Our waterlogged fortress is getting incorporated into the homeland as a barony! I’m not sure what this means yet, but I’m positive that I want it.

Continuing with the theme of screwing over the fortress without outright destroying it, I managed to anger a trade caravan that had set up shop here, by making several offers in a row that they thought did not give them enough profit. Personally I feel like a 30% profit margin is pretty good, but we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Unfortunately, this means we didn’t get the shipment of picks we’d been holding out for.

Everyone seems to have gotten used to the fact that most of the fortress continues to be underwater. Nevertheless, spirits remain high. Labor continues almost uninterrupted, and some dwarves are even throwing parties and partaking of our fine wines.

Still, we need to figure out what to do with all this water. It can’t stay here forever.

After what feels like ages, we’ve finally got the passage blocked off.

At first, we tried to pull the underwater lever by digging a channel above it, but dwarves were unable to reach that far down into the water.

Then, we tried to channel out the ceilling above flood gate to be able to attach a new lever to it. Unfortunately, all our mechanisms had gotten separated from us by the flood. We needed to construct new ones, but we were also out of rock for the same reason. So, we dug a new staircase downward until we found some, but then discovered after hauling it back up and turning into mechanisms, that the floodgate was unable to be connected to, due to being underwater.

Finally, our last hope was to try to isolate a section of rock directly above a section of the pipe, in the hopes that we could cause a collapse and plug up the flow of water. It worked!

By now, everything in the fortress below basement 2 is completely submerged. We’re now just waiting for the lower levels to dry out… Thankfully, the most important areas were spared.

Everything was set up perfectly, but there was one minor miscalculation. As it turns out, the water pressure from the ocean was enough to completely fill the pipe and flood the general surrounding area within mere seconds of opening the connection — not nearly enough time to pull a level to close the floodgate.

What have we learned? Well, for one, keep the floodgate lever one floor up. Ours is now completely submerged, making the prospect of closing the pipe seem hopeless.

Well, I should probably go deal with this emergency.

Maybe this ocean will come in handy after all.

We sent a lucky volunteer to start a hole that drills all the way down to the cavern. Using this nearly infinite supply of water, we should be able to flood out all the dangers below. I can’t think of any way this could go wrong.