In which we follow the outpost Ringstaff.

Our stone detailers currently lack employment, having finished the smoothing of the meeting room around the well. We don’t have a big new project for them (yet), so they can work on the workshop floor.There are pieces of wall not properly designated. The one next to our worker is currently being worked on but the two other tiles are unreachable behind workshop equipment. Down at the new craftsdwarf’s workshops are another three tiles. To mitigate this problem, we can either dismantle the workshop, smooth the wall and rebuild the shop (which is what I’m going to do, as we can catch floor tiles beneath equipment this way) or just dig a tunnel behind the wall. Due to dwarfish quantum entanglement both sides of a wall become smooth when we work on one.
Our mechanics finally finished the first levers of this outpost.
The levers are the “ò”s at the end of the floor. The accent changes its orientation when we pull the lever or rather have the lever pulled by one of our citizens. Those two will be linked to the bridges in the entrance – it is important to mark levers, by position or otherwise, to remember which one affects what part of the fortress. Hilarity ensues otherwise, especially when using magma-powered installations.
Meanwhile, the miners found the first cavern.
Caverns are vast underground structures with a unique biosphere, among them trees – which we can use as an additional source of wood, given its scarcity on the surface.
We bypass the breach of the caverns roof, digging around it and go deeper. We have to go deeper, much deeper. In theory we will find two more caverns and then go down to the sea of magma at the bottom of the world. In practice, we found two more caverns with ever more colourful vegetation and finally the magma lake.
At the bottom of the third cavern we also found our first adamantine – we will not mine it in the near future, but it’s good to know where to find it.
Adamantine is good stuff. It’s lightweight and durable, perfect for armour and cutting weapons. Mining it, however, tends to release demons into our halls, and we’re in no position to deal with them yet.
While the miners were busy I designated what will become the main sleeping area of Ringstaff. It is a one-floor design, with relative short walking distances. Every citizen will have a bed, a chest and a cabinet in his 3×1 tiles bedroom. Nobles will demand bigger rooms: yet another thing I’ll talk about in detail as soon as it becomes relevant. The whole thing is symmetric, it just doesn’t fit on one screen. Our miners will dig it out counter-clockwise, and when they’re done our detailers will go to work and smooth the whole thing.
Sodel created a masterpiece – a bin. Usually this will happen more and more often after the first piece. Not five minutes later we have two more masterpiece barrels. High quality work is more expensive and being near it, looking at it or handling it makes our dwarves happier, so we want that. Hopefully we will get a big load of masterpiece beds for our new bedroom floor.
And as some of our animals seem to be too stupid to find food, we designate a pasture outside:
I really do hope this works out well and there is enough food for all – otherwise we will need the service of Dôbar, our butcher. By the way, a HUGE advantage of the scorching hot biome we’re in is that the river doesn’t freeze over…
The first section of the bedroom floor is done and ready to get a smooth-over.
And I just found out that we can order jobs to be done NOW. I will explain why we need a floodgate as soon as it is finished and we actually place it.
Which will be next week, as winter is finally over. This was a rather short post, but hey: it’s the second for the season.