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[RSO]

I don't think we can use the undead to fight off goblins, because then we'll just have undead goblins that never leave. You cannot weaponize the undead.

There might be a future in Degrinchination, though I'll have to check if doing so leaves corpses. If not, we'll just have to make lots and lots of cage traps. Thankfully, cages can be made out of glass, which we have an unlimited supply of once we can get our magma back.

[Klear]

I've written a bit more after all. Below are some more notes on the fortress and link to the save file. Good luck!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

10th Obsidian, 202

I can't believe it! I can hear sounds of a pickaxe! It's close! It's...

I'm saved! It seems that the dwarves upstairs noticed the horror that is going on down here and sucessfully walled off the bedroom area. It turns out that they were not trying to save me, in fact, Goden the miner was very surprised to see me alive. They dug here in hopes of recovering some of the beds, and are ready to wall this new stairway off at the faintest hint of trouble. I told Goden how things are and that it is hopeless to search for other survivors here, but that he should dig deep towards the adamantium deposits, where according to my data there should be a few adamantium extractors, if they had the sense to stay hidden there. I gave him my maps, and he immediately dug deeper with a renewed vigour. The fact that I'm alive after all of this points to the fact, that the undead are unable to get through locked doors, but my room should still be walled off forever. I know I won't be able to rest here ever more. I'm very thirsty after being locked in here for two weeks, but I will wait here to oversee the construction and then leave this place forever.


Excerpt from Uvash Rabshorast's diary

Something happened above. I can feel it. Maybe goblins attacked and all are dead. I'm down near the adamantium deposits with Úshir Elbelkonos and her child. She decided to take a look upstairs, but I'll remain here where it's safe. I begged her to leave her child with me, but she thinks I'm just crazy, and besides, they are both hungry so they want to go up no matter what.

I can still hear them talking, though they are many levels above me. Úshir met the little girl, Id Beriden, daughter of the poor armourer Dastot. And she's asking her what is she doing there alone. Wait... Armok preserve! They are fighting!

I snuck closer after all, only to find that it's not the little girl, not anymore, but a foul undead creature! Úshir killed it... again... but she is hurt. Something must have snapped in her. She calmly said that she needs rest and walked upstairs. I begged her to stay down with me. The whole fortress must be overrun with the undead by now, but she just kept walking upstairs, dragging her child with her. I may be one of two only dwarfs in this outpost to have killed a goblin in battle, but today I proved to be the worst of cowards. I let them go. I returned deep into the shaft and built a wall so that nothing can come for me. Now I'm waiting for a coward's death of thirst. May Armok forgive me.

I can hear distinct sounds of pickaxe somewhere close. Since the undead are incapable of using tools, it seems I am to be rescued in time after all. I should rejoice, but now that I know I will have to live in the shadow of my shame, death from dehydration seems like a better option.


22nd Obsidian, 202

The crisis is over. We've lost some good dwarves to that traitorous wretch that is walled off in our former bedroom, but the rest of us is alive and spring is comming soon. Even during the crisis dwarves were being born, we have large stocks of food and alcohol should last us for some time too. We've established a temporary dormitory in the hall beneath the dining room with Lêganlerteth, our greatest achievement, on display to remind us what we are capable of and a sign of better things to come. I've told Erib that this year has been too taxing for me and asked her to be relieved of most of my duties. She said I will still need to do all the paperwork, but that she will appoint someone new to take care of planning when the spring comes. I certainly can't wait for the burden to be eased from my shoulders.

26th Obsidian, 202

One last note of this eventful year. In all the confusion it turned out that our outpost liaison has been unable to have a meeting with our expedition leader and is only now leaving the fortress. May his voyage is peaceful and safe so that he will be able to tell everyone in the mountianhomes of our plight and warn them that what has happened here can happen anywhere.

Ok, I think I've pretty much cleared all that mess. The dormitory level and most of the long exploratory shaft must remain off limits. Other than that the fortress should function the same as before the vampire attack.

I was planning on leaving my dwarf locked in his dormitory until spring and leave it up to you to save him in spring, but the other trapped dwarf prompted me to mount the rescue operation this year, since he was already starving and dehydrated, I think.

Hotkeys:
F1 - top level, entrance
F2 - former dormitory, overrun by undead
F3 - Dining room with control room to the north. There is only one lever so far, which controls the drawbridge.
F4 - Magma sea with adamantium deposits below. Don't be too greedy with it, or vampires will be the least of our troubles.

What to do:
We definitely need to build a well from the first cave and a hospital. So far all wounds proved immediately fatal (the vampire killed dwarfs in two hits - one to crack the skull, the second to bash their brains out. We'll definitely need some helmets if we are to clean the dormitory)
Speaking of which, we have one 9 dwarf squad without any weapons or equipment. We do have 4 anvils (I suppose it will be best to build a single forge and melt the rest for steel.) What we don't have is access to any fuel, but maybe there is a sedimentary layer somewhere in a different biome. I didn't get to prospecting for it.
Prepared food supplies are over 1500, we have only about 200 booze, but that's mostly because of barrel shortage. I'm not too good at managing these things, especially on a map with no trees.
Edit: Oh, and Klearol will need a new office to work... The one he currently owns in walled off in the danger zone.
Edit 2: One more thing - the undead cannot open doors and the vampire didn't knock down locked doors to Klearol's bedroom, though maybe he simply wasn't interested. I think that means we need doors everywhere! In every hallway, between all rooms, everwhere where possible. That should make it possible to contain any further outbreaks.

That's about it.

Here's the save:

http://www.mediafire.com/?gogvpjk502p83h0

[Klear]

Aw crap!

I'm looking through the legends and Olernakuth, the original vampire that caused all this may not be the original vampire after all. The info begins with "Olernakuth was Udil Megiddoren's corpse, animated by unknown forces". And then it lists its four kills. I have a bad feeling that there may still be a vampire running around Chaosfortunes, so beware.

OK, going through the legends, I've uncovered the true vampire. I'm a little hesitant to post its name here, since it IS a kind of cheating, and spoiler tags work more like "READ THIS!" tags.

It appears that what happened during second year can repeat itself at any time, so that is a lot of fun, but maybe too much. I'll leave it up to you.

Edit: BTW, this vampire business basically makes DF into a detective story... maybe a good approach would be to split the fort into several burrows and if another murder takes place, we'll know that it must have been one of the dwarves assigned to that specific burrow. I don't know. Maybe we should just cheat, reveal the vampire and throw him to the undead cows.

[RSO]

Appointing a sheriff and getting him/her some suitable accommodations and playing through the detective story would be my first choice. Just designate a Meeting Area over the (new) dormitory so that dwarves watch where they're sleeping. The vampire will eventually get sloppy.

[Klear]

Hmmm... Game Hunter, you could write from the perspective of the new sheriff, saying that he's the only one convinced that the original vampire is still on the loose and take it from there. Or whatever suits you. What I really love about DF is that if you just describe what is happening in the fort without any embellishments, you'll still end up with an epic story.

[RSO]

Useful article: DF2012: Vampire on the wiki. Note that it is random which of these signs show up, because the rules for how vampires work are randomly generated in each world.

[S.K. Ren]

Why not promote vampirism? Create an elite faction of vampires and a giant dormitory for the food, I mean immigrants. You can spread vampirism by contaminating a water source with vampire blood }:D so make a special well and put it off limits except when you want to induct a new member to the Order of Armok, eternal servants of the blood god.

[RSO]

In another biome, I'd be all for that (well, no I wouldn't, but I wouldn't have a case to argue it). In this biome, deaths cause more-than-the-usual problems for the entire fort. I think that The Udil Megiddoren incident speaks for itself on that front. If you think you can run a fort with more than one Vampire in it in a biome like this, ask Game Hunter to keep the vampire alive in a box for you if he catches it, and then take year 4. Good luck with that; I'll start scheming up strategies to reclaim the ruin.

You cannot weaponize evil here. It's previously been a fundamental rule of Dwarf Fortress that anything that has stats can be used to kill goblins in entertaining ways. That is no longer true. The only thing that we can do to zombies is turn them back into corpses, and then the corpses turn back into zombies. It's a cycle we can't win. Any process that makes corpses as a byproduct of its function (whether that function is feeding vampires or killing goblins) is unacceptably dangerous to use.

I also don't think we're ever getting that old dormitory back without taking some drastic measures, like flooding it with lava.

The zombies are a serious and permanent threat. They're not like most early game DF threats like hunger that just become laughably trivial in the late game. No matter how long this fort lasts or how strong it becomes, it will always be one mistake away from becoming like Phobos Base. And it will only get easier to make those mistakes.

[S.K. Ren]

Corpse disposal is easy, just create a cremation room. Set it up to fill and drain lava and throw corpses in from the top, fill, drain and recover metals for reforging.

[Klear]

You are underestimating the speed with which the corpses reanimate. Also deaths caused by vampires and resultant zombies don't generate announcements, so the reaction time is further shortened by how fast the murder is noticed by the player. Also, all that corpse and bodypart disposal has to be done manually which would get old pretty fast, I think.

It certainly didn't help that the vampire decided to kill the dwarf when I only had just about a month to go and everything went smoothly, so I didn't pay too much attention to the fort at that time.

[RSO]

There's been a bug fix release since we began. AFAIK, saves are forwards-compatible, but not backwards. Do we want to upgrade to 0.34.04?

[Klear]

As long as it doesn't mess up the save, I can't hurt, can it?

BTW, Game Hunter, are you still up to the third year? I know I wouldn't with .996 available =)

[Kashi]

Regarding the vampire issue, let's do the sensible thing when it's found: Entomb it and keep it as an anti-Fun security system. In the case that's not possible, and a fortress reclaim should be done, make a backup before, so a daring adventurer can loot investigate the place.

[Game Hunter]

BTW, Game Hunter, are you still up to the third year? I know I wouldn't with .996 available =)

During the weekday I don't have much time, and the release of 0996 preventing me from doing anything at all in DF. I'll be able to invest plenty of time this weekend and I should (hopefully) have a completed year by Sunday night, if not earlier. I apologize for slowing things down: shouldn't be so bad next cycle.

[Klear]

That's even within the week limit, and I think release of new DoomRL version is good enough reason to be delayed. I just wanted to make sure you're taking the fort into account.

BTW, if there's anybody who'd like to have the year after that, please step forward. If there's nobody, I guess RSO can have another go.

@Kashi

If it was up to me, I'd throw him into magma. I like to roleplay my fortresses, doing what the dwarves would probably do (which is throw it into magma, whatever issue arises). Hell, from the dorf's POV, it would be sensible to throw anybody suspected of being a vampire into magma, though the way I've written my report, they (or at least the chronicler) don't know the vampire is still among them and if I only could keep my mouth shut, maybe you wouldn't too.