Chapter 1
The Diary of Kipi
1st of Granite, year 101After two weeks of traveling we finally arrived to location known as The Strapping Hill. This woodland shall be our new home from now on.
Why are we here anyway? Well, our civilization has been in war for decades between different races. Goblins, elves, githyankis and so on. The problem is that now all those aggressive races have decided to form an alliance and now they are attacking us. This alliance combines the forces of goblins, elves, githyankis and fallen humans, though it seems like githyankis and the fallen ones are leading the alliance. Our task here is to establish a small outpost to protect this section of the border from any invading forces. The catch is that this fortress is supposed to have a limited population. By this we should attract as litle attention as possible.
With me came two miners, Confinedpaddles and Tourstops, carpenter Auburnroads, mason Doorcloistered, farmer Crazecloisters and Bloodtooth, former personal guard of the king. She is quite good with her axe and she also brought her personal equipment with her so we shouldn't be too worried about our defences.
We have enough supplies to last several months, the king was kind enough to give us some extra rations, but still we must start building as soon as possible. I have already sent a message back to the mountain home that we have reached our destination and it's relatively safe for migrants to come. So hopefully our population grows soon enough.
5th of Slate, year 101Our miners have finally reached the stone layers. So far they have discovered gypsum, sandstone and a vein of siderite. That means we have iron around here. That is good considering what is our purpose here. If we didn't have iron ore it would be much more difficult to defend the borders.
10th of Slate, year 101I was just informed that our miners discovered a vein of bituminous coal. That means we don't need to get too deep immediately to get our forges and smelters operational as we can power those with coal.
Now that we have stone for constructions I ordered the miners to start working with farming area and food storage. We need to secure our supplies before any migrants come so that we don't end up starving here.
20th of Felsite, year 101The farming area and food storage is finally ready. In addition we have our first still constructed so we shouldn't worry about keeping ourselves satisfied and drunk anymore.
Next our miners will move one floor down and make rooms for basic storages; furniture, crafts, wood, leather, cloth and gems. When those are ready we should start preparing the working areas for basic industries.
24th of Malachite, year 101The first group of migrants arrived Oilfame today. Honestly I didn't expect them this soon. No matter, the food and alcohol production are going already so it's not a problem. Besides, we do need more workers.
There were seven dwarves in the first group of migrants. Unfortunately only two were adults and they came with their five children. So, one big family just moved in. I wonder why the king sent such a group here at this point? Well, they are here now and that's it. The two adults were ordered to work under the guidance of Crazecloisters in farms as they had no skills useful to us right now. Or where would we need potash maker or soap maker?
3rd of Galena, year 101The storage rooms are finally ready and our miners are moving to third floor to mine out the industrial sectors. Unfortunately we don't have any crafters among us so we must hope that next group of migrants has one. Otherwise I just need to assign someone to be one, which is never a good thing.
27th of Galena, year 101The basic industrial sectors are ready on floor three, which is good. Now I think we should improve our living conditions, and that means dining hall, dormitory and office for me. When we get more citizens we should also consider starting the production of clothing. After all, we can't run around naked, can we?
5th of Limestone, year 101Autumn is here and so is the dry season. Well, I don't see how this could be considered more dry than other seasons as we haven't see any signs of rain since we arrived here. The pools outside have already dried up, leaving the small stream in southwest corner of our location as our only source of water. I think we need to connect one of the pools to the stream so that we have closer access to water when we need it. But that's not the thing we should worry about right now, there are more pressing issues to be solved before.
While mining out the central floor of the fortress, the floor which will contain the dining hall and such, our miners discovered a small cluster of native platinum. I don't know where we should use it since it's very rare metal. Again it's not the most pressing issue right now so I just ordered our miners to keep on working. I will figure out the usage later.
16th of Limestone, year 101Our miners discovered several other veins while mining; bituminous coal, siderite and tetrahedrite. So far this location has shown the signs of being rich in metals, which is always a good thing, especially when the metals are iron, silver and copper. And coal is always a plus, even when we start using magma to power our forges we will need it to produce steel.
8th of Sandstone, year 101Another group of migrants came today. Still no crafters so I was forced to assign one of the migrants to be one. There were four of them newcomers, one was made crafter, one was assigned to be our second mason and two were assigned to work in farm and food industry. This takes our population up to eighteen dwarves. It's not much but better than seven, at least we have all the basic industries finally running.
15th of Sandstone, year 101Our miners have finished their work at fourth floor. Finally we have a place where to gather inside the fortress, even though there is no furniture ready yet. But our masons are working on it.
16th of Sandstone, year 101We had a small problem with gray langurs today. There were a small group of those, coming here and trying to steal our equipment. Unfortunately two of those succeeded, though we only lost a wool cap and a glove. Still, we need to build a wall around the entrance as soon as possible.
What worries me is that Bloodtooth, the warrior we got, refused to wear the iron breastplate we brought to her. It was not her own and thus she didn't want to wear it and if I tried to order her to do so she just stood there. When I let her off the hook she went outside to her station point. Unfortunately the langurs were already gone by then. I think I have to have a long discussion with her about her behavior today.
14th of Timber, year 101So, after several long chats with Bloodtooth we finally reached an agreement; she claimed that wearing both mail shirt and breastplate were going to slow her down too much and she won't be wearing both at the same time. So, instead of using the shirt, I ordered her to wear the breastplate only. She accepted the suggestion and thus we have one spare iron mail shirt in our storage.
