Dwarf Fortress: The Legacy of Eagletime

For those of you not in the know, Dwarf Fortress is a highly complex, intricate insanity simulator where you lead a community of seven and growing idiotic dwarves into prosperity, greatness and ultimately complete and total destruction, all in pseudo-ASCII graphics. In the name of Eagle Time, I've founded the beginnings of what I hope will be a prosperous and Fun fortress.

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SpoilerAs a note, I'm using the Vidumec graphics set, because the default bright-on-black is bad for my eyes. If there are any requests for particular graphics sets, I'll be more than willing to comply.

We're embarking over a half-mountain/half-forested region. My hopes are to find some giant eagles, capture them, and tame them, but I'm more likely to get them from some elven traders. Dwarven names include one common first name and a last name that is a compound of two dwarven words. Here's our starting roster:
Zefon Bomrekmondul (Zefon Whipgrave in English)

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One of our two miners, and our future armorsmith if a better one doesn't immigrate.
She's generally physically fit in resisting and recovering from injuries, and she's strong to boot.
She's smart with a knack for language, but not really creative. and strong-willed when she sets her mind to something, but she's poorly focused. Also she's unconfident and kind of awkward in public.

Asmel Etasrel (Joinsilvers)

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Our second miner, and our future weaponsmith if we don't get a better one by the time we need it.
Disease isn't a big problem for her, but she's fat and easily tired and kind of a klutz. This one's interesting. She has a darn good memory, but she loathes the intellectual. It's probably why she's so disorganized. She's a socialite, but she's rather unemotional. Even so, she likes helping people, so she might be repurposed to medical duties if I need to bunker down for a while.

Kikrost Atastzuglar (Braveships)

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Our carpenter and mechanic. Both are sporadic jobs, so generally, when I have a carpentry job I don't have a mechanic job, and vice versa. He's our expedition leader, by the way.
He'll take a beating, but he's weak to illness, klutzish and gets tired easily. He's relaxed and a bit quiet, but he's a good people-person and is empathetic. He's also pretty slow to anger, which is good because he'll be the one who talks all the angry tantrumming dwarves down.

Tulon Unibonul (Ragmirrored)

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Our woodcutter and stonecrafter. First thing he does upon arrival is to cut down as many trees as possible for our carpenter. Once there's enough logs strewn about the map to last for a while, he gets on making rock pots for brewing and other rock things for rock purposes. When he runs out of things to do, he goes back to chopping.
He's sturdy, quick, and quick to heal, but he's easily tired.
Although he's impatient, easily angered, and neither sympathetic or empathetic, he's pretty social and is a good speaker. He also cracks his knuckles in deep thought. Make of that what you will.

Zon Nebelkel (Admiredmetal)

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Our mason and eventual woodburner if we need fuel and don't have a suitable such person by then. In hindsight, this probably could have been relegated to some idling migrant, but screw it here he is.
A physical powerhouse, strong and tough, and shrugging off slashes and syndromes with equal ease.
She's not easily waylaid by urges or stupid risks. She's focused with lots of willpower and patience. She's seems relaxed, confident, and compassionate, but she doesn't really go out of her way to help people.

Kogan Tostsazir (Visedbridges)

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Our sole planter and current off-time miller. Not much to say about this job.
She's weak, easily tired, and easily diseased.
Although she's reserved, she's does well in social situations. She's a bit of a ditz, with little patience, willpower and memory. She's quite focused and creative, however.

Zekkud Uristbidok (Daggeracted)

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Our brewer and thresher for the moment. Brewing is a very important job in dwarven culture, for obvious reasons.
She's strong and agile, but besides that a physical pushover. She's patient and relaxed, yet hasty when making decisions. Fortunately she has a strong sense of intuition.

I'm be willing to nickname dwarves after eagletimers if you feel a resonance with one of these fellows

Let's get started.

While I dig out a properly designed and laid-out fortress, I punch out a hole in a little hill up north. Nothing fancy, but it'll do. A dog chained near the entrance and a dorm along the west. At the end is a mess of food, drink, and the workshops that made them. The brown junk is farm plots, currently growing everything I can. Variety in booze is very important for dwarven survival. One floor down is a temporary dining hall, a circle cut out of the sand with a flurry of tables, chairs, more workshops, and nestboxes for the peacocks that I brought.


Next is the main entrance. While I typically use doors, building destroyers, such as trolls and ogres, can break down doors. Building destroyers can't destroy straight up, however, so I used floor hatches and a short underpass. Also a dog chained up like the temporary mud hole.


The beginnings of the main fortress, one z-level down from the previous picture. I'm going for circles because circles are cool. The triangles are ramps, which look pretty from a design perspective, but the way I laid them out sucks for rapid up-down transit so I added a ring of up-down staircases in the center, which are the 'X's. Over to the right is an under-construction tunnel to an under-construction farm. Spring ends somewhere around here. Summer commences


My first migrants! What valuable skills do they bring to our fortress? Overall, jack shit. I'll give the abbreviated version for migrants.
Meng Adasen (Sungravel) is an adequate engraver. He might be useful later, but for now he's our new chef, incidentally replacing our mason/temp chef Zon Admiredmetal.
Eresh Ducimrovod (Workarch) is a novice ranger, meaning he hunts and traps. He also has the "animal dissector" skill, which currently has no use. Ironically, his preferred meal is vegan.
Ber Cattenvathsith (Channeledsquares) is a novice farmer, who wants to do general farming but is 25-years-old and wet behind the ears. She has been relegated to do all the farming/related jobs that only happen occasionally like butchery, tanning and milling. I had her butcher the two horses that pulled our caravan here. It's not like they were going to be good for anything else.
Cerol Fikodthoth (Glazeaura) is a prime example of the infamous lye maker. A skill that's related to the production of soap, lye makers are often lumped with fish dissectors and cheese making as low-value skills. I won't be making soap for a while, so she'll be on hauling duty until I can figure out what to do with her.

Now you might notice that there's ten migrants on that list. The other six? Are bratty, useless, dwarven children. They do nothing but eat my food and drink my booze. I'd crush them all immediately under a bridge if it weren't for the fact that my four adult migrants who, although of marginal utility, are still working bodies, would throw tantrums. Four spawned from the hairy loins of Ber and Erush, and the other two from Cerol and Meng. Maybe once they're happier, I'll kill the youngest one.


The first thing Ranger Eresh Workarch did was march out with his crossbow, quiver, and bronze bolts and go hunting. I checked to see what wildlife happened to be in the area at the time and a wild trio of Giant Chinchilla. Now I knew chinchillas were generally harmless, but I also knew that giant creatures can be surprisingly lethal. It was entirely possible that they'd get angry and maul my hunter, but it was also possible that we'd be eating Giant Chinchilla biscuits shortly. I decided to let him go ahead. He empties out his entire quiver of bolts into one rodent while the other two run away. In this picture, you see Workarch circled in red having finally killed his mark and the giant chinchilla circled in yellow, surrounded by broken bolts, blood, and chinchilla vomit. Hunting is messy business, you know.
He drags it back where I have Channeledsquares butcher the body, and Sungravel fry up some chinchilla chorizos. Not bad, I say, so I decide to let him carry on. It's good marksdwarfship practice anyway, and they drop as much meat as a horse. Meanwhile I put our useless lye maker Glazeaura on bone carving duty to cut some bone bolts to get some more delicious chinchilla meat. He manages to wound one more chinchilla before it and the third one run away off the map. Saddening, but five chinchilla people just walked onto the map, and our hunter has five horse bone bolts. And we still crave chinchilla meat.

It's now late summer. Here's an overall view of the map.

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