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We've started the construction of a new entrance to the fortress, the old entrance will be closed once it's finished. The new entrance will be wider and is more strategically placed. It should be able to handle more traffic, which actually is of no use at all, with the number of active dwarves we have right now. There are other advantages though, first and foremost is that we can smuggle all the loot from the destroyed caravan into the fortress without Kib Halltraded seeing any of it. The outpost liason is still in the current entrance hall/hospital/storage area waiting for Bralbaard to wake up. He's mad enough without us looting his caravan.
The caravan is filled with usefull stuff: plenty of barrels with wine and beer, cheese, plump helmets, and various kinds of meat. There's also an extra anvil, several weapons, some good pieces of armor, and *lots* of other stuff.



The only problem is that the wagon broke down far from the camp, it takes three days to haul a single object from the wagon and with only three of us we will never get the food inside before it rots away. We've dug out a temporary storage room below the wagon, where we can keep the food cool untill we have the time to drag it home.

Healthcare is still taking a lot of time and Ushat has started complaining:

The others are saying that she (I only now notished that Ushat's a she, but then, the difference is hard to tell) is acting like a *** but whe have no choice really, she's the only one that can mine and fight properly, so she is relieved of healthcare for now.
Ushat proved her worth by killing a few skeletal carp that were threatening to disturb our looting activities.

Immigrants have arrived! Why anyone followed us here is hard to understand, they're probably clueless about what they are running into, and they certainly are running into something. The 8 migrants are ariving from the same direction as the caravan did, and not suprisingly head straight towards the same herd of skeletal deer. The unholy deer instinctively jump on the weakest member of the immigrants, young Urist Gearedraked, a peasant. He is knocked unconcious and is bleeding badly. The other immigrants are too shocked too respond, except for one dwarf, with, given the situation, the rather unfortunate name of 'Tholtig Deerlashed'.  The other dwarves had been making fun of his name during the entire journey from the mountainhomes, and he seemed determined to prove them wrong. Deerlashed jumped on the skeletal deer with fierce determination, tearing of skulls, breaking bones and shattering spines. He single-handedly killed all four undead deer.




A new hero was born. Also the immigrants certainly had now received a proper introduction to the fortress. Urist is recovering in the hospital

According to our callendar winter should have arrived by now, temperatures however remain above freezing. Even the seasons here are unlike those at the mountainhomes. It has started raining though.

Here's the story so far:

Bralbaard Bridgeriddles, self appointed leader of the dwarven expedition "The Rack of Wine" that was to found the city of Halltraded was standing on a lump of volcanic rock, with his fellow expedition members gathered around him.  The others were currently not too happy with his leadership.
"You can't be serious Bralbaard, are you sure this is the right spot?, have you been drinking too much wine again?" cried Inod Empireorb, the juweler, while gesturing wildly at the surrounding landscape. The dwarves were standing in the sulphurous fumes of a nearby lava lake on a slight elevation that offered a view of the terrifying landscape below. For as far they could see the landscape was covered with dead trees and bushes. The valley was cut in half by a huge river. There was not a living creature in sight, but the water was stirring with activity. Large undead fish jumped up out of the river, and even crawled up the shores and surrounding hills. In death, it seemed these creatures were no longer  bound to the water, the hills appeared to be crawling with skeletal carp.



"I'm not going fishing for those undead!", Cog Boltswelters the Fisherdwarf, cried out. Bralbaard, trying to sound convincing, replied: "Those undead can't be that bad, how much dammage can a fish do, once it's out of the water? Besides with these skeletal carp around we'll certainly be free of nobles and taxcollectors. They'll never come and visit us here with....

At this point Bralbaard was rudely interupted by a skeletal grizzly bear that jumped at him from behind a nearby hill. The creature hit Bralbaard full on, and send him flying into a nearby dead tree, Bralbaard dropped down and lost consiousness. There was no time to panick. Atír Apeboat,  the woodworker, and Ushat "Maggarg" Combinedcity, the woodcutter grabbed their axes and charged at the foul beast. The undead bear however slammed Atír aside with a mighty blow; the woodworker landed several meters away, unconscious, with his leg in an imposible position. The bear, not slowed down by this effort, now charged at Inod Empireorb, and bit of his left arm, the jeweler squeeled, and passed out. With three dwarfs down the remaining four saw that they would only survive this if they worked together.
Vucar Tonedsack the stoneworker, Besmar parchedbolt the fishcleaner and Cog bogswelters, jumped on the bear and tried to pin him down, while Ushat hacked at the bear with his axe, slowly taking the struggling undead appart bone by bone. Finally it stopped moving.

There was no way back now, with Bralbaard, Atír and Inod unconscious and in need of medical attention, they could not move on to settle elsewhere. Ushat yelled at the other dwarfs: "we need to do something quickly, before they all die!."Besmar! build them some beds!, Vucar!, grab Bralbaard's pickaxe and hack out a cave!"
"I'm a fishcleaner, I don't know how to build furniture!" Besmar complained. Ushat argued that Atír, the woodworker was unlikely to build his own bed while being unconscious and all, and that they had no choice. After a while Besmar showed up with three pieces of furniture that somewhat resembled beds, it was probably good that their occupants were unconsious and unable to complain about the quality. Vucar *tried* to grab Bralbaard's pickaxe, but despite the fact that their leader was unconsious he still held a firm grip on his pickaxe. Vucar pulled and pulled but it was impossible. The miner could not be seperated from his tool.

Luckily they brought a spare pickaxe, Vucar however did not seem to know how to use one. Digging through the hard felsite rock took the inexperienced dwarf forever. They put the beds in the small cave after it was finally dug out, and filled the rest of the room with food from the wagon.
 There was suprisingly little food, only a barrel with dog meat, a few fishes and some plump helmet. It wouldn't last untill halfway the summer (I started without selecting starting gear) There were a few small ponds away from the river, seemingly free of undead. Cog had spotted living (!) turtles in the water, and he and Besmar went turtle hunting. They struggled to keep up with demand from the fortress, it would however likely take longer to build a farm and irrigation, and get a harvest out of it. (I wouldn't know actually, I'm a newbie who never build a working farm before :-p)

On the 25th of Slate, mid-spring, the dogs suddenly started barking. When Ushat rushed outside to see what was going on both of them had already been killed by a skeletal pike. The undead fish had somehow climbed out of the valley, denying the waterbased life style of it's living brethren. Ushat destroyed the undead and sighed. At least they had more dog meat now.


The rest of spring and summer were marked by a few small attacks of undead foxes and racoons, the unholy carp and other dead fish mostly stayed down in the valley or on the hill on the opposite side of the river. The four remaining dwarves lost a lot of time carrying water and food to their hospitalized friends. As a result the fortress was build as compact as possible with stockpiles set up in every available space including the narrow corridors.



There simply was no time to dig out a large fortress. Meanwhile Cog and Besmar had developed a disliking to each other, and were yelling and swearing while processing the raw turtles. While everybody was busy with all this they also had to try and produce some trade goods for the caravan that would be sent after them from the homelands, it would arrive this autumn. The fortress barely produced enough food for it's own population, there would never be enough to survive winter if migrants arrived. Also they currently had no liquor production at all, they had even decided to give the unconsious dwarves water instead of beer, to stretch the little resources they had. They needed the trade caravan badly.

In early autumn disaster struck. While fishing, Besmar saw two skeletal carp crawling up the hill straigth towards the fortress, He quickly realized that he was the only dwarf that was not sleeping or unconsious. Unarmed, he threw himselves at the carp to break their unliving bones, the creatures leapt at him and bit him in the stommach and back, yet Besmar refused to give in. Determined to save his companions, he tore the creatures apart. After the battle he staggered home, collapsed on his bed and lost consiousness.

The other dwarves had still not healed, Besmar said the lack of beer must be the cause, every dwarf knew that drinking water was not healthy. Cog however claimed that the poor quality of the beds that Besmar had provided were to blame. Their relation was clearly not improving. There were now only three dwarves left that had to keep the fortress running, while also taking care of the wounded.
Finally however the trade caravan showed up on the horizon. Cog recognized from this distance that the redbearded, superdwarvingly tough Kib Halltraded was leading the trade expedition from the mountainhomes. (Is it usual for the outpost liaison to be named after the fortress or is this just an unlikely coincidence?). It seemed that the words "inaccessible site" seemed to be no part of the vocabulary of Kib, he seemed determined to steer two fully loaded wagons through the dense unholy forest towards the fortress. Cog, Ushat and Vucar had all ran outside to look at the caravan, they were all waving and gesturing to Kib to take another route but it was too late, the caravan ran straight into a large herd of skeletal deer. It was horrible. Screams filled the valley as the deer tore the first wagon to pieces. The second wagon turned around and fled back towards the mountainhomes, luckily all dwarves escaped unharmed. Only Kib Halltraded was determined to reach the fortress, if only to demand an explanation for the horrible situation here.  He fought himself a passage through the herd of undead and arrived at the fortress screaming with rage. When he opened the door to the fortress he suddenly stopped, as his rage was overtaken by confusion and utter disbelief, he had never seen such a mess. The entrance hall to the fortress was partly used as a hospital for the unconscious wounded population of the fortress, the rest of the room was used as a stockpile for random craftwork and furniture of the most appaling quality. A dwarf was busy trying to force-feed one of the unconsious dwarves a piece of turtle meat.
"I demand an explanation immediately!!" Screamed Kib at the dwarf. The fisherdwarf looked at him sheepishly. "All right, Urist, Tell me who is in charge here! the dwarf in charge will take full responsibility, Let me talk to him now!!". Cog pointed at the unconsious Bralbaard, the dwarf was snoring loudly, pickaxe still firmly grasped in his hands: "you'll need to talk to him, sir"
Finding a flaw in his own statement, Kib had no other option than to wait at the bed of the unconsious miner.

--Anyhow that's all so far, if I can get the stuff from the destroyed wagon without getting killed I should have a decent chance at survival. I'll try and take more screenshots, the next time around.