in grim interest. But when some cave swallow people escaped
the caverns, flapped their way up to the surface, and killed my reindeer, it meant war. I hadn’t even previously bothered to set
up squads because we had been so untroubled but now everyone was drafted and told to train. It seemed to be going well until I noticed
repeated disturbances being reported at the well. For some reason my dwarves kept drowning at
the bottom of it. The mystery was revealed when I saw a cave
swallow person fly up the well and proceed to stab my dwarf until they fell down into
the water where they succumbed to their injuries. With this they were directly bringing the
fight to me, and so, as unprepared as we were for a direct battle, I sent my dwarves down
to the mine where we would deal with the cave swallow people once and for all. After an exciting initial battle that we fared
pretty well in, the cave swallow people started picking away at my troops one by one. Eventually we had been whittled away to almost
nothing. And then, after our expedition leader staged
his final stand and was killed by the cave swallow people on the surface, we were left
with nothing but the couple of bards and poets that were still hanging around in the tavern. To give them a fighting chance I locked the
doors to the tavern, which would buy them time, but also doom them to the eventuality
that a troll would wander up from the caverns and smash the doors down. We had gone from a productive little beehive
of Dwarfmas activity to a husk of a fortress populated with more gorlaks than stonecrafters. I don’t know what made me do it. Perhaps it was staring down the barrel of
forever, or perhaps it was the fact that I had an exam in the morning and I was craving
chaos. Whatever the case may be, thanks for watching
and merry christmas!
