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Year 1

Journal of Asmel Plaitchannel, Expedition Leader - 11th Felsite, Year 250:

Well, Ingor, so far so good. We’ve got several rooms set up, bedrooms even, and space around the workshops for walls just like home.

A large portion of these early levels is being hewn out of rock salt. Which means our workshops, walls, doors, tables, and even our mugs are being crafted from rock salt. Who’sever bloody idea rock salt MUGS was is going to get a rock salt mug to the head. Then again, it does add a nice depth of flavor to the dwarven ale we brought from the Mountainhome…


Anyway. I’ve never designed an outpost before, so my ideas are probably not up to peak dwarven efficiency. But they’re good enough to get us off the ground. On a, erm, personal note, I’ve been quite taken with Onol Daubcloister. We truly see eye to eye about most things, and love has unexpectedly bloomed between us. I’m not usually one to open up to feelings like this, so it’s very strange for me. While I was distracted by Onol’s courting, I forgot to tell everyone else to stop collecting vermin corpses from the cats. Now we have hamster remains all over the stockpiles and no one is dumping them in the new corpse dumping pit despite my putting signs on all of them telling someone to do it!

Mid summer
out of food somehow as best I can tell! We switched the farm from cave wheat to plump helmets, gathered plants outside to make meals but the meals keep getting eaten before they can get stored.


We dug down a few more layers earlier in the summer, and finally found stone that wasn’t rock salt or hematite. But for now, the food situation is much more urgent than finding ores and gems. I tried to ask Lòr to hunt, but she’s ignoring my requests. Maybe I should go do it. We need the meat.

20th Malachite
I have been informed that we have some plants saved up now, they’re in a barrel next to the dwarven rum so I missed them while searching. I truly need to consider who should take care of accounting in this place. All anyone can tell me is we have about 40 Urists of food, no meat, and 4 plants. That’s not acceptable.

After a brief thought, it makes sense to have Deduk be the bookkeeper. He’s a neurotic perfectionist, I’m sure he’ll do a good job for us. I’ll ask the others to build him an office. At some point over the summer, Onol improved his woodworking skills. He’s now an Adequate carpenter. I guess building enough tables, beds, and storage chests for each dwarf in the outpost was fine practice.

2 Galena
It took a few weeks after designating some mining tasks, but Deduk and Lòr are finally digging out the new hospital and hospital storage, and will hopefully move on to Deduk’s bookkeeping office before their next ridiculously long ale break. Soon I hope to be done with basic construction so we can get to work on improving what we have. Better temples, higher quality meeting halls, maybe even a tavern up near the surface!

But, for now…we continue mass-crafting doors for new rooms.

3 Galena
I spoke too soon. Migrants have arrived! We have 2 new dwarves on our roster. That should help ease the workload for us all. Let’s see what skills they have…

Etur Labordroar is a young dwarven man with some mining skill. He has an average sized extended family with 20 or so dwarves, great intuition and empathy, but he’s bad at words and can’t carry a tune in a barrel. Maybe someday I’ll make him an assistant medical dwarf, if he ever gets over his disdain for being told what to do by authority.


Tulon Helpgems is an odd dwarf. He’s a bowyer and a lyemaker, he’s a marksdwarf, and he left behind his family but brought his two pets–a cavy pup and a gosling. He made this journey with two baby animals but left his wife at home? Perhaps she will join us in another migration. That would be nice for him. Tulon will make a decent squad leader, I believe. With almost ten dwarves, we should start military training once construction on the new bedrooms is complete. I’ve heard some forts double their population with their first migrant wave! By the grace of Budam, I am glad that wasn’t the case today.


14 Galena
One of the baby alpacas we brought with us has grown up and is ready to be shorn. I am concerned about it surviving the winter if we shear it now, so close to the cooler season. It is worth a test, we do have two alpacas.

25 Galena
Deduk has been finished cataloging the outpost for a few weeks now. Looks like we’re doing alright for now, Kadòl has been doing a great job farming.


12 Limestone
I was busy assigning people to begin military training, when the caravan arrived. The merchant was swearing at me from across the valley, and it wasn’t until he got closer that I realized something critical.
I forgot to build a trade depot!!


While everyone is working on that, the outpost liaison, Monom Dancewires, caught my attention and updated me on some news from home, before asking what we wanted the caravan to try to bring next year.
Thinking ahead, I suggested some light armor, heavier armor, and some leather goods including water skins. There are not many hostile creatures around here, so far, so leather will be hard to come by until we have to start culling stray creatures.

Monom tells me they’re trading at a higher price for cloth and headwear for next year. Having shorn all four of our wool producing creatures and made wool yarn from their hair, this will be an interesting experiment to see how much cloth we get out of two sheep and two alpacas.

Upon reading the updates from Monom…we are not the only tiny outpost within The Infamous Room. Another has had its population lowered below 20. But, the mountainhome still has the vast majority of our population with 400 or so citizens. It’s still surrounded by human settlements and abandoned monasteries. One of the larger dwarven civs is at war with us. Perhaps that is why our population is so meager? I never paid attention to current affairs before, so I’m just speculating. Either way, he circled all of The Infamous Room's settlements, and even starred the mountainhome. I suppose I don't look like someone who can read a map?


I put both squads on rest, set up 22 goods to be traded, and now we wait for dwarves to move the items to the trading depot. Onol is busy doing his everyday tasks, but I’ve told him as soon as he finds time he should head to the trading depot.


...


Come on! I know Budam is important to us both, but you’ve been praying for a week straight! Sigh.

Oh, great, some migrants have arrived too. Another pair, bringing our population up to 11. I’ll introduce myself to them once we get these merchants dealt with.

Out of frustration, I undesignated the temple and took Onol off the squad roster. Once he put his waterskin down, that seems to have caused him to realize he was needed at the trading depot. I’ll redesignate the temple now so no one gets mad about not being able to pray.

Most of what we’re trading this year is our excess of rock salt, and the few crafts I was able to get Zon to bash together right before autumn started, so we don’t have much value to trade. We’re doing alright for the moment, though, so I’m going to make the best of the 148 Urists’ value our trade has.

The mountainhome has sent some interesting goods, but I think getting some training weapons (so we don’t have to waste time crafting them). I desperately want the silver kanzud they are selling, to improve the merrymaking in the dining hall, but it is significantly out of our budget. Hopefully we will strike gems over the next year and have higher quality crafts to sell.

Except…..
What?!


What do you mean you can’t take what I’m offering and that you’re 2,000 Urists over capacity!

Oh. Wait. It’s the rocks, isn’t it?


Removing those takes our value down to 112 Urists. Let me see how many rocks I can convince you to take…just one? Fair enough. Raw hewn boulders are the heaviest thing in the world after all. Next year I’ll cut them into blocks first.

Now, let’s have a look at our new citizens.

Rovod Matchedpaddle, who only knows his deity, the dwarf he arrived with, and Tulon the militia commander. Novice stoneworker, and the first thing he did upon arriving was go to the temple and meditate about gems. I think I’ll try to make him our gemcutter.

Cilob Fencedverse is much the same–only knows her deity and Rovod. But she’s an accomplished armorsmith and a plant presser. Her most notable skills though are in music. If I ever get instruments, I hope she enjoys them. (Author note: if we do start dorfing people, I’m going to dorf myself as her.) I’d like to keep her as an armorsmith, but we have a long way to go before our smithing enterprises get off the ground.

23 Sandstone
I may have made another novice overseer's error. I did not retrieve our goods after the traders from the mountainhome left. Nobody wants to touch them even though they’re not forbidden. I’ve set everything to dump, changed the dump square from above the pit I wanted to put the hamster corpses in, to a random place in the entrance hallway. But NOW suddenly everyone has decided “let’s move these hamsters that have been rotting since Granite!” Despite my handbook saying I can place a dump over an open space, evidently the rest of my citizens didn’t get the memo that I didn’t mean literally ONLY the open space above the pit. I’ve corrected this.

At least we’ll get our barrel and training axes out of this.

…I had accidentally told everyone to ignore items that were outside.
By the grace of Budam, I was much better at this job when I wasn’t also trying to start from the ground up. Someone else had already set all the rules, I just made sure it kept working.

15 Timber
I’m tired of there being boulders all over the fort. I’ve undesignated the stone stockpile, and made a 2x2 dump for stones. Hopefully the quantum stockpile effect I’ve heard of will work this way. It’ll make it much easier to understand what materials I actually have available.

I’ve also re-enabled one squad and they are on a training cycle now. We’ll hopefully be slightly ready if anything ever happens. But considering the only creatures I’ve seen so far have been badgers, I’m not holding my breath. Maybe this will be the start of our military might that helps us bring The Bright Trades down a peg, someday.

For now, it is winter.

—

6 Obsidian
Some damn fool cooked all the plump helmets, so we didn’t get any seeds from processing them into booze. Having to brew pig tail beer instead of plump helmet, because we bloody ran out of drinks entirely.

Luckily, my dear Onol is quick to learn, and he decided he’d be the one to re-hydrate the outpost. So far he’s doing a good job. But we quickly ran out of pig tails too, and we can’t plant those again until summer.

Hopefully the beer we do have will hold out, or Onol knows how to brew something out of surface plants.

Yes! Crisis averted. It’s no plump helmet booze, but quinoa beer will still keep us alive.

25 Obsidian
The alpacas have given birth to a baby. Between them and the lamb born earlier this year, we could someday aim to be the cloth capital of Dwarfkind.

1 Granite, Year 251

Despite my critical errors, we have survived a whole year in this valley.

It could be exciting if we became the mountainhome someday, in our relatively defensible position here on this peninsula. Unless goblins learn to make boats. But, for now, a small victory of survival is enough.

Prologue

“Well, something must be done!” the king pinched his eyebrows with two rough fingers. The Infamous Room was in danger of being wiped out in the next lifetime if something wasn’t done about it. At least two outposts had been destroyed in dragon attacks over the last 50 years, not to mention the surrounding wars and goblin ambushes. Thîkut Firstfortress had known nothing but stark ups and downs for his entire reign.
A gaunt dwarf whose beard was wider than his body stood stoically nearby. The King’s advisor lost weight from illness years ago and never could gain it back, which made rumors of him being a secret necromancer very convincing, though untrue. He cleared his throat to gain his lord’s attention.
“My liege, the mountainhome has a stable population at the moment. Perhaps sending out a small expedition crew to build a new outpost ought to be considered. It has been decades since the last attack.” His raspy voice echoed slightly in the throne room as the King sat, silently pondering his options.
He had 800 souls to his domain, while Dîshmab Helmsgrouped had practically taken over dwarfkind with his 10,000 citizens and nearly 100 settlements.


While there is strength in numbers, it also pays to have those numbers spread out. Could we really spare one whole percent of the population to try to form a new outpost?
“Very well, Ingor.” A weariness crept into the King’s voice that he didn’t like. “Send out notices to suitable candidates and tell the workers to get a caravan ready.”
“Aye, my lord.” Ingor Slashedcoals bowed, and began to leave the room.
“Oh, and, Ingor?”
“Yes, my lord?” He stopped, and turned to look at King Thîkut Firstfortress. The leader of the Infamous Room suddenly looked life-sized rather than a King, as if Ingor was seeing him as a mortal being for the first time.
“Instill upon these settlers that they must succeed. And if they ever grow mighty enough to take settlements from Dîshmab and The Bright Trades, they will be heralded as heroes in statues and engravings for all time.” There was something else that Thîkut meant with this message, but Ingor could not quite tell what it was. He decided it meant “We will check on you annually and you’d better be successful”, and included such in the paperwork he devised to make the journey legitimate in dwarven government.

---

Journal of Asmel Plaitchannel, Expedition Leader - Embark:

Ingor graciously gave us a map with some highlighted suggestions on it for where to put our new bloody outpost. Daft bastard suggested several locations within a day’s travel of necromancer’s towers! Didn’t he say that the future of the Infamous Room depended on us? So why send us to death? Whose side is he really on? I bet he’s a thrall, skin-n-bones arse that he is. Ah well, we’ll work with it.
I ended up picking a plot of land on a peninsula since it was the furthest away from other civs I could find that didn’t sound like it would end in me boiling alive in my shoes. I had no idea that the southern wilds were so hot!
We’re far from the mountains, but Ingor says there’s no aquifer and that the nearest civs are Elves and Humans, a few days away.

Good. Nice and safe, just like the King wanted. We have a long way to go, I’d best put down the journal and make sure everything’s ready. Ingor really hand-picked this crew, I expect us to do quite well before the first supply caravan comes that he promised us.

...

Well, we’ve finally made it. Somehow, with all our animals, stores, and dwarves intact even. Ingor gave me a letter before we left, saying “do not open this until you reach your destination”.

I just opened it. Bloody bastard named the outpost before we even got here. What kind of name is Sealrim?! Come to think of it, how much of this venture was even our choice? I feel unsettled and as if Ingor is watching us, somehow.



While everyone else sets up the fort and puts the animals in the pasture, I’m going to write about each of our new citizens of Sealrim for the history books.

Obviously, there is me–Asmel Plaitchannel (in the common tongue, anyway). I was an administrator at the Mountainhome so it was sensible for me to be the expedition leader on this fool’s errand. I’m close friends with everyone on the embark except for Lòr Wallfurnace and Kadôl Metallisten. Both consider me a friend, though, for reasons I am unsure of. I consider us kindred spirits.


Normally I’m not this good at writing, but something about these journal entries Ingor insisted I write has me coming up with words I forgot even existed. Bet he enchanted this book or summat. Anyways. I’m not too good at much of anything, but I’m pleasant enough to talk to so I do all the paperwork.


Next is Lòr Wallfurnace. She’s our everydwarf–she has a little skill in several necessary labors. Perfect for honing in on whatever assignment she’s on, as she’s already prone to do. She’s impatient with a bad memory, but somehow she’s good at conversations and has a lot of willpower. She likes causing small problems on purpose, and she’s always fidgeting somehow.

Kadôl Metallisten, despite her name, is our farmsdwarf. She’s adventurous, good with words and people, and avoids conflict. I think that’s because she is secretly a coward. I’m hoping if we get more settlers here, she can help with the administrative duties. Maybe she’d be a good trader.

Etur Tinwork (why did Ingor choose so many metal-surname dwarves for this mission?) is our physician. I have no idea why he is a physician, because he’s critically impatient, bad at intuiting what to do in a given situation, and has no empathy for others. But he’s friendly, and I guess someone at the Mountainhome decided we needed a doctor who makes people feel at ease. He’s rather scatterbrained, even in conversation.

Zon Thronefortresses is our craftsdwarf. He is also a novice warrior with a hammer and armor. I suspect he will end up as a squad leader once we get our military up and running. Of course, I’m the expedition leader, I could just tell him to. But he’s a bona fide pacifist who likes to start arguments, so maybe not. He’s not good with social situations–indeed, he’s prone to hating others, which is one of few qualities of his I don’t get along with–and is easily swayed due to his low willpower.

Onol Daubcloister is our woodworker, with a little farming experience from his youth. He has great memory and a great way with words, but his intuition and reflexes are not great. He likes helping others, but finds collaborative work tedious. Unlike most of us here in Sealrim, he can handle stress without breaking.

Finally, we have Deduk Diamondflies, our stoneworker. He’s rather similar to Lòr, but he’s a perfectionist who gets nervous in combat despite appreciating martial skills. Truthfully, he’s just generally a nervous, jealous dwarf. Letting him dig holes and hew blocks is probably for the best, at least until we find something else that suits him better.

Phew, that was a lot more writing than I expected myself to do! But now we have a record of the original dwarves of Sealrim. I hope to Budam Zefonzalud that we live long enough for this to matter. For now, it’s thunderstorming, everyone is wet and unhappy, and I need to help convince the alpacas to move to the pasture. I'll write a new update in a few weeks, once we've gotten things under control.

Hooray for the new website and for saving the fort with the RAM tool! I'm so glad you didn't lose Roomcarnage after all this time to a RAM issue rather than the fate it deserves--whatever that may be.

Definitely going to check out your site and send you some notes if I find anything that catches my eye setup wise.

EDIT: My primary suggestion is to look into writing alt text for your images, and learning how to write good alt text. This is vital in case someone has a slow internet connection or uses a screen reader. I am a user design professional IRL and I focus on accessibility features, so this was something I was primed to notice. You can totally get by without this, it'll just add ease of use for the long-term.

Overall, the site is straightforward, well laid out, and easy to navigate. Quite frankly, I find your text easier to read than the Imgur version because of your choices (tan background, black serif text as opposed to imgur's black background with white sans-serif text).