03/13/2019
(Toady One) It's announcement day! Dwarf Fortress is coming to Steam and itch.io with a new tile set and enhanced graphics support and audio. We'll continue updating the free ASCII version on the Bay 12 web page as Dwarf Fortress Classic. We posted a longer message to our Patreon supporters (anybody can read) with more information.

I'll be in the Kitfox Discord all day today. I'm also doing two Reddit AMAs on Thursday the 14th: one at /r/dwarfortress at noon US Pacific and one at /r/gamedev at 2PM US Pacific.

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03/09/2019
(Toady One) Hmm, matters have still been hectic, so I don't have enough for a story. I've been working on several final plots for villains in order to round things out and make use of the new dungeons and so forth, as I mentioned earlier. These include corrupt imprisonment, framing, snatching, sabotage and trying to ignite warfare involving their enemies. This work will continue until and then after GDC, which happens from the 18th to the 22nd, though we're going to have that DF announcement on the 13th to keep matters interesting! In much smaller announcement news, Threetoe now keeps four threetoes. From the left: Harry, Ramone, Sid and Bowie.

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03/02/2019
(Toady One) As foretold:

Part 1

,

Part 2

.

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03/01/2019
(Toady One) Here is the

Bay 12 Report

for this month. Stuff still a little busy, so I should have the Future of the Fortress tomorrow! Then we'll be back to villains.

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02/28/2019
(Toady One) Nothing villainous to report on the dev log this week, as the bulk of my work time was spent preparing material for an upcoming Dwarf Fortress announcement. That'll happen in a few weeks! GDC is also coming up in the second half of March, so we'll be entering what will prove to be an unusual month, but we should still make some decent progress toward the villain release.

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02/21/2019
(Toady One) Some time frustratingly burned on another butterfly-effect style world generation bug, where the same seed would occasionally produce different results. I had to trace it through different temples being built in year 100, to different lovers being selected in year 60, to different shrines being constructed in year 35 (a RNG state alteration which caused somebody's gender to change on the other side of the world at birth, hence the lover difference), to the actual mistake in the code where leaders selected which shrines to encourage. That took a few days of diligent logging and world regeneration. But it's fixed now. I've been adding stuff to world generation for some months, so it was inevitable this sort of thing would happen from time to time.

I did make progress on hideouts. Plotters can use their organization and leadership locations, whether that's a monastery or a mercenary compound or their own castle. But we needed a few options for people without those social structures, for artifact storage among other things, so now anybody with a sufficient account can grab a house or have a tower built in a city. (Given how dwarf maps and fort mode room assignments work, I don't have options for fortresses yet.) The buildings pass on to family members currently, and buildings that don't pass to anybody can be obtained by somebody (instead of having them build a new one, sometimes.) Merchants and wealthy officials have generally been the tower-builders in my first passes, as they are very expensive. There's a cap on the amount of towers based on city size to prevent a Towers of Bologna situation from being too common, but there can still be a number of them. Towers can also be reconstructed and extended - feast halls, added fortifications and gated yards are common, but plotters can also add a dungeon, the purpose of which is shortly to arrive, heh.

The previous owners of towers and houses are referenced in the histories, so we can follow their passage reasonably easily. I found one named the Luxurious Bejeweled Executions first built by a corrupt official who had tremendous luck gambling. When he died, his wealthy merchant ex-lover purchased the tower. She died shortly thereafter, and the Executions was purchased by another official, who died and left it to his son Gal. That happened over the course of a hundred year, so we should see some wholesome layers of history develop on these structures.

For instance, if a villain, say, passes on in an unfortunate way and has no family in the area to inherit their artifacts or house, the artifacts will simply be in that house, hidden and lost. In the very likely event that the house is purchased later, the artifacts will be unknown to the homebuyer (at first), but they will nevertheless possibly have a problem on their hands, depending on who might be searching for the treasures. I haven't actually seen this yet, with random homebuyers. The world I checked had the orderly passage of eight hidden artifacts to heirs of houses and towers that contained them, but they could easily have gone on the market instead, and even in my case, the heirs weren't all told about the hidden treasures, as they weren't all family heirlooms.

In fact, Bax Doomedwane was a descendent of kidnapped dwarves who grew up in a goblin tower, but she left to become a dancer in a human city. That didn't last long, but she was out of the goblin civilization and somewhat integrated in her new home, and became the chief executioner in town after a few years. Being raised a goblin, Bax was a natural for villainy, and soon had the harvest administrator embezzling money for her. She soon corrupted the local magistrate and turned her eyes to thievery, having her gang steal two artifacts in particular, an alder figurine of an ant and a pig leather quiver, both rightfully claimed by the dwarf fortresses where they were made. These were quite coveted objects, but in the year 183, when Bax died, she had them both, squirreled away in the house she bought with her ill-gotten gains.

Bax had six children still living at the time of her passing, and the house went to Usbu Menaceflew. He had a goblin name, and grew up in a tower, but like his mother, his art took him outside its bounds, and he became a bard, a lasting career for him. For almost 120 years he'd been composing, his latest being "And He Sang 'Toasts!'" and "We See Depression." Usbu never committed a villainous act of any sort. Married three times, he moved around the world, and was living in a forest retreat named Entrancedsparkled when news came that he'd come into some property. World generation ended at the time when he moved to the human city, to his newly-inherited house, which contained the two hidden dwarven artifacts. Nobody aside from the dwarves had an outstanding claim on the quiver, but the alder figurine was also sought by Lema Furnaceteach and Ngoso Dreaddirge, two goblin bandit lords as old as the world. They'd each stolen it from Bax before, and their minds would still often turn to the treasure.

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02/14/2019
(Toady One) I decided to do the religious work I mentioned for worldgen last time, in the form of persecution and riots, religious grievances and personal grudges against abusive rulers, as well as allowing priests to reduce (or further inflame) tensions, according to their character.

Stodir Valeinked was a dwarf born deep underground in what was becoming a heavily religious community. His father had joined the Crystalline Denomination four years before Stodir was born, and would later become a priest of Limul, the dwarven goddess of metals. Stodir followed the family religion ardently, but a love of history took him to the human town of Combatfoot, on the east coast not far from the mountains. The first and greatest library of the world was there, the Bastion of Poets, and Stodir studied diligently for many years. For reasons unclear, Stodir was elevated to be the baron of the town when the former ruler died... this did not suit Stodir well, as he was greedy and somewhat cruel. It wasn't long before he began accepting bribes from a goblin criminal. (Unrelatedly, a fell mood dwarf in the town also gifted him a human bone floodgate which he made the symbol of his rule.)

Over the years, his eye was drawn several times to the Occult Coven. This religion of fate was older than the Crystalline Denomination, and in Combatfoot stood their temple, the Church of Veils. The first high priestess, Exalted God Ongu Furnacecloaks, died peacefully in 75, leaving the Heavenly Wonders, a perfect wax opal, in the Church. The next high priest was Nani Lushslops. Worship of the Tenebrous Aura continued in the Church, until, overcome by a decade's weight of greed and driven by fervency, Stodir made his move in the year 88.

The Church of Veils was the only temple destroyed in the first 125 years of history. Many minor shrines to the Coven in Combatfoot were also razed during the persecution. The possessions of followers were confiscated, and they were expelled from Combatfoot. Overall, eleven historical figures and seventy others made the journey south to the peninsula town of Northpranks, still in the same human empire, but outside of Stodir's domain. The Occult Coven had a priest there, but their one great house of worship was gone. The Heavenly Wonders was destroyed with the temple, fervency having outmatched greed in the end.

In Northpranks, tensions were high. The Crystalline Denomination didn't have a temple in town, but there was a simple dwarven shrine and a few worshippers that had trickled in from the mountains over the last fifty years. The Occult Coven's local priest, Sacred Dawn Gasem, preached on the subject of love and tolerance toward the Crystalline Denomination specifically, that tensions might abate, but a year later the wound was still remembered and a riot broke out. Including the eighty or so recent arrivals, just over 200 of the town's 300 citizens were Occult, and they rose up together and destroyed the shrine. Nobody was hurt among the eighteen followers of Limul, but that was by no means a sure thing. The shrine, the reminder of their suffering and exile, having been destroyed, the riot ended and they pondered no further violence. The local Denomination believers nursed a grievance of their own, but didn't try anything. Tensions abated over the next thirty years. When the displaced high priest Nani passed away in 127, he left a lump of clay in the new Occult Coven temple in Northpranks, constructed in 120.

I found one historical instance of the story going the other direction. The humans conquered a forest retreat and placed an administrator in charge, who was an ardent Occult Coven follower. She was greedy, but not particularly harsh, and confiscated some goods from the few Crystalline Denomination worshippers that were there, without expelling them or destroying the shrines. This created some tension, but their local priest managed to talk them out of doing anything. Oddly enough, this priest, Libash, was also a historian who had studied in Combatfoots, twenty years after the Church of Veils had been torn down. Before joining the priesthood, he had discovered the technique of comparative biography, which is more than Stodir even managed.

Incidentally, priests do not always take the high road when preaching to their flock. There were three other human religions inciting violence against each other repeatedly as they took turns abusing the power of petty lordships, leading to various riots and trouble. These were more deadly... at one point, a few people were fed to beasts to honor the nature god.

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02/06/2019
(Toady One) Various consolidation and small moves to start the month. I traced accounts for embezzlement networks and smoothed out some rough edges there, and made sure the mercenary groups based on organized religions (as opposed to generic worship) functioned correctly. I also fixed some frequency issues with religions and updated the November update to temple profaning to make it compatible with upcoming religious strife. Ruining random temples no longer matters to the deity. In order to be cursed, the act must be against a god the offender worships, for some specific reason (how this manifests in post-worldgen is TBD, but at a minimum it can just check the worship of, say, a tantrumer -- curse one way, religious tension the other.) In order to avoid werebeasts and vampire curses exploding like popcorn during religious riots, something had to give, and in general, making the curse stories a little more personal seemed appropriate now. I still have to do religious tension etc. of course; something will be added for this time, even if it ends up kinda basic.

I now have punishment in terms of sentences of a number of years understood by worldgen, vaguely aligned to dwarf mode and the (wholly-inadequate-but-good-enough-for-now) ethics definitions. Before, prisoners were just prisoners, for as long as it lasted (escape/conquest/etc.) Now an embezzler might spend five years in the dungeon, not try to escape, and then go on to do something else, which is important as we move toward non-assassination problem-solving by villains. They should have the option soon to engineer false charges or otherwise corrupt imprisonment.

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02/01/2019
(Toady One) A

Bay 12 Report

to start the month. A Future of the Fortress too:

Part 1

,

Part 2

.

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01/30/2019
(Toady One) Worldgen mercenaries now participate in battles. If they do well, and survive for a time, they can pull together some of the other mercenaries participating, as well as some of the other non-historical people participating, and create a mercenary company. These can be quite different from each other.

The last one I looked at was founded by Oddom Weatherbrass, whose great grandmother was a bookkeeper who feel in love with a necromancer, became obsessed with her own mortality a few years later (unrelatedly, somehow), and began worshipping the skeletal death god Rakust. Kadol received Necroskull, a slab with the secrets of life and death, from the god and became a necromancer herslf. She was murdered decades later by a criminal assassin and so forth, but the important point for this log is that she had a large family and they were all death god worshippers. Not necromancers, but Kadol's non-traditional religious beliefs passed down. Oddom was devout, and after a few battles, she founded a mercenary order devoted to the worship of Rakust and dedicated to the mastery of the mace and the battle axe, the mace being her favorite weapon. Oddom's daughter was also a mercenary by that time, and being a death-worshipper, she joined the order when it was founded. Over several battles of recruitment, they came to have over sixty soldiers (non-historical converts, as it was hard for them to find co-religious historical people), created a treasurer position to manage the income (taken by daughter Inod), founded a fort which they inventively named Necrodie, and there constructed the Chapel of Oblivion for the worship of Rakust. Pilgrims, often from their extended family, but sometimes from other necromancer families, often visited the Chapel to pray, and sometimes became prophets and formed their own religions and temples in other parts of the world. (Military orders can also be founded aligned with specific organized religions, but that wasn't the case here.)

As a mercenary order dedicated to a few weapons (Oddom valued skill, like many dwarves), they had honors which they bestowed at various skill levels and other milestones (battles, kills, years of service.) Oddom was exempt from the general rank system as overlord, but Inod was made a 'Soldier' after her first battle. She didn't manage to become a Mace Adept like her mother, as she died in the goblin wars. Her mother died a few years later fighting in a battle, opposed by the Oily Spikes, a militant religious order devoted to the wolverine mountain goddess of the dwarves. The death mercenaries fared poorly overall here... they all died. This happens sometimes. The group was officially disbanded at that point (this can also happen after heavy but not total losses.)

"Soldier" and "Mace Adept" aren't creative names, and the death mercenaries only had three or four general and skill-based ranks, but even more skill-oriented groups with orderly founders can have rank systems with 15 flowerly-named levels for each type of weapon they utilize, and they refine their skills more on their off time. Other mercenary groups focus on military tactics, leadership and organization, and others rely on stealth, and can contract out their members individually for thefts and assassinations. These shadowy groups focus on scouting when they take company-level battle contracts, staying away from most of the danger and offering a tactical bonus to their side's commander. The most versatile companies can do all of the above.

Aside from forts and temples, mercenary groups can also spend money to upgrade the average quality of their equipment; this impacts their performance in battles but also increases upkeep costs. A group that runs into a long dry patch can go broke and disband, though this doesn't happen often (heavy losses/group wipes are more common.) When groups disband, the survivors can rejoin other groups, though they often take some time off (when the Oily Spikes ran into trouble and disbanded after 20 years in action, their founder went off to have a peaceful life as a butcher in a nearby city.) Individual mercenaries can also use their money to upgrade their own equipment. This typically happens before their company (if any) steps up, but a wealthy company can pay to equip joining members if they are behind.

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01/23/2019
(Toady One) I've mainly been 'consolidating gains' this week (that is, finding horrible bugs and wondering how anything worked in the first place.) After cleaning up after myself, I started in on bandit forts as a preliminary to villain hideouts. The bandits were also horribly bugged, but now the largest groups can make forts out in the wilderness somewhat near to the civilizations they are associated with. Along with the new monasteries and the return of castles and the old tombs and necromancer towers, it's starting to look more interesting away from the cities, and we aren't quite done with new site placement yet. More next week.

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01/16/2019
(Toady One) Zach's final surgery went great! Hopefully life here will be calm for a time.

I ran a medium world out 100 years, and it's getting a little hard to decide which stories to write up, which is a good sign. I was just looking at the ruler of one of the goblin sites, Nguslu, notable for being a war buddy of the demon lord (to the extent demon lords respect the buddy notion), who hammered out a villainous life (like many goblins) for 68 years before being assassinated by a dwarven mercenary Dodok Ochrevises. Dodok was hired by Erush Castlegild, a snatched dwarf that became a goblin-style bandit and was sick of Nguslu's stymieing authority over the fortress of Evilchant. Dodok failed to get the drop on Nguslu, and they were evenly matched, but after two failed assassination attempts, Nguslu's luck finally ran out.

But perhaps we should talk about the king of the dwarves, Aslot Sinentered, a goblin, ruling for the last 55 years. Back in the year 24, 21 years before his reign began, Aslot was a bandit, like Erush or any of dozens of others. Styled 'overlord', but ruling nothing. He operated near the dwarven capital of Targetroad, and his first attempt at villainy was to try to extort money from the broker Nish. He failed. The manager Adil? Failed. The bookkeeper Dakost? Nope. The chief medical dwarf, Erith? No again. (I'm chuckling to myself reading the events, as I know that Aslot becomes king, but this is new to me and not looking promising so far.)

Over the next ten years, Aslot only managed to subordinate Reg Figuresavior, the tavern keeper of the Chestnut of Spices, and Reg went on to do absolutely nothing of value for him. Finally, in 39, six years before his ascension, Aslot managed to get the outpost liaison Alath Whippedlances; Aslot was a world-class flatterer by this time and was bound to be successful (since there's not enough cost for repeated failure, yet, in terms of punishment.) Aslot set the liaison to work immediately, using the new access to attempt to turn the until-then unapproachable General Mafol. Mafol was incorruptible. Alath's ex-wife, the diplomat Dumat, however, was another story, and Alath managed to pull her into Aslot's web.

It was at this point that Aslot first thought about seizing the throne, but it seemed hopeless. A few insiders had less than a fifth of the pull necessary to orchestrate something that grand. So what happened? (I don't know yet, he he, reading...) Using Dumat's access, Aslot turned one of the many landholders in the year 43; Baroness Besmar enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger games so much she took the name "Sikel the Foggy." The coup soon followed, but it only worked because in the year 45, Besmar went from being "one of the many landholders" to being "one of the two landholders." A war with the elves had begun. General Mafol was killed by an elven grizzly bear in 45 leading the defence of the fortress Shipskunk. The dwarves won the battle, but several barons were killed. That year, the power equation having swung just barely in Aslot's favor, he pounced, using Besmar, Alath and Dumat to seize power from the Queen Ducim Windfang. The deposed queen was imprisoned in Targetroad, though the gracious King Aslot later gave her a minor barony where she lived out her days until a quiet death in 82. Besmar became a countess, then a duchess. She married Alath, but they divorced after thirty years. He remained outpost liaison under Aslot until his death in 84. Dumat remains the diplomat, where she regular competes in battle axe throwing competition with Duchess Besmar.

Over those forty years, King Aslot fiddled with his network and attempted to control his subordinates with varying success. Several coups were idly plotted against him, but nobody managed to turn more than one of his now numerous landholders. The one major villainous event Aslot pulled off during his kingship was in the year 86, when the king hatched an assassination plot on a different Alath, Alath Glovedbrass, his own guard captain, after tavern keeper Reg failed to loop him in on some low-grade scheming (the rulers don't yet have other tools in their box, like simply firing the guard captain, he he.) Aslot used new asset Id Steelarmors to send a message to famed assassin Nushrat Exitrulers to set up the job. Nushrat performed the job flawlessly, her fifth kill earning her the name "Nushrat Exitrulers the Sacrificial Gaze."

It wasn't always that easy. Nushrat was a human criminal born in the town of Focusesteem, where she learned to skulk about well enough doing petty crimes, though her most notable achievement by then was being boxed in the face by a cyclops and losing some teeth. Nushrat's first real job was in the year 55, when a bandit hired her to kill a baronness who refused to take a bribe to ignore his operation. Unsurprisingly, she failed, but somehow survived, and continued learning. In 61, she was approached by Jal Mirrotboots, the master of beasts of the Curious Realm, who wanted her to kill the Realm's justiciar. (Nushrat never knew that Jal had been sent by Dang Strokedhorrors, the only other goblin in history that managed to overthrow a civilization, becoming law-giver of the Curious Realm 24 years later after turning both the chancellor and the previous law-giver's advisor.) This time, Nushrat was successful. Next, the harrowing job of killing a goblin lord for a goblin bandit in a dark fortress, but Nushrat was getting good and pulled it off. She did her fourth job for a necromancer's apprentice. The master necromancer had it out for the Justice who had rebuffed the apprentice's attempt to bribe him. In 80, it was the captain of the guard of a dwarf fortress, marked for death by his own mayor for refusing to ignore the embezzlement of the chief medical dwarf (of which the mayor was taking a cut.) The mayor was a goofus styling himself "Azmol the Lone", but Nushrat never met him, just his messenger, a local mercenary who the mayor later appointed the broker.

In 81, five years before the job for Aslot, Nushrat put her stealth to use on a side job for the bandit Snang Beardplague. The Contemptible Straps was a famous copper short sword, made in a strange mood by dwarven weaponsmith Onul Playedcrafted sixty years before. Onul offered it to the Queen (not Queen Ducim, we are with other dwarves not far away.) It was only a few years before the greedy and villainous hammerer got his mind to working and had the corrupt bookkeeper steal it for him (when we add hideouts, he'll hide it somewhere sensible instead of carrying it around, he he.) When the hammerer died in 81, and the Contemptible Straps was found and restored to the fortress, our bandit Snang, who had been pining after the sword for years, wasted no time and hired Nushrat to swipe it for him. She did this easily. Snang still carries it.

Nushrat carried out three more assassinations after her work for Aslot in 86. Then she stole three more artifacts. And assassinated two more people. And lives happily at age 97, never married, with her seven remaining children, waiting to take a job to come to your fort and take your things or deal with your pesky sheriff. Or somebody like her.

Interestingly, none of the major historical events described were precipitated by large villainous networks, just the networks that were well-placed or lucky. Osnun Enddungeons and Atera Ivoryowl were both running ten people and I have no idea what they were up to. Ah, Atera was a druid! But I should stop now.

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01/08/2019
(Toady One)First, a Zach update: he's going in for followup surgery tomorrow. The initial procedure went pretty deep so there needs to be some reconstruction and moving about of bits, but we're hopeful he's cancer-free at this point.

I'm underway on additional worldgen villain mechanics, continuing into schemes to acquire artifacts (and then keep, sell or pass them along) and then on to shenanigans involving positions beyond embezzlement, up to and including coups. Then we'll need to cover at least assassinations and hideouts, perhaps more if we feel like there's time, but that'll be enough to make dwarf mode interesting when we get there. I'll have another villain story when I finish this set.

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01/01/2019
(Toady One) Here's the first

Bay 12 Report

of 2019! Here's the Future of the Fortress:

Part 1

,

Part 2

.

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12/24/2018
(Toady One) This story only uses what we have finished so far: network building, corrupting officials, and some light law enforcement. There's a bit more to do before we move on from world generation, in order to make things more properly villainous.

In the year 100, the most extensive network was run by a secretive figure known only as Earthhells the Bewildering. They have members working in several towns and fortresses (purple is the leader, red is a member, yellow indicates a corrupt official. As usual, the fortresses are just a few pixels; there are three colored here.) To see how this came to pass, we'll start with Lomoth Hummedage, a bandit causing minor trouble around the human town of Bucklejacks.

After amounting to nothing as a bandit for some time, in the year 43 at the age of 29, Lomoth, fond of scheming and idly wishing to become wealthy and powerful, struck up a conversation with the dwarven butcher Aban Paintedbites, on one of the human's visits to the fortress of Sensedtraded. Aban was similarly constituted, and an intimidating figure, though she hadn't committed a crime in her life, and Lomoth managed to talk her into scaring the poor noseless bookkeeper (cougar at age 5) into giving Aban some extra supplies for the pair of ne'er-do-wells to share. Lomoth encouraged Aban to look around for other opportunities while continuing to skim supplies from the bookkeeper. (The human didn't accomplish much else, but Aban was always grateful for the push into her new and exciting lifestyle, and kicked some money Lomoth's way over the years.)

Aban was an extravagant sort, and given to flights of fancy, so she took on the name Earthhells the Bewildering, even if all she'd done was strong-arm some supplies and fail to convince Captain Momuz to look the other way. In fact, Ducim the bookkeeper got fired (no hammering yet!) after a few years, but was too scared to identify Earthhells, went off and became a fish cleaner instead. Earthhells, in the meantime, took the brazen move of looping her own father into criminal schemes, got him to talk Manager Uzol into skimming some money from his position. Her father was a priest of the goddess of jewels, but not a stranger to crime, as Earthhell's aunt had become a notorious goblin gangster after the abduction, and Earthhells was able to play on her father's bond of love as well as his greed. As before, Captain Momuz found out Manager Uzol before long, and he scampered off to become a tavern keeper in some distant fortress.

Earthhells and her dad weren't done with Sensedtraded, though. The priest involved three more locals, and Earthhells convinced a ranger, Dastot, son of the bookkeeper, to get involved (before the firing.) This ended up being quite a catch, as Dastot became an agent for the dwarven civilization not long after. Before leaving on his first mission, Dastot failed to corrupt the broker, but got the chief medical dwarf, earning enough trust with Earthhells to get the go-ahead to try to run his own network. Unsurprisingly, the dwarven spy proved talented, getting Captain Momuz to accept a bribe while flipping Uzol's replacement, Manager Besmar. There would be no more firings of corrupt officials. Sensedtraded was lost to criminality, at least while Momuz was around, but there were still a lot of honest dwarves. At one point, Earthhells tried to get her mother the militia commander to join up, but she was having none of it and never trusted her wayward daughter again. Afterward, Earthhells moved to the nearby fortress of Netpleat. Captain Deduk was never known to turn down a bribe and would be even less trouble than Momuz had been.

In 59, Dastot received his first assignment from Queen Erush, to infiltrate the human town of Bunnyvise on the goblin border. Dastot took on the identity of a monster slayer and went to work, doing Earthhells business on the side, acquiring a cut of embezzled funds from the Chief Chamberlain in 62. He acquired a few new members for the organization, the most notable being the goblin Ber Larvalmenace. Ber was unusual as the child of a goblin spy posing as a merchant and her local goblin lover; Ber stuck with his mother Azstrog while she was on assignment, so never acquired citizenship, and just sort of hung around town without a job when he became an adult. At the time, Dastot and Azstrog were using each other for information as part of their agent duties, and Dastot eventually recruited Ber for the gang in the year 69, when Ber was 21. He was terrible at the job, making three failed approaches on Bunnyvise officials; when he finally turned the Chief Cup-Bearer Shorast, in the year 95, it was short-lived, as a cyclops killed the official in 97.

While all that was going on, Earthhells was growing the network in Netpleat. Her most notable new lieutenants were the historian Urdim Mountainwarded, who brought no fewer than eight new members into the organization, and Thikut Relievedattics, Earthhells's ex-husband, a convicted embezzler and leatherworker. Earthhells was still a butcher, and then a tanner, and eventually became the alderperson of the tanners guild. The reliable Captain Deduk died in 91. His replacement was an elf, Ima Coastalpleats, an ex-poet who got flipped by Earthhells's network within a few years on the job. In year 99, when we were winding up, Earthhells even decided to get her hands dirty, and started embezzling money directly from the guild. As an alderperson, she won't be migrating any time soon, but several of the organization's members are dwarves, not bogged down with duties, and free to travel to the first new fortress that becomes available. That should be fun.

Queen Erush also became a villain, and was killed by a zombie roc, but that's another story.

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12/13/2018
(Toady One) There is always more to do, but we're at a good stopping point for world gen religions. Prophets now arise in cities and villages associated to their particular gods through the new more granular belief tracking (rather than at random), and the named organized religions are associated to them and can start anywhere, whether that's a village or a capital. Prophets could already do this with monastic orders, and that has been improved by giving these orders the ability to find sponsors for the construction of a monastery, whether the sponsor is a religiously-aligned government or a merchant company or craft guild with aligned leadership.

The prophets can also convert portions of the population to non-monastic religions as well now. These are similar to the current version's temple religions with some new properties. Priesthoods come into being before large temples are built, once the prophet's teachings have taken hold in a community, and these priests further convert populations in the village or city where they are working. This leads to small-scale infrastructure production, as in the last devlog. Once the feedback loop has created enough infrastructure in a market-sized town, a temple can be built, and a high priest is elevated. Additionally, priests can convert people along trade routes and local market connections, leading to additional priests and temples springing into being over time. Once two temples have been built, a holy city is designated and a third level of priest arises there, above the high priests. We should add many variation to this process and its structures later, but it's fine for now.

Even as it stands, there's quite a bit going on. In my first test, a war-and-fortresses religion sprang up in a dwarven hillocks, and the prophet managed to get it adopted by quite a few people in the associated fortress. From there, the second quite-adventurous priest managed to get it passed along the trade/smuggling route to the dark tower, risking murder to establish a temple in what was later declared the holy city of what became the largest world religion. It's quite a fortress, the dark tower, and wholly appropriate for the war-fortress deity for that reason, but pilgrimages are notably awkward. Though I suspect that under the hood, the dark tower was a hit because there wasn't as much competition for the faithful. The demon rulers do not currently care about religions cropping up in their environs, and the goblins don't form them themselves, so the first outsiders that don't get murdered tend to do well. This might be changed in the demon's favor; similar problems with the elves are curtailed somewhat by the druid (who gets an extra state turn as a religious position holder). Prophets only attach to deities (since they are given a belief system concerning the deity's will/future actions), giving them an advantage, so more robust religions using other/similar methods for the non-deities (demon/forest spirit) seem necessary at some point to counteract this and leave those cultures intact for longer.

For some broad examples, I ran out a medium-sized map 150 years. At the end of worldgen, there were 90 non-monastic religions as well as 39 monastic orders. 11 of the monastic orders had found sponsors for monasteries, which exist as separate sites (much like the castles, which are also back in the game.) Seven of the religions had risen to the point of having full three-level priesthoods with multiple temples and a holy city; the largest of these was either the Rainy Sect with 10 temples and 147 priests, or the Cult of Pages with 7 temples and 162 priests, depending on how you count, noting that the many priests are each in different sites and are historical figures drawn from the proper religious segment of the population or from believing historical figures, with all that entails in terms of individual interlocking storylines, though their personal conversion stories could certainly use some (any) details.

Here's the trade map of the world, of the kind you can currently export from Legends mode. And here are the major religions (purple = holy city, red = temple, orange = priest, yellow = believers): the Rainy Sect (deity: sky, priest: Sacred Flier, high priest: High Cloud, holy city priest: Most Holy Sky), the Cult of Pages, the Fenced Faith, the Creed of Blossoms, the Foggy Communion, the Mauve Cult (deity: jewels, priest: Holy Cave, high priest: Exalted Rock, holy city priest: Absolute Lilac), and the Sect of Controlling. One other religion, the Granite Order is in a transitional state with a single temple and 35 priests, but they haven't broken through to a second market-size town yet.

The other 82 religions aren't all insignificant though. Take these two religions, the Romantic Faith and the Adorable Creed, founded within five years of each other a century ago in the same dwarven fortress by two different prophets of the birth god Zefon. Each has only a single priest, the aged dwarf prophets preaching their own version of Zefon, but they've had impact throughout the area. They just haven't managed to break through significantly across trade barriers, or make enough of a local impact to get another priest set up in an attached village, hillocks or mountain hall. But there are many adherents to either faith. The largest templeless minor religion is the Armored Fellowship, a three priest dwarven fortress god religion with two fortress branches, a hillocks branch, as well as believers in four human market towns and an elven market town they picked up on the trade routes. There would be a small chance for these to spread out to the human and elf villages from those markets, but priests on-site would really have helped speed that along. The major faiths managed that transition.

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12/07/2018
(Toady One) The first part of the w.g. religion rewrite is to update population demographics and site infrastructure in order to support more diversity, which will in turn lead to more interesting links and possibilities. The current setup that the big market cities have (usually) one large temple and nothing else, religiously, and that smaller sites have nothing has been changed. All sites now keep track of small religious structural/sculpture additions they've had over the years, in terms of every worshipped deity and every named religion.

As an example, I ran a small island, where we have the towns of Bunnygears and Wiltconfuse. These towns both started human, and are both located in the north of the island, surrounded by dwarven hillocks and fortresses. So it came to pass that by the year 50, the population of each town was roughly 25% dwarven. This is reflected in the new infrastructure accounting, with each town having a substantial minority of its shrines and statues depicting dwarven deities. In Bunnygears, however, more than half of the religious art/shrines/etc. are dedicated to the human god of beauty. This happened because the ruler of Bunnygears for the last 47 years has been Baroness Erab, an ardent worshipper of Ashi Mirthumber, the aforementioned god. Bunnygears also features many small religious structures specifically related to the Fellowship of Sheens, an Ashi-focused religion that coalesced about halfway through the fifty year period we are considering.

Technically, the game allows devout state actors, populations, and the infrastructure itself to each perform 'actions' over the years. The state historical figures and populations can build new infrastructure, and the infrastructure sways the demographics of the populations slightly. In the case of Bunnygears, this leads to any historical figures that come from the dwarven populations to have a decent chance of being at least casual Ashi worshippers, perhaps even Fellowship of Sheens members, on top of having their traditional beliefs in the dwarven pantheons. The dwarven shrines etc. also have an effect on the human populations, though it is less pronounced numerically. Overall, we're just getting started on these kind of cultural feedback mechanisms, but it seems very promising so far. For now, we'll be moving on to more individual-focused religious interactions in preparation for the villain work. Even as it stands, the fact that historical figures are much more religiously distinct makes the potential plots more interesting.

Incidentally, Ashi's only involvement with Bunnygears was unleashing a werezebra on it, the current price of having a temple to profane. We'll improve this at a later date, he he he.

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12/05/2018
(Threetoe) I don't want to alarm anyone, but the cancer on my nose has returned and they're going to have to do surgery to cut it out. The procedure is covered by my wife's health insurance so I don't need any help in the form of money. But I do want to say that a whole lot of people are not in my position, where insurance will cover part of the cost.

Once again, I don't need any more money than you would normally give to Bay 12 Games. I just want you to think about all the people left out in the cold during the holidays.

Thanks for supporting us, and Congratulations to the generous!

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12/01/2018
(Toady One) A

Bay 12 Report

to begin the end of the year, and also here is the

Future of the Fortress

for the month.

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11/28/2018
(Toady One) Worldgen corruption is underway. It seems pretty clear it'll fulfill its function in preparing a fertile ground for villainous network building, as the various petty actions are tracked and ongoing. Dwarves and others are variously tempted by e.g. the opportunity to embezzle or accept bribes using the power of their positions. If their personality and values aren't up to the challenge, they may eventually fall to temptation and undertake corrupt activities in an ongoing fashion, which will make them a target for both law enforcement and blackmail. (It needs more work to be a good-enough model for crime, but it works for now.)

For the record, the first corrupt person in Dwarf Fortress was Irne Locksnarl, a human from Postrushed. He was a miner, then a bard, but when the opportunity to become the chief chef of the entire kingdom opened up, he took it. After being tempted several times over the years, finally, after fifteen years in the job, Irne began scheming a bit extra out of the kitchen budget. One can imagine a few things a villain could do with that information. At least, that'll be our job next month, heh.

We've also moved profaning temples under this framework (up to this point it has been completely random), and we've also added business rivalries leading to sabotage, gambling problems, and related w.g. activity. That's almost all we need! Another look at religion, and we're ready to revisit villains.

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