Part 26

-- Excerpt from the diaries of an unknown engineer, Early Autumn, 109 -

"The new well has been completed, together with the 'adaptations' to the new rooms for the nobles. The construction of the doomsday device is entering the final stage."

-- Excerpt from the diaries of Brother Kippling, Mid Autumn, 109 -

"A cloud of depression overshadows the fort. The three injured dwarves are slowly dying of thirst, unable to rise from their beds. I hope their suffering ends soon. More pets have mysteriously combusted, including a dog and several cats. The purchase of gems from a caravan lifted the spirits of a few, even inspiring another legendary artefact said to be worth 600,000, but the daily struggle for survival has taken its toll on moral. My own mind keeps wandering back to the image of a wave carved on the spooky crown. My sleep has been disturbed by the sounds of digging behind the walls. I'm not aware of any new workshops being created, so I think I'm going to investigate"









-- Excerpt from the diaries of an unknown engineer, Early Winter, 109 --

"The dwarf Kippling knows too much. He must be stopped before he finds out about the doomsday device. Perhaps now is the time to test the new bedrooms."

-- Excerpt from the diaries of Brother Kippling, Mid Winter, 109 --

"It seems my efforts here have earned me the right to a decent bedroom. I'll move my things over right away!"





"SWATJester, noooo!"





-- Excerpt from the diaries of an unknown engineer, Late Winter, 109 -

"The doomsday device has been completed and the magma pumping is proceeding at full speed. At the current rate of extraction the device will be ready to be triggered during early spring."

Savefile @ http://www.stinkfish.co.uk/binaries/succession.zip

Note: The doomsday device I think needs to be seen to be appreciated properly. I can't really make screenshots because it's too damn big.  It's essentially a magma waterfall generator. A new underground 3-6 tile wide magma river stretches from the northeast corner of the map all the way round to the southwest corner of the fort, rising up 7 z-levels using a chain of screw pumps. The magma river drains into a roughly 20*30 sized chamber located immediately to the west of the gate and trade depot. On the outside wall, facing south, there are two adamantium flood gates equipped with adamantium mechanisms connected to levers on the inside. When the upper magma chamber is fully filled it will be capable of flooding roughly 4200 tiles with fiery death every shot. It should be able to reload in around 1min realtime, assuming the lower chambers are full. However, there are some drawbacks. The lower chambers take about 9 months game time to refill and I've no idea where the magma will actually flow when it's released. It could potentially flood the entire fortress killing everybody. Also, care will need to be taken when digging channels now. There is plenty of room to expand over/under the new rivers, but I think care needs to be taken. Possibly walls could be added to the outside of the fortress to direct the flow, but that's up to the next guy. Personally I like the random hit/miss element. Another thing to consider might be to redirect the river to clean up the mess after it's been used. 

On the bottom level I've built a  few rooms for the nobles/rich people. Each room backs onto a water sluice (for the new well), and every room has a floodgate linked to a lever outside the door. If any nobles start making unreasonable demands or otherwise causing stress, then can be easily drowned while they sleep at the expense of a few muddy tiles (or potentially flooding the bottom levels of the fort is the doors are wedged open). 

There's a ton of food and drink, and some new bedrooms but not much more. The military has shrunk to seven after one of the deaths. There's no new weapons and bugger all iron/steel (I used it all to build the pumps and whatnot) and nothing really left to trade.

Edit: I've just loaded up this save. Turns out there's a whole bunch of goblins just about to walk through the front door, so watch out! I think the military are sleeping.