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Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 19th of Slate 168

Progress on the Tankard has finally started again. I have had the seed stockpile laid down and the drinks stockpile too. The workers complained about two dwarven children and another migrant lazing about outside it though. Apparently they hadn't got the message to enter through the fortress entrance rather than the Tavern in progress. I understand of course, who wouldn't want to go for a drink first thing as they arrive at a new settlement.

Sazir, the weird child has also started building whatever it is in that little head that requires materials from all around the fort. Lets hope its something useful.

I have been spending the last couple of weeks drafting, redrafting and drinking. Usually in that order. The planning for the new memorial hall has taken up a lot of my time due to some restrictions and rules I am going to be putting in place regarding the hall of the honoured dead

1. The deceased must have been a dwarf.
2. The dwarf must not be an elf lover
3. The elf hater is required to have contributed to SmallHands
4. The contributor must have been a citizen of SmallHands or been actively earning citizenship.
5. The citizen must be in good standing upon their death.

Therefore, a small portion of the old memorial hall will not be eligible for transfer to the new one. Examples include Vutok for his murder of Ex overseer Amara, and certain elves that a certain predecessor of mine should be arrested for entombing. In addition, as this is a memorial hall to the honoured dead

we will honour them

All entrees into our hall will receive the following: One statue depicting them in their life at their prime performing their proudest achievement or most worthwhile one to Smallhands.
A memorial slab or coffin as appropriate to the dwarf and chamber.

Those that have performed military deeds for the fortress shall be put to rest within the second tier of honours. They who gave their lives in order to safeguard our home will receive a Wall engraving of themselves serving Smallhands in addition to the previous benefits.

Finally, certain rooms shall be allocated for Legends of the Fortress. Each shall be customised to their holder's wishes, or if deceased to proudly display their life and glory in the finest of detail. Any unfulfilling floor engravings shall be removed. All wall engravings shall be determined by the owner. Floor engravings shall be left to the artist on the condition they are made from a different citizen's fond memories of that dwarf



Naturally, only myself, Nogood and Salmeuk have earned that honour so far.


Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 3rd of Felsite 168

The Hall of Honour has been laid down


The top floor has rows of alcoves dedicated to each dwarf. A statue at the back of each alcove depicting the dwarf, and the slab or coffin in front of them for people to pay their respects at when they go pass. Each corridor shall start at a nexus. Each individual nexus shall have pedestals in its corner holding certain gemstones for symbolic reasons.
Each corridor ends in a room. These specific rooms shall be made to tell the story of smallhands's crowning moments in our history. These rooms shall be engraved last and only after discussion from the overseer to the public. I'm probably being rubbish about this, but my artistic sense...isn't the best at times.

The bottom floor is split into three separate sections. The heart shaped rooms in the centre are for our legends of Smallhands. The eastern most rooms will hold those crafters who wish to be beside their artifacts they made.
The western rooms will hold the military engravings. The north will hold our ranged squads, the south our melee teams.

I drafted the plans to accomdate increased demand  as well, there floors above and below with undug space that can be used if additional memorials are required.

In other news, apparently Sazirs artifact was a tunnel tube earring. Unfortunately, this means Sazir has been irrecoverably tainted by the elves. I shall have to execute him. At least one of the kids was playing with a toy axe made of iron, a proper dwarfy toy.

Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 19th of Felsite 168

When Felsite came around I was reminded that I hadn't started yet on finishing the one outstanding issue from my last reign's production issues. Namely the military.
Our military is reasonably skilled. All 5 members of it. There's 3 ghouls in the siege breakers, myself, and Ast our legendary marksdwarf. I thought there was six but then I remembered to cross off Tholtig. Either way there's simply not enough of us.

2 of our 3 ghouls were training as normal, albeit as best they could with their falling apart bodies. When I asked about Rigoth, I was directed to the hospital- there I saw a sight that almost made me want to drink to forget: Malfoy the murderer, happily stiching up and treating some ghouls back together. Why couldn't he do that with our living dwarves? Mind you our only other option is Salmeuk, and if he's not around, I don't blame all of us among the living who have injuries from getting treated.
Looks like I've finally found something for our new peasant to learn. Medicine

After some chatting with the missing ghoul, and a walk around the fort, I ccalled attention at dinner that night the same way I always done. Slamming my granite tankard against a mat. I announced that from now on, all living dwarves not in the guard or possessed of invaluable or unique skills will be getting military training every other month. In addition, more ghouls are going in the military. A full time force will be training always, but there will be two backup forces that alternate their on duty months. Smallhands needs to get into fighting shape again if those goblins come back.

It would also give me a break from making clothing alongside King Zultan each month. Sure, the pair of us are churning out legendary clothing like there's no tomorrow but we shouldn't use all the cloth in the fort. Not if we are repairing our ghouls now.

Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 15th of Hematite 168

Hematite has arrived and with it, the realisation I hadn''t done a single thing to the smity or to address our lack of quality armour so far this year.

I needed a drink when I then realised that all the progress I had made towards training a smithing force in my last reign had gone up in flames over time.


Correcting this was important if Smallhands is to be glorious bastion of all that is dwarfy once more. I had our miners dig a couple of chunks out of the big open area to the south of the magma forges and set up three stockpiles to replace the old useless ones. On the left is low grade metal for melting. On the top right is military emergency. In here lies poor quality steel and iron equipment plus silver bludgeoning weapons. The bottom right is where all high quality equipment is going for use by our armed forces.

I announced a short clean up of all jobless dwarves to go fetch any equipment off the surface. While there shouldn't be any jobless dwarves while the Tall Bar is still be assembled, going out in the sun will be a fitting punishment for some of these slackers. I also laid down some smithing orders so I can manufacture some good metal furniture for my tavern after a previous overseer melted the few things I had.

Curiously, when I want on the surface myself, I found the axe I inherited from Tosid. This thing has quite the history, and its such a work of art too. I'm glad to have it back.



I think I'm going to use it on the raid next month.

My dwarf has a wonderful combination of personality traits

"She thinks she is fairly important in the grand scheme of things"
"She is quite ambitious"
"She holds well laid plans and shrewd deceptions in the highest regard"
"She values honesty"
"She deeply respects those who work hard at their labours"
"She really respects those who master a skill"
"She values military prowess"
"She respects fair dealing and fair play"
"She tries to act impartially and is rarely moved to mercy"


So she's offended not just because its insulting, but because it showcased nothing about her sills or achievements.
It was the fly on top of the pile of rubbish that was a memorial hall full of dwarves being kicked by camels and echinidas

Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 28th of Obsidian 167

Haha I can't believe it! My hypothesis is right! Souls do persist outside of time! Tholtig truly has my utmost respect for sacrificing herself for me and I'm sure she was grateful for getting to journey to Armok's realm without the possibility of being dragged back by necromancy.

I shall take her surname out of respect. Its better than Claspfought at any rate. That just earned me snide remarks about how I couldn't build furniture or what have you. Even so, she was the best dwarf out of all of them that I could have replaced. Nobody would object to having me around instead of her in any event.

My observations of the undead showed that the ghouls have their own souls trapped within, whereas the zombies do not have anything and are mere puppets driven on bodily instinct. The necromancy slabs said that when there is an abundance of life or death, time starts slowing. This led me to wonder why everybody felt the passage of time slowing down yet still thought at the same pace. The answer to me was that our souls must not be affected by time.

In order to test such a theory I brewed two special bottles of alcohol, designed to trick the body into shutting down momentarily while the dwarven liver kicks in. Alas the goblins invaded and I received the call to arms. So I drank the first while waiting for the green skins to arrive and felt myself fall into darkness with only the feeling of my body standing there. After what felt like forever I felt a second bodily presence similar to my own, I reached out to it so to speak causing its owner to end up slipping into my old one. The liver kicked in and here I am! Alive and well albeit in Tholtig's body.


Now for the second bottle to fix that



A wine stain covers some of the parchment

Bleh, that was horrible. My face is back to normal, I'm physically in better shape than I was but on the downside I'm a bit more wiry. Thank goodness Tholtig was similar enough to me as it was because I ain't brewing another one. I've had my share of terrible alcohols but very few have made me gag and spill some. It must have started to turn.


Right, time to stop writing and go say hello.


Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 1st of Granite 168

Everyone was miserable when I arrived at the feasting hall, those that were there anyway. I overheard that Nogood had finally gotten sick of his necromancy and cut his strings. With magma. Damn, I would like to have spoke with him concerning what I had learned. Still the man deserves his rest more than anybody here after what he's endured, and what a way to go as well. I'm gonna name my next brew after him in honour.

I turned to the nearest dwarf, Logem our legendary silversmith and asked him what was with the decorations if we are mourning Nogood.
"Its suppo' t' beh ahr new ye'rs party... 'lection o' new' ov'rser an' all tha' Rec'n"

He then dropped his glass and stared at me, doing a double take.

"Wai' REC'N? YE LIVE? -hic-"

I've never seen the man sober up so fast. Not seen a crowd do a double take like that either. Was it really 2 months since I died? Death means little and less in smallhands, but I got bombarded with questions about my survival which was horrible. I then announced that I was going to prepare the election.

Of course, by prepare I mean strike everyone else from the candidate list. I have a mission to do, and that is to return Smallhands to glory!

Starting with my tankard!


-------------------------------

OOC
For my reign I am going to do the following

1. Finish the Tankard and attempt a method of pumping magma up it
2. Attempt to rescue and if possible destroy the tower holding our soldiers
3. Fix the military armour and weapons
4. Plug skill gaps in the fortress
5. Dispose of some of the clutter in the trade storage area

It was a very somber new year party of 168. The sacrifice of Nogood and the loss of so many brave men and women in the siege had taken its toll. Even the Tavern Keeper had been slain, she who had taken upon herself the mantle of running the overseer elections year on year.

Tholtig was a bored, lonely dwarf. She had no friends beyond the giant blackbird she tamed. A single measly kill to her name- a giant fly. Barely worth the ink on the parchment. Perhaps she could gain some recognition if she ran the election. It worked for the Tavern Keeper after all.
The isolation from her family and lack of friends was getting to her. The ghouls in her squad didn't know nor care how to interact. All she could really claim was to be a fit healthy dwarf.



Tholtid then had an idea- if she was to run the election and get some people to talk to then it would do her good to investigate how the Tavern Keeper did it. Lets see...she always had a list, a specific scroll tube and careful notes about each candidate. They were brought out at election time and put away again after the day. Tholtig's absolute insistence on maintaining decorum and not wasting time "relaxing" drove many away and she sometimes wondered if she was too hard, but here they would be an asset!
Tholtig headed to the old Tavern Keepers office to find out the materials. Certainly the rules and regulations Recon struck certain candidates off for was in there! Alas to her dismay all that was in the office was writing supplies and designs for the Tall Bar. A cruel reminder that the dwarf whose quarters she was plundering was the same one whose ego in having statues of themselves in every bedroom was only eclisped by the waste of time that was the giant tankard.

Still these were some very nice quarters. Perhaps they were in the bedroom in her strongbox.



Tholtig didn't have to look far to find the key to the strongbox, and a rather large one at that. The key was merely underneath the weapon rack in a hidden slot. Quite a clever design but Tholtig was better than that. She opened the chest and peered inside finding several files and curiously two bottles of alcohol labelled 1 and 2. Tholtig shrugged and got everything out than sat on the bed and pulled the stopper in the bottle labelled 1. She could do with a drink, and what better than the Tavern Keepers secret stash? Every dwarf knows that the properietors of an establishment keep the best drinks to themselves.

The booze smelled of strawberries but it certainly didn't seem like wine. Thats it Tholtig realised- Recon must have made Strawberry beer! She recalls overhearing her grumblings about it one training session!
Tholtig upended the bottle and chugged it as any dwarf would. It was strong, incredibly strong, but so sweet! and...Tholtig was getting dizzy...and everything was getting louder. Time was slowing to a crawl and her vision swam. Her body felt like it was slipping away from her. Everything felt heavier and it felt like she had her armour on all of a sudden.
She opened her eyes when she heard the sounds of battle and what sounded like Vutok laughing. Wait that can't be right Vutok was crushed after he fell in battle?
She looked around, her left hand holding Recon's old military flask, empty, in her right a hammer. Goblins were pouring round the corner of the Tall Bar in front of her.

No this can't be happening, she was in Recon's room but then...was she seeing Recon's final moments?
Wait... was that herself in the tower window just then? But that was where she was stationed during the siege...

Tholtig looked to her left and saw Vutok there, surrounded by goblins and trolls. She then jolted feeling a sharp pain in her shoulder as a goblin scourge sheared through her armour. Tholtig screamed as two trolls came and started beating down on her. Blood everywhere, her blood.

that was real, the pain is real, the wounds were real. Was that...Recon laughing?

oh no, did Recon...?

NO

NOOOOO she shrieked as the Lasher plunge her blade into Tholtigs chest and she felt everything go dark.

Rest in peace, brave warriors. Vutok's brain was missing. Pretty impressive they got back up after that.

Indeed rest in peace you legends. Though I noticed no mention of my body. This will be an interesting final update...


Regarding vutok's injuries
it was actually his brain had only functional loss which is unsurprising. Feebleminded and psychopathic as he was

His actual injuries was losing his hands and feet (cut off), the front half of his head punched off (likely a bludgeoning blow given the marginal damage to lower lip and blindness of the eyes) about 3/4 of the back of his body from upper legs to just below his crown was all smashed and pulped and only minor bruising to his internal organs following getting crushed in the back.

and more than likely he still survived that until he bled out, grappling goblins with his elbows given he got brought back as a living ghoul

tbh given the lack of response from others I'd say yes. I picked up the save but between irl giving me little time to play till this morning and the siege taking forever to lift nothing much has happened

this has got to be one of the best fortresses I have been in. Year 9 probably being the best we had.

Look at it from the mountainhome's POV

Year 1: At the behest of the possibly no longer sane queen, 7 of the smallest dwarves are sent into the middle of evil to build a fort for no other reason than expanding the queen's domain so she has something to do other than grieve

Year 2: The first migrants are sent, and the diplomat reports back that smallhands is prospering, however the diplomat claims he saw the dead walk when he left.

Year 3: Smallhands is last seen being stalked by the dead and a great maze is constructed.

Year 4: The dead have invaded. The diplomat is also killed. Traders report back that smallhands has likely fallen or burrowed underground. There are curses in the air and evil echnidas stalk the land. There's still signs of life though...

Year 5: Human mcstuckwagon due to his stuck wagon doesn't get killed by the undead when the rest of his trade convoy continue to smallhands. He reports back seeing caged and defeated undead and the necromancers leaving. The report reaches the mountainhomes who send some armed migrants to reclaim smallhands.

Year 6: Traders come back home and report that smallhands was unable to trade and was otherwise quiet. When pressed the trader admitted he got cold feet. In response the traders are jailed, news of smallhands' survival led to several volunteers migrating to smallhands with dwarven optimism assuming everything was underground

Year 7: Elves report gaining good profits from smallhands. Queen sends lots of migrants once the news makes its way north. Smallhands is prospering

Year 8: Goblins and necromancers invade. The necromancers eventually leave and the invaders are driven out by the smallhands military. Its a proper fortress now! Smallhands begins an ongoing revitalisation program to clear the corpses and detritus.

Year 9: Smallhands destroys cactushexes and Glimmersanctum, ending a century long war. Or should have...the flow of time is still convulted, with two Nogoods appearing. The Queen does not care though and seeks to take advantage of this by sending some migrants to set up some hillocks near smallhands. Smallhands continues to become a formidable outpost, raiding goblins, kobolds, elves and necros alike, even capturing a cyclops

Year 10: Baron Salmeuk and Overseer Amara give the elves the boot. The Smallhands legal system is in uproar, with kingzultan taking charge. The humans prove to have a knack for tactics keeping the necromancers away from smallhands before coming to trade and slaughtering some werepigs.

Year 11: Due to outstanding legal issues, the overseer election ends up being mixed up with the animal pasturing list resulting in an Alpaca taking over. Nonetheless traders report that Smallhands has begun central heating and magma pumping.

Year 12: After successive repelled invasions necromancers were captured, however one of them, the infamous Spriggans had another card to play and enthralled most of the population. A tower is begun to build but thanks to the resistance of Zultan, the tower turned into a tomb for Spriggans ending his brief reign. Nogood the undying ends up taking over the fortress just in time for a giant to invade, a slab of necromancy in each hand. The mountainhomes never learns what happened to the slabs.

Year 13: The elf prince arrives, once more demanding limits to tree cutting amidst rumours of him sneaking where nobody should be going. Suspicious, the queen sends more migrants out to establish new hillocks just before dying. The new queen however immediately elevates Smallhands to a duchy. The greast asylum is furnished. The aftermath of the necromancer's hold is laid bare- most of the dwavres are infected or fevered for life. Smallhands seems to begin experimenting with reviving the dead as murder and crime begin to soar...

Year 14: Smallhands' latest overseer causes some legal trouble for the mountainhomes by executing the elven prince who was on diplomatic business for trespassing, attempted theft and necromancy. A monument is started amidst a wide ranging industrial and legal overhaul where nothing of any importance other than sock production was finished. A surprisingly stable year after the first month

Year 15: Alas, the previous year's peacefulness was shattered as much as the windows in the half finished monument when goblins invade. Smallhands also discovers the human representative was in league with the goblins.

Year 16: The latest overseer of smallhands condemns smallhand's population to a year of murder, zombification and ghoulification under the guise of dwarven !!science!! amongst the many incidents, smallhands military is decimated over time.

Year 17: Unrest and a strangely empty overseer candidate list leads to smallhands having another year without an overseer. It doesn't help matters that rumours of a ghostly alpaca stalking the halls are abundant. The dwarves finish the magma system and do little more than make the fortress tick over giving the Mountainhomes great concern given previous incidents of unrest... Fortunately as time goes on the Dwarves start getting less fearful, complete with a candidates list leading into

Year 18- our current year

Overseer's log of Recon Avuzning "Mineburn": 1st of Granite 187

DAMN THEM, DAMN ALL THESE GOBLINS TO HELL

except that one with the solid gold pike, I want to impale that one on its own weapon with my own two hands!




and this is our military status?


We have over a hundred dwarves constructing buildings! WHY? WE COULD BE KILLING GOBLINS RIGHT NOW!

A large booze stain covers the writing
....tually after much discussion I was elected overseer. Somehow. I no longer need to rage at the goblins. Not when I have the power to see to their demise through smithsoldier's combined might and metalwork.

To begin with: a count of our caged prisoners. We have 5 pages of goblins currently sitting unprocessed in cages ready to be used in mine and my fellow smith's testing, or usage in entertainment or live training of our military.
Roughly half that number is the current goblin invasion force and their beasties to go in our dinners. I reckon about 120 ish invaders with 240 caged, the remaining 100 is all the animals and cavern monsters that have been spotted roaming about.

The mayor had the gall to interrupt me about putting an armour stand in the dining room. Ordinarily I'd have told him to piss off, but then I remembered I'm the overseer now. So I immediately sacked him and put myself in charge.
my first mandate: all dwarves who have been throwing tantrums in the last year, or who have any military skill and no secondary profession of any importance are to start arming themselves immediately! Cruel? yes, but half of these idiots would be get themselves killed anyway and I'm simply encouraging them to earn some last glory to Armok before entering his halls.

Refill the military, we have a fight on our hands!