In which we follow the outpost Ringstaff.

As you might remember, we have a little problem right now. Our bowyer has been possessed. What does that mean?
Dwarves can be taken by moods. They drop whatever they’re doing, barricade themselves into a workshop and start creating a great piece of art: an artefact. Artefacts are great works of art masterpieces, with all their craftsdwarfship of the highest quality. Induced by several different otherworldly forces, or in some cases by just being emo, they usually bring the dwarf up to a legendary level in the used craft. Possession of course doesn’t. It’s the only one that doesn’t. And these actors always take a skill already known by the dwarf – which leads to the rather important question which skill is affected here.
Dwarf Therapist tells us that Kivish is a bowyer and nothing else, so we should set up a bowyer’s workshop as soon as possible. To do so, we also need to make another dwarf a temporary bowyer, as a dwarf in a mood can’t set up his own workshop. Not being able to provide a workshop has the same consequences as not being able to provide the resources requested by  our worker: madness, and ultimately death.
Looks like we need our doors on the other floor. This is inconvenient, but not impossible.
We dig out the room, order a bowyer’s workshop to be built, wait until Temporary Bowyer Dakost finished building the room and then…
Winter arrives.
Kivish, smelling the construction of the workshop, starts running.
It is incredibly important to cut all stockpile-ties to a claimed workshop. Or at least it was. For some reason, dwarves taken by a mood still respect(ed) restrictions, leading to unnecessary deaths due to lack-of-material induced madness. As the new workshop hasn’t any piles connected to it this doesn’t pose a problem here. Maybe I’ll test the adherence to restrictions in another mood. Why is a stockpile link a problem, one might ask, as it is the stockpile giving stuff to the workshop, not the workshop taking things from the pile. Yes, but as soon as the first pile is linked the workshop will only take stuff from linked stockpiles, and not just the things actually stocked there. So if a stonecrafter claims a workshop linked to a stone stockpile, she will gather all the stone she needs from there, but she wont turn towards another pile for non-stone materials.
Kivish starts collecting all the materials needed for whatever item he wishes to build – there is one mood leading to the violent death of another citizen followed by the construction of an artefact out of his remains. We seem to have dodged this bullet this time. In the meantime, our weaver-turned-jeweller Vucar is running out of the first raw gems.
He will continue working until the last raw gems in the stockpile are cut. We should revisit the workshop from time to time to set up new orders.
Kivish has gathered everything he needs and starts working. If this message doesn’t show up soon after the affected dwarf claimed his workshop, something is wrong and one should take a close look – we get cryptic clues about the materials needed and can try to get them. Sometimes we just need to cancel any stockpile links. The muttering is new, and I have no idea what it means.
Another thing worth knowing is that item requested by a mood a order-sensitive: if a moody dwarf wants shells, wood and stone and we don’t have and shells in stock, he will just sit there doing nothing.
The artefact, a *drumroll* crossbow is finished, and suddenly I know what the muttering was all about…
This is a very basic artefact with nothing in terms of lore engraved on it – but then it is the first artefact created here. Well done, Kivish. I’ll forbid access to the crossbow for now, before some hunter grabs it. That wouldn’t be bad in itself, but if he somehow loses it, its creator won’t be very happy. Do not sell your artefacts.
The next big building project will be a wall. I usually wall off an area outside the mountain, to plant surface crops, create a pen and a safe place for fishing. I once had a fortress which was attacked by goblins riding bats – it didn’t end well for me – but this setup creates a reasonable safe area against most (early) attackers.
The well is finished and we can make a meeting room out of the area.
Meeting rooms are rooms where dwarves meet. I know, I know, you never would have guessed. Meeting and/or partying with other fulfils a dwarfs social needs, and like everybody else they like meeting in a nice place. Which is why we order the room smoothed after all the fortifications are done. The fortifications are the… things in the smoothed walls. I have no idea how to call this symbol.
I have to say that I like the priority setting for designations very much. It allows us to control so much better which project is done when, and with some fiddling stacking orders is no longer impossible.
Speaking of impossible: I’ve no idea how Unib got there.
She seems to climb along the fortifications. That’s Dwarf Fortress, ladies and gentlemen. The things we do.
She continued around the corner, up the wall and is now on her way to bed. I still try to figure out why: there are stairs back up here. But soon after Vucar did the same. Must be something with the pathfinding. And after finishing down there they both take said stairs. What the hell is going on here…
On the workshop floor two more craftsdwarf’s workshops get build, together with a refuse stockpile on the raw materials floor above. Refuse is here stuff like bones, hair, hooves and the like: our crafters can use these for bone bolts, totems, decoration of other items and more purposes. Especially the bone bolts are useful, as we can give them to our hunters to bring in more bones. This way we don’t have to waste precious metal bolts.
Another thing to be done is a deep core mining operation, aka “drilling a shaft down to the gates of hell itself”. As this will most likely result in the discovery of caverns, I will wrap this post up for now – Winter 215 continues next week.