Im Going To Bed

Many years ago I found ten symbols in a cave. Some I recognized then, some I only recognize now. The native people of Gravity Falls prophesied that these symbols could create a force strong enough to vanquish Bill.

funny story

Way back in 7th grade english class, we got an old substitute teacher who did his very best to impress us students. He wasn’t successful, but he cracked jokes and made puns that would make everyone sigh in disappointment. That day we were working on poems, but since there was a substitute not much work was being done. I was slacking off by talking to the boy next to me. After a little bit he started jabbing me in the side as a joke and I started slapping his arm whenever he threatened to jab me again. So, the substitute sees this as a great chance to give us some fun “advice”. He says, “You know, when a boy messes with a girl like that, it means he has a crush on her.”

Everyone in the class went wild with laughter and the boy and I started gagging. Because we are twins.

The teacher was mortified when we told him and he turned really red in the face. He didn’t try to impress any of the students anymore, that’s for sure!

Got tagged by @noahwithaw (As seen above if you’re not blind)

Relationship Status: Has Girlfriend (As of October 1st, i.e. yesterday)

Favorite Colors: Colors along the blue green spectrum, to specifically name them, Cyan, Teal, and Turquoise.

Wake up time: Typically around 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. College is great for sleeping in.

Cats or Dogs: I prefer Cats to Dogs. There are a few breeds of Dog I really like (Yorkshire Terriers)

Coke or Pepsi: These two aren’t that different (I can typically tell the difference and really the only thing they affect is what other sodas come with them since Coke and Pepsi are a huge duopoly and such) though I personally prefer Pepsi, both for the other sodas that come with it, and just between Coke and Pepsi. Most Pepsi machines come with root beer (mug typically) so yeah, why am I going to drink Pepsi when rootbeer is an option?

Chapstick or Lipstick: What? Chapstick I guess? I mean why would I want to wear lipstick? I’m a guy. I barely even use chapstick (typically only when camping, and then I try to avoid using it because chapped lips are a sign of dehydration, which means if you drink enough water your lips don’t get chapped. So how I avoid using chapstick is by trying to drink more water. It works as long as water in is greater than water out).

Last Song I Listened To: Well I’ve typically got some music going on when I’m trying to focus on something so I had Lemon Demon’s “I Earn My Life” and at this point “Angry People” is playing and I’m having a hard time not laughing. “Evil Babies with guns. It’s completely normal.”

I’m not really planning on tagging anyone on this really. Most people I have that I follow/follow me, I either already know the answers to most of these, or they’ve just been asked by Noah, or, OR this is the one person I’m tagging, they’re @bumibomber.

Tagged by @k-omerebii aka my bae 
Rules: Tag 9-10 people you want to get to know better
 Relationship status: cuddling my pillow at night 
Favorite color(s): red, faded colours 
Wake up time: lol it rlly depends. School days = 6:45 am, weekends = 8+ am
Cats or dogs: dogs obviously but I rlly love kittens too
Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi 
Chapstick or lipstick: lipstick 
Last song you listened to: Here Comes a Thought from the show Steven Universe 💖

I tag: @hafizzzle @noahweidner and whoever wants to do this

Adrien: oh fiddlesticks! That really ruffles my feathers

Nino: please just say fuck

I'd say Wendy still misses Dipper, but hear aim is too good.

Winter for a Pine Tree

Disclaimer: Hey this gets dark real fast (0 to 60) and was written primarily to “Balance out the forces of the universe” After a friend of mine took a join project I’d been involved in and taken it off the rails into Wendip Territory (The stories ended up splitting into 2 stories written by two authors each instead of 1 story by 4). Anyways to balance out the force of the universe (and yes, I’m looking at you Graviti and Futur) I wrote this.

It gets dark so I tagged it as Depravity Falls, and spoiler alert, it involves death. So you’ve been forewarned.

Keep reading

There is a post in r/dwarffortress I always think about from time to time, it shows a maze the poster made for a minotaur they caught. It's a neat project for your fortress, you can use it as a dungeon to throw any prisoners into it and watch them struggle to navigate until their inevitable demise, pretty fun stuff. The post also shows the Minotaur's attributes and skills, and she is described as a Grand Master Observer (which in Dwarf Fortress all Minotaurs are) and also "good with language" traits which often Scholars have. A comment suggested as a joke making some office space for her and supplying her with writing materials. Minotaurs can't write (not that I've checked myself), but the concept alone is hilarious can you imagine? being a fearsome minotaur, and going by your day smashing people's skulls and stuff and then writing in your little diary about it? or writing about your existence serving the sole purpose of killing people the little bearded men throw down there simply for entertainment, you know just a cow-girl doing cow-girl things. I swear Dwarf Fortress produces top-quality writing material sometimes

So I added a cipher to VFD

So the story called VFD actually needed an end cipher to it, and since I forgot it, here it is:

Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.

So happy solving. Or if you’re lazy here’s the key:

VFD

Not cool dude, but I understand, it was a hard key.

Did you find your missing baby?

Not yet. Kulet is still missing. I admit my schedule has been rough for playing DF as of recent, and my most recent time has been spent on a new fort (The Sea Adventure, a Sinister Ocean/coastal embark). Kulet is from my 4th Fort (Idk the name it was too long). Short summary of my forts though:

1st Fort, Bustmoment: -Tutorial embark. Went fine initially, set up large bedroom complex, good dining hall, and food/alcohol production. Decent traps for surface entrance. Lack of understanding of how Fortifications work lead to bad usage of them, and ultimately made the surface defenses scary to operate. Meanwhile I breached the first cavern layer and only the first, and got involved in a nasty war on Olm people, that kept dragging my dwarves into the lake. Eventually after losing a major military engagement, I dropped the save and made a new world. (I didn't know about Retirement at the time)

2nd Fort, Steelfortress: -The infamous war on birds started here. Embark was a neutral badlands with high savagery & a light aquifer. Aquifer posed no challenge and I was within a year having settled with all three caverns pierced, and a decent magma forge set up. Traps and such were more aggressively deployed, and there were more than a few battles (Internally referred to as the "Great Cavern Wars" against Ant-People) to carve out certain areas underground for farming. Ultimately what drove me to abandon this fort was a 9 month long battle against giant flying agitated wildlife. During that I built up a decently large and armored military, which while incapable of fending off the birds, was apparently itching for World Domination. (More on that later. Though also on another post of mine)

3rd Fort, "Lake of Something" (Name forgotten again): -Having felt a High Savagery was too much & Light aquifers too easy, I searched for a heavy aquifer and got a lake location I liked. After starting the first year, and trying to dig down, I almost immediately hit the heavy aquifer and got stuck for over a year trying to get things stable, and set up a method to pierce the aquifer before beginning to build the fort proper. Unlike the previous forts which had surface trading depots, I decided to move this one underground. Like other forts before and after, I then began to quickly dig towards the bottom, and set up small areas within each cavern to work in, or blocked them off after discovering them. Ultimately nothing particularly notable happened that sticks out in memory, but the fort was ultimately abandoned due to the Cave Adaptation fix update rolling around. Knowing most dwarves had likely developed it in this fort, I decided to take a break from Fortress mode, and play some Adventure mode.

(Which I decided to retire my second fort, as my save of it was in the worst condition of the three, and I originally wanted to retire the fort by "Succumbing to internal invaders" or similar but a standard retirement was an option and I viewed as more desirable)

4th Fort, Gooddesert the Fortress of Mines: -After playing around in Adventure Mode in the 2nd fort's world, I got an itch to start a new fort again, and was talking with my brother. We ultimately came to pick a fort in a Good and Neutral biome cross between "Desert?", badlands and Grasslands. Among world history, as it shares a previous fort, I decided to embark from that Civ again. Just to find out when the Liason came by, that 2 of my 3 dwarven neighbors were at war with me. Going through Legends mode further told me it was my Civ that seemed to have started the war, with all attacks coming from my prior fortress after I retired it. The whole time I was trying to rescue kidnapped children from Goblins in Adventure Mode, it turns out my fort was just attacking EVERYBODY. I played this one until around 1-2 weeks ago, when I began wanting to try messing with some mods for the first time.

4.5th fort, Some volcano Fort I think?: -I had a friend over and I was talking about DF, as you do, and he got curious about the game and wanted to see what it was like. So I booted the game up, showed world gen, we picked an embark, and then retired it to go to it in Adventure Mode. We then made an ideal character for him, and then foolishly rolled up a Worm Man with over 100 pet worms, and crashed the game. I haven't talked with said friend yet, and was gonna play in that world when talking with them.

5th Fort, The Sea Adventure: -That leaves us with our current fort. It's a sinister oceanic embark, and I brought a few adventurers there, including a Dwarf-me, a dwarf-version of my brother, and an anomalocaris (one of the mods) woman of one of my roommates (And their cat as a pet cat, who died to Goblins). Originally the plan was to grow Sliver Barbs & catch Precambrian Arthropods for an aquarium, but I don't know how to do the later half. The Roc attacks have been on this fort.

Responding to both the reblog above, and the tags from dwarvendiaries, I would like to note, I tried to *mostly* cover stuff for the first couple years that a less experienced player may be concerned with. I admit forgetting there's three different fabric types (technically 4, but dwarves never want metal cloth thankfully) was something that slipped my mind and is a good catch.

Yarn comes from animals, Cloth from plants & silk from spiders/monsters, and all three can be requested for moods and are NOT interchangeable with each other. As far as I can tell, this and value are the main differences between them use-wise. Production-wise which is easiest depends on what you have available. I personally find Silk usually the easiest to stockpile, but that is because I captured a Giant Cave Spider in one fort, and a Forgotten Beast in another... That is not necessarily an easy or safe idea, but if done offers a massive amount of silk for free. Likewise animals can be sheared for a large amount of wool fairly regularly. My textile industries personally tend to be capped by clothiers/dyers/dye rather than cloth usually.

As for moods, it is true that the type of workshop a dwarf uses can be semi-easily manipulated. My latest fort shows as much, where 4/6 artifacts made in the fort so far (summer of the 5th year) have all been metal. Part of it is luck (I've gotten lucky metalsmiths have gotten the pick so far), part of it is manipulation... (I've trained approximately 1/3rd of the fort by my estimate in some level of a metalsmithing skill. Mostly armorsmithing, metalsmith's were my second guild to form, forming about a month after farmers & a week before craftsdwarves)

Which I suppose brings up another topic, petitions for locations. *Generally they are always worth pursuing*. I can't think of a reason why you'd want to take the unhappiness hit for denying one, considering that a guild hall can: -Be restricted to only guild members (preventing training of undesired skills by new dwarfs) -Teaches dwarves skills without them needing to do labor -Are a nice and convenient source of happy thoughts

Meanwhile temples offer happy thoughts, and a new method of dwarves venting their issues & clearing their needs for prayer.

You should definitely consider setting up guilds for skills you value, especially a doctor's guild, as it offers a way to keep doctor's skills sharp without dwarven pain.

Also from a prior reblog, there was mention of how elves "could" send nobles to negotiate tree cutting limits. They still do do this, and they start once you have a baron/count/duke, i.e. when Humans typically begin sending their own nobles, and dwarves & humans send wagons. Following the limits results in a positive relationship with the elves, breaking them results in a negative relationship. Ultimately break it too many times and they go to war. Also notably important... they don't become more lenient if you chop down less trees. The number picked seems somewhat random in my experience, and is based off the skill of your mayor? (maybe the ruling noble?) as well as the wildness of the area you settled in... which will be a problem for me with my latest fort unfortunately...

Lastly, I do want to add there was a bit more I wanted to talk about (Like werecreatures) but I don't want to clutter this post up too much, but I do know if DF players enjoy one thing it's reading.

Werecreatures, necromancer experiments, necromancers, and vampires do not show up at worldgen. Certain events in worldgen need to occur to incite them into existing. For Werecreatures & Vampires, a civilization, usually dwarves or humans, need to build a monastery, and then a creature (usually an elf or human, but I just found out from a friend that dwarves can do it too, like as I was typing this. I'll write up what I got from that story elsewhere, but the funny news is your fort's dwarves can profane god too!) has to profane the temple, which is typically done by toppling the altar. Likewise, Necromancers require a race that has a set lifespan (humans or dwarves typically), and one of them needs to decide they fear death, and go on a search for a method to avoid it. This can result in them discovering the secrets of life and death (necromancy) and becoming a necromancer. Afterwards, they typically build a tower somewhere, and other necromancers are welcome to join them. They also may begin experimenting on creatures creating hybrid soldiers for their armies. Unlike the other 3 mentioned prior, necromancers tend to show up in around the first generation of humans or so, so a 100 year world will typically have necromancer towers beginning to sprout up.

The reason I wanted to talk about werecreatures, is werecreature infection containment, which is typically best done by securing the hospital in such a way you can lock down either the whole hospital, or an individual patient during a full moon, to see if an injured dwarf got infected. Since they *usually* are capable of breaking down doors, this requires either a drawbridge or a Cask of Amontillado solution.

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2