"Apology accepted" I will however correct you as it was not one, but 28 of my dwarves! who had been mining but I needed to get stuff up to my external trade hall in a hurry so I had them all act as porters. My ribs are still sore and I am going even blinder staring at the interface.
Ginger You got it running with the tile-based mod, or the 'original' purely text-based nethack/rogue style?
I found it a lot less intimidating using
Mike Mayday's semi-graphical collected easy-instal version thing.
Having read up on it, I concur. Severe Cave adaption is awesomely hilarious. Apparently there are ways to treat it, but it is a difficult, expensive path that involves lots of vomit.
There follows the tale of Nothinod, an ill-fated settlement in the mountainous regions of a still-young world.
YEAR ONE - Year of Sudden Fire. or;
Mushrooms? We don't need no stinkin mushrooms!Seven carefully chosen dwarves, two dogs and two fluffy, adorable cats embarked in a gloomy mountain-step, far from any significant neighbors.
The two principle miners quickly excavated a simple dormitory and barracks, before continuing onwards and downwards to start both the workshop floor, and the attached store-rooms beneath. Refuse went outside, out of the way so as to avoid filling the fortress with the stench of decay, and the small graveyard was placed on a hill overlooking the entrance. Not that we'd be needing it.
Summer soon passed beneath a flurry of activity. Beds were made, doors also. Food and wood storage was provided, but mostly vast achres of rock storage. The ground was hard and unwelcoming, but rich in useful rock. In autumn, the first dwarven caravans arrived, though they had to complete the journey on foot as the entire fortress was inaccessible for such vehicles. Trading was not amazing, but we came away with some extra food and drink.
Not much, however. It was then, having explored the stocks, that I realised just how low we had gotten. We had, in fact, no source of food. At all. It was well into late autumn when I realised that not only had my dwarves embarked upon a rocky, soil-less land, but they had not even attempted to build a farm.
Now everyone was getting hungry. The alcohol wasn't looking very plentiful either. Work began on an off-site farm, in the lower hills. However, the work was not completed, as at the start of winter, it all went wrong for the Seven.
In a flurry of violence, three dwarves and both the adult cats died a fiery death, as a fire-imp clawed its way up from the bottomless pit, (just south of the pool of magma) and went on a rampage. Quickly enlisting the miners and woodcutters, the imp was dealt with. However, the surviving miner was injured, and work slowed to a halt. As winter grew more grim, the surviving dwarves began to slowly starve. One was lost to drowning, depression and tiredness making him careless while fetching water from the stream. Another starved.
The remaining two took to fishing, and hunting vermin to survive. all work ceased, bar that required to survive.
As spring broke, bringing a fresh batch of migrants, only one dwarf of the seven remained alive. With the new labour force, (all hideously poorly skilled at any usefull, apparently consisting largely of peasants and gemsmiths) work on making the stocks of fish edible began, and slowly things began to stablise. Not before the last of the original dwarves could be killed by either goblin attackers, of course.
Year two began, with Elven Caravans making their first visit, and all the original settlers dead...
