Meet The Party

Okay so it's hard to read, but basically what it boils down to is this:

We've got a fisher and fish cleaner, so if we can find some water (I think I see some nearby, but the cursor says open land, so maybe it's just bluegrass?), we can hopefully start putting food together. Also, we should probably put a farm together, to grow grain. You know, for booze. And finally, we need to carve out some living quarters.

I start time again and the fisher dwarf teleports to some water so far away that I can't figure out where she is in relation to the rest of the group. I designate a bunch of the mountain for mining, figuring my miner will start carving it up, but the miner still shows "No Job" on the unit list. Hmm.



Well, apparently telling my miner to dig out some more specific minerals has gotten the work moving. Maybe the other stone was too hard.



I've also put the woodcutter to work, thinking that putting a farm next to a body of water might be a good idea. I've also designated some of the stone areas my miner has cut out for smoothing, to get my stone worker dwarf to join the party. I guess I'll have to build buildings for everyone before they'll bother to actually move to the new settlement location. And traders, IIRC, like to trade where the wagon is, so we may have to build a long tunnel out to the wagon. Stupid humans and elves. But the main priority right now is still getting everyone to work. As fast as the miner can make me some rooms, I want to get storage and workshops going so everyone has something to do. Then we'll worry about living quarters.

And So It Begins

In following the Dwarf Fortress thread on the Penny Arcade boards, I decided it would be the perfect way to procrastinate instead of looking for my next job or learning ACS scripting to make class based co-op DooM levels.

And so, I cast my destiny to the winds. I let the fractal world generator free to create a multitude of worlds. The game warned me it could take a long time as the random process could generate a plethora of rejects. Only six rejects were generated, meaning I would be playing on the seventh world, a good omen, and while I may not be superstitious, I know dwarves certainly can be. From what I'd read on the thread, dwarves are drunken cowards with a great appreciation for craftsmanship. They could also be quite mad, a fact not unrelated to their penchant for creating. Apparently, sometimes a dwarf may be inspired, the idea for a fantastic work of art suddenly overtaking their entire being. If the materials for said work cannot be secured fast enough, they go mad. And of course there are the standard monsters, cave ins, and accidental tapping of magma veins to contend with. But no matter. I am fortune's to guide. I let the game automatically generate my party of dwarves and pick my starting location. Here's what it looked like.



I'm a bit concerned about those purple bits. I think bad things may live in them. I'll try to make fortifying an early priority, but the first priority must be to survive, and I'll need to do a lot of work to secure food and shelter to survive the winter.

Oh, and my new settlement is called Windape. Considering my love for all things simian, another good omen.