Another day, another set of delvers. Today’s set is starting early… and they don’t look much like my typical delvers. Most of them come in with some variety of armor, or at least a wizard’s robes, but not these ones. These ones come with what looks to me like forge gear, heavy leather aprons and gloves and such. The half-dozen or so at least have picks and hammers that they probably know how to swing, but I seriously doubt they can handle my deeper stuff.

That doubt turns to certainty as I probe them with a few encounters on the surface. One of them gets a nasty bite from one of my vipers, and he hobbles back towards the gates to recover, giving me some “defeat delver” mana. The rest of the group decide to turn back when they meet a widow in the tunnels, and I’m just glad they understand what they can’t handle.

The next group actually tries their luck against the widow, and she leaves them nice and wrapped up for my ratlings to haul to the gates on the surface.

On the one hand, I’m enjoying the mana for victories. On the other hand, I’m starting to think I should have been more careful about the fantasy metals. While smiths theoretically could be after gold, I seriously doubt it. These guys look like they make adventuring gear, not jewelry.

I’m sure they’ll learn. It doesn’t look like it even will take them long to do so. The more experienced miners show up around noon, a bit late in the day for them, but it looks like they were spending their time organizing a big group. I wonder if it’s even technically a raid party. That’d be kinda cool, even if it’d really show how much I underestimated how desirable those fantasy metal nodes are.

Usually, mining groups going to the caverns are about 3:1 miners to adventurers, but this group is looking almost 1:1. They all consult with a map and check their route, and I’m much less concerned for this group than the others. I’d bet they heard about my friendly disposition and the valuable ores, and thought they’d be able to run in and get some quickly. These guys have been in the caverns and know I can bring some heat if I want, so they’ve prepared accordingly. I’m actually a bit proud of these guys.

I make sure I have some healing slimes down in the lava tubes anyway. They probably have some fire protection, but I don’t know exactly how dangerous my wyrms actually are. They’ve been having an easy buffet of the fire elementals, but that’s thanks to the ambushes. I don’t want my wyrms to just swallow limbs and dive back into the rock. Hopefully it’ll be good training for my weird little dragons, to actually have to fight, instead of relying on surprise tactics.

I keep half a metaphorical eye on them as they steadily make their way down, cool and professional. The rest of my attention is on the tubes as I consider what else to do in there. One thing that catches my eye is the herbalism stuff. I had been expecting them to mostly just be fuel to make charcoal and coke for the cinder ants, but it looks like some of the seeds the fruitbats have found on expedition are starting to grow down here with their help.

There’s even a variation on a lumber node, called a deepapple. I think they actually specifically want to get fruitbat attention, as the mushrooms grow pretty thick and tall, putting the caps close to the ceiling. Instead of the typical mushroom gills, they have little round… spore pods, I guess? Makes me think of a video I watched before I met truck-kun, about stinkhorn mushrooms. I think the little pods are full of gleeba, which is not just fun to say, but also basically spores in liquid. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be too stinky. I think. I’d imagine they’d get a ruder name if they were. Deephorseapples, maybe.

Whatever the smell or nutritional value, they should be perfect for the cinder ants to do their thing, and let me grow some of the more exotic stuff my bats have managed to recover. I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten them from the volcanic area past the tubes, which bodes well for delvers being able to do stuff in there, eventually.

One that catches my eye is Fool’s Coal. I sprinkle a few of them around as I look over the description, which is interesting. The plant looks like it mostly grows inside the rock, and produces a little black fruit on the surface. It has a lot of alchemical uses, apparently, and is called Fool’s Coal because only a fool would try to burn it. It looks like it tends to explode when too hot. I guess that’s one way to get your seeds away from a place too hot for them to survive.

Magmoss is an interesting one, too. It grows close to the surface of rocks and such, making them look like they have veins of magma, but they’re not hot. In fact, they actively cool, and I’d bet they’re a primary ingredient in a lot of fire protection potions.

I have a few others that I’d like to plant, but I think I’ll need to expand again to get them. Lava Lillys actually require lava pools to grow in, making me wonder if the volcano area will be more like the underswamps but with lava instead of water. Magma. Magma is inside, lava is outside. Thank you, Dwarf Fortress.

I also check in on my crucible ants to see if they alloy stuff properly, and it sure looks to me like they can. I see a few hills made of bronze over by the copper and tin nodes. It makes me want to place a whole bunch of nodes close to each other and see what the crucible ants can cook up, but I think I’ll hold off on making more of the fantasy ore nodes for now.

I might upgrade the ants again, though. I like the crucible ants, but they’re still not going to make me an enclave. I think I have at least one more tier of ants before I reach the max ones. My mana is still doing fine, especially after ‘defeating’ those earlier miners, so it’s not a difficult decision to upgrade to the next tier.

Wow, that’s a big and ugly ant. It’s called a tunnelbore ant, which makes the ugliness make a bit more sense. And the size. They’re easily going to be my biggest denizens at around four feet tall and around ten feet long. They’re kinda squat and thick ants, with a huge head like a major might have. Instead of the big mandibles a major would have, though, it has a big flat ugly lumpy spiky face. It reminds me of the head of a big tunnel boring drill, but organic instead of metal.

I’m glad it doesn’t look like it can just rotate its face like one, though. That’d be some nightmare fuel there. It does like to dig, at least, and I watch as it starts. It just rubs its face against the wall in a circular motion, looking like it wants to wax on, or maybe wax off. Probably off, because the wall of the tunnel is easily being dug away. Once it gets to put its entire face against the newly-flattened part of the wall, the ant crawls around in circles, like a breakdancer spinning on his head. But with more limbs. And on the wall.

…maybe not so much like a breakdancer, then. Whatever the correct metaphor, it’s making good progress into the wall, and I spend a bit of mana to give it some direction. I'd usually have Coda do this, but he’s busy with the cinder blocks and cement. I tell the ant to make a bunch of side chambers along the tunnel for now, and am glad to see the next tunnelbore ant start to work on a new one. I’m sure they’ll congregate a bit once they can start opening the boreholes into proper chambers.

I’m really happy with my new tunnelbore ants, and watch them work as the miners reach the tunnels. It looks like the adventurers have some form of fire protection, which is great for my wyrms. Not letting them ambush is one thing, but how can I expect them to attack if a touch would make third-degree burns? First degree?

Really bad burns! The wyrms keep them on their toes, opting to start with making very obvious and slow magma holes before leaping out, forcing the delvers to dodge or otherwise deal with the simple momentum of the attack. The delvers’ strategy is simple, but effective. The adventurers will lock down the mandibles of a wyrm in various ways, and the miners will come in with hammers and picks to get at the more vulnerable sides. It’s not especially fast work, but it’s effective and pretty safe. Burns and wounds still happen, but they have some healing on hand for that.

I absently nod to myself about that, glad I won’t need to babysit the delvers as I watch the ants dig. That’s part of the fun of an ant farm, after all.