So: Dwarf Fortress in a forest with an aquifer down in the soil.
It takes a year to build a wooden hall large enough for most of the workshops, on one side of the river, while on the other side digging out a collapse to drop soil into the acquifer. A lovely wooden bridge and wooden tile road is the meeting area to keep the dwarves happy while they have no stone.
The dwarf with the only pickaxe falls into the watery pit under the collapse and drowns. I have to wait half a year to trade for another while the dwarves live on fish and berries in their hall. They are haunted by the ghost of the miner, as there is no stone for for a engraved slab in the graveyard. Cherry blossoms litter the ground, and blow into the half-finished excavation.
A crafter is possessed and wants stone, the one thing we don't have. What little the drwarves traded for had to go to other uses. A great pile of wooden crafts is building up. Just as well there are no elven neighbors. The crafter becomes melancholy, and wanders about the fisherdwarves, watching them. Sometimes he stands in the middle of the river.
After trading a new pick, the next miner knocks out the remaining support, and the collapse happens. But, alas, the aquifer is two levels thick! Only one level is smushed dry with the collapsed soil. We trade for rock, build a new structure in the now open watery pit. Two dwarves fall in that season during the construction, adding more drowned victims and wailing ghosts.
The construction of stone walls in the pit is knocked down at the cost of yet another dwarf - yet it isn't enough to breach the aquifer. Woe. The pit is now littered with rock and bodies and materials.
There is only one other thing to do; build a stack of wooden pumps, stairs, landings down into the pit, and an aquaduct to the river. Pump it dry and send in dwarfs to build walls and lock away the water.
All of this and still not at the point of the exercise - to raise a great hollow tower of stone over the river and a deep pit of stairs beneath, and tear down the hall of wood for charcoal. So it continues.
It takes a year to build a wooden hall large enough for most of the workshops, on one side of the river, while on the other side digging out a collapse to drop soil into the acquifer. A lovely wooden bridge and wooden tile road is the meeting area to keep the dwarves happy while they have no stone.
The dwarf with the only pickaxe falls into the watery pit under the collapse and drowns. I have to wait half a year to trade for another while the dwarves live on fish and berries in their hall. They are haunted by the ghost of the miner, as there is no stone for for a engraved slab in the graveyard. Cherry blossoms litter the ground, and blow into the half-finished excavation.
A crafter is possessed and wants stone, the one thing we don't have. What little the drwarves traded for had to go to other uses. A great pile of wooden crafts is building up. Just as well there are no elven neighbors. The crafter becomes melancholy, and wanders about the fisherdwarves, watching them. Sometimes he stands in the middle of the river.
After trading a new pick, the next miner knocks out the remaining support, and the collapse happens. But, alas, the aquifer is two levels thick! Only one level is smushed dry with the collapsed soil. We trade for rock, build a new structure in the now open watery pit. Two dwarves fall in that season during the construction, adding more drowned victims and wailing ghosts.
The construction of stone walls in the pit is knocked down at the cost of yet another dwarf - yet it isn't enough to breach the aquifer. Woe. The pit is now littered with rock and bodies and materials.
There is only one other thing to do; build a stack of wooden pumps, stairs, landings down into the pit, and an aquaduct to the river. Pump it dry and send in dwarfs to build walls and lock away the water.
All of this and still not at the point of the exercise - to raise a great hollow tower of stone over the river and a deep pit of stairs beneath, and tear down the hall of wood for charcoal. So it continues.