Ch. 5 - Events of Year 251 Part 3 - Meeting the Local Wildlife
The Dwarf fortress world is filled with many dangerous forms of creatures. There are the forgotten beasts that lurk in caverns deep beneath the earth, waiting for a fool hardy or brave drunk dwarf to unleash them. There are legendary beasts who wander the realms and appear as uninvited guests for time to time. Mighty bronze colossus, giant cave spiders, and hydras are just some of the examples.
Of course there are more mundane things that endanger man, elf, dwarf, and goblin such as the might elephants, the old carps, badger swarms, and the odd ornery giant capybara. They aren't that bad to deal with usually but... this isn't a usual biome. Its fricking evil.
Like really fricking evil.
![[Image: evil-spouse.jpg]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/evil-spouse.jpg)
The first encounters were from late Autumn in 251 with the standard 'Cancel Drink' job spam.
I play with sound sense which basically adds sound effects to DF so the job spam was quickly followed up by a crunch/splat/scream sound. I zoomed to the area and found the first casualty of the fort:
![[Image: 0004-rhinos.png]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/0004-rhinos.png)
Someone's guinea-fowl got deadified by a Skeletal Rhino. You can see the rest of the herd in the western clearing. Apparently something finally wandered onto the map from the north.
Luckily they weren't the zombie variety with infectious undeath so we didn't have to worry about it turning into something like Left Fort Dwarf.
I looked around and wondered why the bird had wandered so far. Apparently what had happened was that the dwarves didn't like drinking from the pond and instead were wandering down to the brook to drink - them and their pets. I didn't think this would be a problem because there was a clearing near the river but apparently there was a wall of dirt between the clearing and the brook so the dwarves ended up pathing have way across the map to drink. I suppose that's why it took them a year to dig out the whole fort.
...Well and the fact that I ran out of booze and a sober dwarf is a unproductive dwarf.
Anyway, I forbid the bird corpse so no one will run the Rhino gauntlet again and dig out the wall next to the river so they can get direct access (forgot to take a picture). Apparently though one of the butchers was curious about what happened to everyone's favorite guinea-fowl and found out first hand what had happened.
![[Image: 0005-canceldrink.png]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/0005-canceldrink.png)
Swoosh/splat/scream, cancel drink due to skeletal rhino spam... I always find it kinda annoying when animals sneak up on drinking dwarves. Glad I built all those coffins early.
So the first casualty that we care about is:
-Butch, ambushed by Skeletal Rhino due to being too sober to notice.
Tutorial Point - If you run out of booze, your dwarves will become unhappy and sluggish. Its not fatal usually unless a ton of your dwarves die to something at the same time and everyone goes insane.
Tutorial Point - You might think a temperance fort might be fun but be warned, it is not. You will not get Kobold Rum Runners and illegal stills being built in the dark recesses of the map. Neither will you get any burly migrant dwarves with Chicago accents or elk bird ridding marksdwarves ride-bys. All you get is a slow, disappointing fort that no one will want to immigrate to because it is no fun.
Anyway, due to having our first death, I designate a shelter area using the burrow option. You can go to the military alert menu and double hit 'right-arrow' to toggle alerts on an off. All they do is force your dwarves to congregate in a single area. You usually just do your meeting room:
![[Image: 0006-burrow.png]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/0006-burrow.png)
... but you will probably want to in the end include an area with a hospital, spare beds, and food stockpiles. In addition, you'll also want your levers in this area. Since levers are placed in your meeting/dining room, this is another reason to choose that particular area.
Luckily we didn't have anymore close calls. The Rhinos didn't really wander around much. I'm not sure if that's how the AI works but I guess I'll just assume that for them until later.
The elephants on the other hand were a different matter:
![[Image: 0009-elephants-deaddwarfs.png]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/0009-elephants-deaddwarfs.png)
In the Winter of 251, a herd of Elephants once again raised the alert of 'Cancel Drink.' This time, however, I managed to set the alert and try and gather my dwarves. The dwarves responded with the traditional 'Cancels X: Forbidden Area.' However, this didn't seem to do much since they were all running about trying to move trade goods and three of them got run down by elephants which are apparently faster than Rhinos.
The good Dr. McLuvin was flung off a cliff. Woody the woodcutter was caught out whilst logging (this happens often so either trade with elves, grow trees underground, or use expendables with no useful skills), and Wade was kicked into a pond and drowned:
![[Image: 0018-wade.png]](http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/antisocialmunky/0018-wade.png)
It really does pay to have some coffins early so the dwarves don't get too depressed when their friends get horribly murdered by wildlife and unfortunate accidents like cave-ins and carps...
I was honestly hoping that the dwarven caravan would be murdered by the elephants and I could collect the loot but one of the guards single handedly defeated most of the herd.
So much for that. I hope goblins have more trouble. All the more reason to get a military up and running and fortifications build. Incidentally it seems like the elephants migrate through this area like real elephants except alive and tastier. They entered from the north and left to the south.
To be continued.
I need to remember to check the embark screen before posting next time...
