* actual saga coming soon
We struck the earth! The dwarves of Lashstab entered a cave beneath the fortress. The cave was not immediately aggressive, but risk must wait until the proper defenses have been prepared. The cave was immediately sealed.
A craftsdwarf fell to madness, claiming a workshop as her own and striking any who came near. She was killed, in self defense, and is currently undergoing burialization.
Patrons welcomed the opening of a butcher shop; meat is officially on the menu.
The twilight hammer cult has moved to farming. They now have their own guild hall where they regularly demonstrate gelding for all to watch.
A growing order of necromancers concerns Fath. They have not reanimated anything yet, but it's only a matter of time.
Here follow the accounts of Minterwute, rector and leader of the fort as of the 252-01-01.
As I begin my tenure, I must take stock of the situation that my predecessors have left me with. Each of them has had their own distinctive style, their own personal priorities, their own novel motivations.
What they had in common however appears to be their complete disregard for fortress security. I'm absolutely appalled by the state of fortress defenses and precautions that have been put into place to ensure the safety of its inhabitants. Which is to say: None. There are no fortifications, no redundancies, no military presence, no airlocks.
Honestly, there aren't even enough doors to go around.
Not wishing to speak ill of my forebears, I must undertake the important task of planning and constructing adequate security measures. I hope to all put in place a framework so that my eventual successors might be able to continue and extend these measures as we delve deeper into the earth.
Even as the first day begins, I already know the first order of business: A vastly deep stairwell currently plunges deep into the ground, piercing into a layer of underground caverns. These deep running stairs are not isolated in any way; positioned in the very middle of the fortress, they're not even blocked up by doors.
Moving the entire stairwell is too great of an undertaking. Instead, we will terminate the shaft before it enters the caverns. Here, we will also add a double airlock, from which we may safely continue the passage downwards. Should any threat to the fortress emerge, the lower levels of the fortress may be sealed away, protecting its residents from the giant spiders that allegedly reside below.
The second project that we will undertake is the designation of safe areas to which the population may retreat in the case of overwhelming danger. An ideal location for this would be the dormitory level, just below the above-ground constructions of the fort. In an emergency, the population will retreat into this level and seal themselves in, hopefully with a reasonable stock of provisions.
The last order of business is to figure out a situation with burials. We've got a corpse lying up top, and its kind of starting to smell.
Summer has come, and it's time for me to update my journal. Progress on the fortress was both quick and astoundingly slow.
In terms of fortress security, some of the primary measures are in place. The old stairwell into the caverns has been completely sealed off, and the planned double airlock as been successfully constructed and hooked up. Not that it does much at the present, seeing as the offshoot passage downwards hasn't yet been extended. Mostly, it's a dead end.
This season was rife with panic, mostly trying to accommodate a wildly moody dwarf that I honestly cannot be bothered to remember the name of. Either way, they're currently running around the fields outside of the fortress, completely naked. The taverns patrons are as confused as I am. I understand that delays in procuring glass can be frustrating, but I don't see how this is going to expedite the process.
These delays mostly come down to the lack of means for procuring sand, a vital component in the production of glass. To date, we've still not managed to get any sand going, what with all of the bags we've produced spontaneously filling up with seeds. I'm still trying to figure out at the culprit behind this mischief.
The lack of any bags, cloth, or thread in the first place didn't help the situation either. We've now spent the better part of a month scrambling to set up pipelines for cloth production and churning out bags as quickly as possible. And not without merit! Sheep having been rushed in and out of the fort and their wool now binds together some lovely new woolen bags. Which are full of seeds.
Why are the bags full of seeds.
On the bright side, we got a whole bunch of coffins set up in record time. It only took some 4 days to lug the corpse of whattheirface into a coffin. That's what we like to call dwarven efficiency.
The population of the fort has swelled significantly, up to a lofty total of 83, between the spring migration wage and steady trickle of petitions for residence. Thus far, provisions such as food and drinks, as well as accommodations and luxuries appear to be in sufficient supply. Some more beds and doors needed to be ordered, but everyone seems to be settling in.
Plans for the coming season are to get our wool production up to snuff, fix our supply of bags, and begin collecting sand. We don't yet have a proper area set up for our sand harvesting ventures, but the burial chambers seems to have plenty of the stuff, so it'll do. And if everything goes as planned, maybe we can even start producing green glass before the summer is out. Having glass crafts to trade for the autumn season would be highly desirable.
Oh. And I think one of the residents died? I'm not quite sure. Either way, the lunatic running our the riverbed will be soon.
We're gonna need to build some more coffins.
Kubuk Ostolin, the child, has been striken by melancholy.
For no discernable reason.
Autumn has come. It's been a busy season.
We've lost a couple of rampant dwarves since my last entry, but that's mostly fine. They were being particularly productive anyway. Not to mention, our population is ballooning, with more of the folk migrating in, as well as the permanent residents of our tavern petitioning their stays.
Our trader has crafted an artifact of great worth only a few days ago. While the quality of the item is stunning, and the detail of its decoration remarkable, there is a slight problem: It's absolutely useless.
Who wants a solid gold toy axe? Seriously, what is the point of this thing? It's covered in gold spikes and sheep's bone, and is absolutely useless as both a toy and a weapon. I simply do not understand.
In other news, we're running short on drink. It seems that the dwarves had been given strict instructions on the drinks to be brewed in the quotas they must fulfill. And our gatherer's have been working tirelessly to ensure that the fort is stocked with ample foodstuffs, most recently, a haul of cherries. What is the problem, then? Well, some bureaucrat decided that fruit aren't plants, and we can't be brewing drinks from that.
I've now got two separate sets of instructions queued up, to brew drinks out of each of plants and fruits, because apparently cherries just aren't plants.
On a separate note, I've started a bit of work on our metalworking industry. Thus far, we've only found gold, which on it's own is quite the find! I'm certain that its worth and value will bring the settlement nothing but fortune!
Oh, and we're running out of clothes. Should be pretty simple to get that solved though. How hard can getting a bit of cloth be?
It's winter, and things have been going relatively smoothly. We're sorted out the drinks situation now, with both fruits and plants being brewed. This is good, and our stores are quickly replenishing. My hope is to build up a surplus of drinks, as the dwarven caravan's that visited us this year were happy to pay a steep markup on alcohol.
Also on cheese, which I've started a production pipeline for. We've got sheep to milk, and I've expanded our production floor to accommodate an additional workshop to be able to produce cheese. This should also help with the textile industry, which is starting to get off the ground, although isn't yet reliable or automated.
Still, we've gotten a bit more clothes into circulation (at least, enough that no dwarves risk going naked anymore), and are focused on pumping out bags again. I really wanna get those glass furnaces going, which have sat idle since spring.
Also, as a memo to my successor: If you find yourself confused by the large collection of rooms just below the production level, those are just our quarry. Gotta get gold and gems from somewhere.
Speaking of gold, there seems to be fair bit of the stuff around, although it seems to be only present near to the surface. So far, we've not found any deeper metals, but we've not really ventured downwards beyond the cavern network that was discovered before my time. Probably going address that this season. Mostly because I'd like to make sure there's a proper airlock isolating the levels below the caverns, for the sake of safety.
There's also the matter of the potential... Miscalculation on my part. Well, There's an awful lot of performers in the tavern.
A lot of performers. Dancers, poets, musicians... And they just keep performing.
I'm finding it hard to get most of the dwarves to do anything. They just sit around and listen to the poetry all day.
It's taken the better part of four months to fulfill an order of 10 stone mugs.
My tenure as leader of this fort is finally over. Winter has rolled around and everything is going smoothly. We're now brewing meed, pressing honey, creating leather and textiles, and doing so mostly with automated processes in place. If one were to describe things, they be going... Well, they'd be going surprisingly, smoothly.
We've apparently already reached the pinnacle of our beekeeping industry, with the specialist reporting that we can have no more colonies. That doesn't entirely make sense to me - there's plenty of space to add more hives - but I'd rather avoid the dreaded "bee experience". What we've got will have to do, and it seems to be enough to get a bit of the mead flowing.
On a related note: Cheese! Yes, we're producing lovely, golden, sheep's milk cheeses for both consumption and export. The dwarven traders that came around in the fall seemed to be particularly interested in these, willing to pay well over double their value!
There's ample living space, food and drink supplies, and the over all mood in the fortress is rather cheery. I don't think I'm leaving my successor with any particular baggage to deal with, so it's up to them to grow us out rapidly.
This final entry shall be a short one. There's no much to say, and I've fulfilled most of the goals I've set out before myself. The fortress thrives, but this chapter of its history comes to a close.
Maybe I'll serve another term in the future. My old village calls me home, and to there I return.
To my successor:
Best of luck. We finally have enough bags to collect sand.
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