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07 Nov 2009 08:09
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11/06/2009:
The Terror of Lambs was the name of a goblin civilization that arose in the Windy Land. They settled at a spot in the mountains which they called Urarstod, "Malignedlaw". Initially, they were equals, but within the year, the goblin Zom Hatredscourges intimidated the others with threats of violence and called herself "Law-Giver", assuming absolute authority over the others. The Palace of Nightmares was constructed, and Zom ruled from within, amusing herself with the jaguars she tamed from the dunes. Strangely, having big kitty cat friends was not enough, and war began with the elves within three years. Zom led a small band to attack their forest two times and was beaten back twice in personal combat with the elf Lapama Glimmerdrink, a hobbled cyclops hunter. The third attack, named The Brutal Assault by historians, was to be the last for Zom, killed and eaten by Lapama, who returned to cyclops hunting and died the next year.
The goblins were used to having a Law-Giver by this time, and Smunstu Staticsteal, a bear-lover who braved the tundra and elven forests for polar bears and black bears alike, rose to the position. The humans took advantage of Lapama's death and defeated the elves utterly during this time, and the goblins lived in peace for many years. A trade dispute with the dwarves brought war back to the Windy Land.
The goblins were winning, nearly taking the dwarven capital, when something horrifying emerged from the dunes. A shambling mound of vomit vaguely resembling a walking frog, it was Vim Forkedmarshes the Profane Nadir, mistress of torture and misery, emerged from the underworld. The demon challenged Smunstu's legitimacy as Law-Giver of the Terror of Lambs, and brought down her putrid fists on Smunstu's face three times, killing the unfortunate goblin. After a few years, Vim moved into the Immoral Tower in Terrorballs, a new settlement built near the ruins of the dwarven capital, which had fallen to the cyclops, Savot Seasonwill, the same beast who killed Lapama years before. Indeed, the cyclops problem was now the pressing issue for the goblins and their disgusting leader. Savot's pack of four attacked Terrorballs repeatedly, and Vim held twice, fighting off the beasts. In the end, Savot was victorious, and Terrorballs became another empty husk to match the dwarven ruins nearby. The goblins cowered in Malignedlaw while the humans eeked out an existence far away on the coast, besieged by ettins and a bronze colossus.
As with yesterday, even the semi-megabeasts need to have their numbers reduced slightly, ha ha ha. I guess that's a welcome change compared to their 40d pathetic selves.
Anyway, that's the variable positions experiment with goblins, so I'm greening that one out. There's a lot more that can be done there, but this is a start. A goblin can consolidate control in one position (not necessarily through violence), or delegate military strategy to others who will do the fighting. In the world above, the Law-Giver position also had all of the military responsibilities. Zom might have lived a bit longer if she had delegated those tasks to others (there aren't military coups yet), but with the Profane Nadir coming down the line, an early death was probably inevitable!
I made another small world just now, and fortunately it went the other way. A popular goblin assumed control of the group without taking on the role of actually leading forces into combat. After a few goblins held this position, a demon took control (through a duel which ended without a death -- the goblin got married and then was shot by an elf the next year). Wars were being fought by unorganized groups of goblins at this time, and after about a decade, the goblins decided collectively to select a general to be under the demon (it's more likely that the demon decides, but it went the collaborative route). The demon survived (the short) world gen, but there were five or six generals in fifty years. After the duel, the demon never fought with anybody again. Every civilization was intact with all of their settlements and the world was in peace during the last thirty years, though the beasts were quite active (none of them died and they had a few hundred combined victims).
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11/06/2009:
The Terror of Lambs was the name of a goblin civilization that arose in the Windy Land. They settled at a spot in the mountains which they called Urarstod, "Malignedlaw". Initially, they were equals, but within the year, the goblin Zom Hatredscourges intimidated the others with threats of violence and called herself "Law-Giver", assuming absolute authority over the others. The Palace of Nightmares was constructed, and Zom ruled from within, amusing herself with the jaguars she tamed from the dunes. Strangely, having big kitty cat friends was not enough, and war began with the elves within three years. Zom led a small band to attack their forest two times and was beaten back twice in personal combat with the elf Lapama Glimmerdrink, a hobbled cyclops hunter. The third attack, named The Brutal Assault by historians, was to be the last for Zom, killed and eaten by Lapama, who returned to cyclops hunting and died the next year.
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06 Nov 2009 09:54
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11/05/2009:
Gulsheb escaped from the depths during the third year of recorded history and wandered the mountains for six years. Eventually she tired of this life and convinced the humans living in the hills below that she was in fact a manifestation of Tob, their goddess of deformity. She was a towering, bloated one-eyed thrush with a fat, bulging trunk in place of a beak, so it must not have been that difficult. The villages united under her rule, and she directed a sixty year expansion. Then the war with the elves began. She never took part in the conflict personally, preferring to direct it from the capital of Pastsmokes. After 24 years and several assaults on the town, the elves finally managed to raze the city. Gulsheb was beheaded by the elf Athifi Swampauthors. Fourteen years later, Athifi herself was shot and killed by a human in the same town. Over the next 500 years, Pastsmokes was destroyed 33 times in the unending war, but the leadership position created by Gulsheb to unite the villages continued to be occupied by various humans during the entire period. The most recent of these rulers was Mastrod Hairymagic, who took control in 599. She continued to worship Tob and the rest of the pantheon, unaware of the deception that had occured centuries before.
The goblins don't have a pantheon to sneak in with, but they respect the power of a strong, murderous critter, so a demon that can defeat (not necessarily kill) whoever's in charge can assume control. One demon managed to assume leadership of the goblins before they had organized positions themselves but was killed and eaten by a hydra three years later. The goblin Stozu Tickwail, a survivor of the same attack, took it upon himself to assume the position of "Master" created by the demon. Unfortunately, another demon that had been roaming in a nearby forest saw the opportunity and challenged Master Stozu a year later, and the goblin was killed. This demon, Cuwiwe, ruled for nine years and was killed by a rampaging cyclops. The new goblin Master was killed by a cyclops the next year, as was his successor, and the one after that, ending the civilization. It was apparently a bad place to live.
The last demon, Ata Newtmonkeys, ruled a peaceful goblin kingdom for 300 years until she was burned up in the dragonfire of Ronux Fireytaxes, who survived 600 years of world generation with 137 kills.
If you want to get the same civ-leading behaviors out of your modded-in mega beasts, you can tack the POWER tag on them, which works in concert with INTELLIGENT_LEARNS. It'll need some spheres to match up if you want it to try its hand at playing a deity. The god impersonation and position formation will then pop up in the legends to read, along with the animal stuff from yesterday.
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11/05/2009:
Gulsheb escaped from the depths during the third year of recorded history and wandered the mountains for six years. Eventually she tired of this life and convinced the humans living in the hills below that she was in fact a manifestation of Tob, their goddess of deformity. She was a towering, bloated one-eyed thrush with a fat, bulging trunk in place of a beak, so it must not have been that difficult. The villages united under her rule, and she directed a sixty year expansion. Then the war with the elves began. She never took part in the conflict personally, preferring to direct it from the capital of Pastsmokes. After 24 years and several assaults on the town, the elves finally managed to raze the city. Gulsheb was beheaded by the elf Athifi Swampauthors. Fourteen years later, Athifi herself was shot and killed by a human in the same town. Over the next 500 years, Pastsmokes was destroyed 33 times in the unending war, but the leadership position created by Gulsheb to unite the villages continued to be occupied by various humans during the entire period. The most recent of these rulers was Mastrod Hairymagic, who took control in 599. She continued to worship Tob and the rest of the pantheon, unaware of the deception that had occured centuries before.
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05 Nov 2009 18:04
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11/04/2009:
Getak Twigracks was a human warlord ruling the town of Spoongrizzle. After four peaceful years, he decided to make a journey to a nearby mountain range called the Belted Tooth, and in the manner of the legendary stories, he managed to tame the giant eagles that lived there. Eight years later, he traveled west, befriending the jaguars that lived in the hills there and bringing some back for his personal menagerie. Many more years drifted by, and the aging warrior thought perhaps he would be able to live out the end of his life in harmony with his many beasts. However, this was not to be -- because I forced a human assault on my fortress with a debug command. Several squads of foot soldiers came, as well as a group of trained jaguars running along with them. Getak was escorted by his personal guard, all riding giant eagles. The seven dwarves milling around by the wagon put up a modest defense.
The elves still have a great advantage in the use of beasts, but there can be a bit of variety now. As in fortress mode, the historical dwarves can now take advantage of certain underground beasts (not that you fight dwarves yet), and the goblins should have a greater variety available as well.
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11/04/2009:
Getak Twigracks was a human warlord ruling the town of Spoongrizzle. After four peaceful years, he decided to make a journey to a nearby mountain range called the Belted Tooth, and in the manner of the legendary stories, he managed to tame the giant eagles that lived there. Eight years later, he traveled west, befriending the jaguars that lived in the hills there and bringing some back for his personal menagerie. Many more years drifted by, and the aging warrior thought perhaps he would be able to live out the end of his life in harmony with his many beasts. However, this was not to be -- because I forced a human assault on my fortress with a debug command. Several squads of foot soldiers came, as well as a group of trained jaguars running along with them. Getak was escorted by his personal guard, all riding giant eagles. The seven dwarves milling around by the wagon put up a modest defense.
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04 Nov 2009 09:21
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11/03/2009:
Dwarf Fortress Talk #4 has arrived: forum thread,DF Talk page with download.
Today I cut out all of the obsolete unit types and updated the code references where it made sense. This included things like the noble work exemptions, complaints about sleeping quarters and punishment exemptions, which made their way into the raw definitions. The old king/queen arrival was updated to move all of the "capital" rules-from-location position holders of your civilization over to your site, and the generated axe-dwarf royal escorts were updated to use whatever weapons make sense for the entity. The hammerer and tax collection code is going to be updated with the guard update, and the dungeon master position might not keep all of its quirks -- it's an appointment, and since your baron is an internal elevated position now, your dungeon master appointee can't suddenly have a personality wipe to make room for DM jokes. It's also weird that they'd suddenly let you tame exotic cave animals. Later on there should be some sort of knowledge/cult/guild surrounding that position, but I'll be happy enough passing that along for now.
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11/03/2009:
Dwarf Fortress Talk #4 has arrived: forum thread,DF Talk page with download.
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03 Nov 2009 13:42
- 11/02/2009: I updated all sorts of location/gender/etc. issues today linking the new position raw files to the rest of the game. It all went smoothly, so we have more green stuff on the list. One of the things left over from the map stuff from last month is that internal volcanic features sometimes leave a gaping hole in the earth when they are not supposed to, and quite a bit of monstery stuff spilled out of there while I was checking that the liaison was named properly, but other than that there weren't any other traumas to report.
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02 Nov 2009 21:07
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11/01/2009:
Ha ha, I haven't been to an adventure mode town for a very long time. There just hasn't been cause for it during all of these other changes. After I did the temple greeting update, I thought I'd be able to green out a few more items today. Instead, during testing, well, there were no temples, because there were no buildings, just a town with about 100 priests of different denominations standing in an otherwise empty clearing. It turns out they'd been razing their own temples each year and then starting new religions, leaving the old priests behind, and on top of that the game no longer knew how to place buildings because it thought there were too many overlaps with the new cave features.
Once all that was fixed, the priests disappeared entirely, but the game still registered the religions as having them. When I checked out an example, the guy had been a tiger hunter all his life, which ended when one of the hunts went horribly wrong. The following year, he was appointed a priest. No wonder my adventurer couldn't find him. After that was handled, I finally found a priest hanging out at a temple, and he greeted me properly.
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11/01/2009:
Ha ha, I haven't been to an adventure mode town for a very long time. There just hasn't been cause for it during all of these other changes. After I did the temple greeting update, I thought I'd be able to green out a few more items today. Instead, during testing, well, there were no temples, because there were no buildings, just a town with about 100 priests of different denominations standing in an otherwise empty clearing. It turns out they'd been razing their own temples each year and then starting new religions, leaving the old priests behind, and on top of that the game no longer knew how to place buildings because it thought there were too many overlaps with the new cave features.
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28 Oct 2009 10:18
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10/27/2009:
The official topic announcement for DF Talk 4 is on the DF Talk page.
A few large, red-eyed pictures from the meetup.
Scamps in his hat (courtesy of the documentarian): One, Two, Three.
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10/27/2009:
The official topic announcement for DF Talk 4 is on the DF Talk page.
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27 Oct 2009 08:58
- 10/25/2009: Rainseeker has put together another episode of Dort Shorts which you can grab over on the DF Talk page: Dorf Shorts - Crime and Punishment.
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23 Oct 2009 03:11
- 10/21/2009: The DF meetup is in Seattle at the Pike Place Brewery at 7PM today (Thursday 10/22) (today if you take into consideration I am writing this log at 2AM and stuff). Zach and I will be there. Please read the details in the first post of this thread if you are planning to come. Even if you haven't posted in the thread, feel free to drop by! If you can't make it, there will be a live broadcast which will also be recorded. Details/url in the thread or here: http://www.livestream.com/dwarffortressmeetup.
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21 Oct 2009 02:01
- 10/20/2009: The transcript is up for DF Talk 3.
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