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That was an excellent set of updates, Arkan15.  I liked the way you kept the main character consistent, but also had him change - descending further and further into megalomania.  The series of entries describing growing dissatisfaction and eventual ousting also worked well.

Oh, cool, you're going to make an underground forest.  Armok knows this particular fortress will have a use for one!

Loved the "I didn't expect to choose a female dwarf" bit.  It took me almost the entire year to figure out that As, Erod, Cemir, Zaran, Ognu, and even Thakom were *all* female.  Seven out of eight.  If it weren't for odd-man-out Thimeth, we'd be a pure-Amazon burg.

Mid-Sandstone:

The traders start packing up.  Zaran gathers us all around her metal forge.  There, she climbs up on a slag-heap and sweeps her hand to indicate the six bars of bright bronze she's smelted.  We all applaud - who could not at such a work? - but she's not done.

"Fellow citizen-dwarves of Palath-halir, we stand here at the beginnings of greatness.  I have never witnessed, heard, or read of such wealth in ore and crystal as we have here!  The silver-mountain of Zarak-zigil?  Overrated!  The gems of deep Gonofar, the "Diadem of Kings"?  Not so clear and bright as those we mine!  The pure copper masses of Tarmentazad?  The seams of ice-moated Turmin'Giltar?  We have the riches of both and more!  Here are the firstfruits.  The first bar becomes a spear for our noble leader, Ebe.  That leaves five.  What shall we make with them, O most long-bearded of dwarves?"

We dwarves just love this "What shall we make?" game.  We pull up chairs, we roll up kegs, we roast pop-slugs over a fire and jump into the action.  Speeches for and against, refereed (and scored) shouting matches, challenge-screaming, table-smashing, flowery eloquence (and thrown dimple cups), ... basically, we blow the whole day devising the following list:

1 spear
2 crossbows
2 war hammers
1 battleaxe

With a prayer to the Forger Unforged, Zaran heats the metal.

Mid-Sandstone:

The traders pack up.  At their last dinner with us, they speak with grudging respect of the great ox-wagon caravans of human merchant-princes lumbering, heavy and well-guarded, on the great trade routes that form a web between our cities and theirs.  Cemir puts down her mug to listen.  She must have been enthralled because I manage to sneak the drink right out from under.

Late Sandstone:

Thimeth and I mostly finish carving out the area I plan to have furnished by the end of the year.  We join most of the others in hauling furniture to furnish the vast caverns - empty except for an amazing quantity of ore.  Ognu is left off the rotation; she has enough to do in linking up levers.  Just as the month turns, she puts the finishing touches to her and Cemir's great work:  A bridge, completely faced with veined marble.  She estastially pulls the final lever and the side bridges rise, forming walls.  Cemir's gotten me to mobilize and try to stand on the edge of the bridge; I can't, which means a flood can't throw me off.
     

But all is not quite well around here!  Both farmers are lying at their ease!  Why?  Those two rascals are holding a "harvest festival" that's lasted more than ten days so far, despite a real shortage of helping hands to gather in the ripening crops.  Thinking bitter thoughts, I tell the six remaining dwarves that everyone not playing Kick-me-Kobold is needed in the fields to prevent spoilation.  I'm going to give those layabouts one more week, and then I mobilize their little fannies.

Early Timber:

Sixteen days of raucous partying end.  As and Erod get a bucket of water each and sober up.  They're great friends now - heck, they probably told each other all their life secrets - but I want some work out of them.  

Mid-Timber:

The six of us who can hold their drink - yes I'm talking to you! - have been busy enough for eight:  We've set up honest-to-Armok bedrooms for all of us; they're just temporary arrangements in the same grand chamber as our maximally primitive dining room, but each have some personal space.  The food growing and preparation area is about half-way furnished.  It's all very crude-looking - unexcavated ore nuggets everywhere, no smoothing whatsoever, not a piece of personal furniture except for beds sectioned off by hanging sheets of thatched reed - but we're all convinced that we're looking here at a future home worthy of dwarves.
     

Late Timber:

Cemir is just as glad to see something closer to real bedrooms as the rest of us are, but her brows are furrowed.  I ask her why, and she takes me on a tour of her workshops.

"Ebe, I've taken the words of the dwarven traders to heart.  We need a road.  I could head up a work gang and get us a dirt path in less than two weeks, but it would need replacing every year.  I could throw up a rough rock path in less then six weeks with not a whole lot of help; although that would last, frankly it would like like kobold scrapings.

Ma'am, I want a road faced with moonstone to our home here.  I want it straight and bright and beautiful.  I want to see every migrant who walks on it to high Palath-halir come inside already happy because he's seen something worth the gazing on.  To get it, I need most of us to fetch and carry, I need at least the rest of the year, and I need some food and tables and drink to stay near the entrance 'till we're done."

I muse on this request.  I muse on it hard.  When this particular dwarf dreams of masterworks, she don't mess around.  I sorta wanted to dig out a tree farm, I was mighty interested in fully shifting our operations well before spring, and I was eying potential spots to put a modest statue garden commemorating the founders, but the sheer absurdity of an eight-dwarf outpost building a road worthy of a prince enthralls me.  The chasm for all small-minded deeds!  What of the cost?  What of the time?  What of the jaguars?  We'll DO IT REGARDLESS!

I gather the eight.  "Dwarves, Cemir wants a road.  We're going to build it for her.  We're heading for the sunshine, I'm locking the doors to the river entranceway, and none of us will see a bed until we finish.  If I catch any of you headed past the cave river, you'd better have a leopard riding your ass, or I'll geld you to stop a coward breeding."

Raucous cheers resound in the cavern.  We race for the entrance.

(OOC: this job's going to take long enough without dummies trying to haul stone from the chasm).

Early Moonstone:

By the 9th of the month, all the last-minute scampering around is under control and everyone's mining, hauling stone, or dressing rocks. ... Or eating, drinking, sleeping, or wandering around, as the case probably is when Cemir and I aren't watching.  Ever tried to herd pixies?  We dwarves are just as bad - actually, we're worse, because pixies don't scream and throw axes when riled.
     

From left to right, we see a mason's shop (with a very happy mason), a moonstone pile (moonstone's on the way), a grey rock pile, a food and liquor stash positioned for easy access, and a bunch of not-so-happy haulers.  Can't please all the dwarves all the time.

One thing we don't see are any nasty felines.  There's only one in sight right now and he's far away.  Let's work fast before this changes...

Mid-Moonstone:

Thakom's had enough.  She wants to get on a few little projects of her own, and she just can't bear to see all these perfectly healthy dwarves tote stupid rocks for Somebody Else when they ought to be hauling willow wood for her!  She knows that she may never get a better opportunity to get a serious woodpile set up, and so fans my ear with a battleaxe until I tell her to go away and chop trees.

Late Moonstone:

A quiet period devoted largely to haulage of great quantities of stone and wood.  As notices a (relative) shortage of liquor and prepared meals and dips into our large stock of fresh vegetables to get dainties on the table and firewater in the kegs.  We currently have roughly 100 brewable units of plants in stock.  Even with the occasional nibbling on a tender plump helmet, that's still enough to make an awful lot of booze, which, cooked, will provide food for twice our present numbers for a very long time.  In fact, a quick back-of-the-tablet calculation shows that we have at least 10 dwarf-years of food and drink and possibly much more.  Farmer/Herbalist Erod takes charge of the stone smoothing needed to clear away the pits and outcroppings too rough to put a road over.

Early Opal:

Cemir falls ill from overwork!  (Actually, she went on break but that wouldn't suit the story...)  The rest of us offer to dress stone and lay roads, but she tells us that the first will be done but slowly, and the second but poorly, by unskilled hands.  Now that we have hauled the stone she needs she can take care of the rest.  Given more time and fewer cats.

Ognu plays architect just long enough to set up a raisable bridge in the now-widened entranceway.  She eventually plans to attach the mechanisms and set up the control system needed to fully block the outside entrance on demand.  What's got her puzzled is where to actually site the lever; we want it in a secure site to stop the gremlins, but also one near the main arteries of traffic so a nearby dwarf can run to the lever and pull it quickly.

Mid-Opal:

Thakom Orbworked is normally a tough, efficient dwarf.  She was smart enough to log on the far side of the river first, and only then to clear the near side, crossing the little bridge only twice.  However, with the trees all felled, she's taken to blissfully wandering in the wilderness doing precisely no work.  This is what happens when we get locked away from our indoor statue garden...

And now, she's attracted furry attention.
     

If I did not have lookouts scanning the wilderness constantly, Thakom would be lunch soon.  As it is, I have just enough time to race for the drum we use as a signalling device and wail away furiously with a stick on it, screaming for everyone to Get Inside Right Now!

To my horror, Thakom doesn't listen.  I stare in shock as she dances on the grass and the great cat comes closer...closer...closer.  Suddently a idea hits me!  Unlock the doors to the indoor statue garden!  Thakom delightedly races inside and we, equally delighted, watch as the mighty predator is bilked of its meal.  We blow rasberries at the slinking feline.

Some of us sleep.  Thimeth and I get back to mining.  Since we cannot get the road built right now, I've reverted to my original plan and that plan is to finish digging out the new fortress center.  Both farmers, supported by Ongu and Zaran, tackle the serious business of shifting and reorganizing our food stockpiles.  By next spring, we need to be ready to plant, crop, thresh, brew, cook, haul, and serve at our new site.

Late Opal - early Obsidian:

Cemir narrowly watches the scouting jaguar and comes back outside, aggressively pushing her project forward in the face of hazards.  She knows that she'll never get a road built in these parts without courage - and won't survive to completion without unceasing, lynx-like vigilance.  She dances in and out of the fort as the jaguar advances and turns away.

Our farmers make real progress in shifting the food and drink.  One of their maneuvers - stripped of the haulage jargon they seem to speak more and more - is to set the old stockpiles to accept nothing, but not to destroy them until empty for fear of spoilage.  I also see them whipping a clean rag over the meals that some idiot keeps lying around and and calling it a "stockpile".  And then they instruct the correct stockpile to take from it.

Head buzzing, I return to mining.  And see Thimeth.  He has grown wonderous fast these past months.  Strong and tough and Masterful, he is so greatly my superior in mining that I would not be honest if I did not admit it - and would not be a worthy leader if I did not now decide a thing:

"Thimeth, the two of us will not mine the ore we have so carefully set aside.  I have seen you, with strong and gentle hands, carve out a nugget to perfection.  I cannot do this, not yet.  You will mine the ore and gems ... and I will help haul."
     

Mid-Obsidian:

A giant skeletal jaguar relieve the giant jaguar on Dwarf-Annoyance duty and investigates Cemir's stone block workshop.  Cemir spends her idle time hauling food.

Mid-late Obsidian:

Hard work at hauling.  Hard work on the ore seams.  Hard work attaching the second floodgate so our new farm can be wetted.  Hard work, hard work for all ... except those damn-fool farmers who go on break again.

Ognu pulls the lever and floods our new farm.  We don't have to plant immediately - in fact, we could get away with not planting for an entire season - but the farm is ready for almost as much growing as we please anyway.  We DO, however, need some more booze within the month.

I retire as leader.  The fort is bigger than I can easily understand, the future vaster than I can well comprehend.  Greater souls, broader minds, more expert hands and eyes must make fair Palath-halir - bright Diamondlucid - all it can be.  And it can be so much.
     

Year end:

At the turning of the year, the eight of us again stand and clasp forearms.  Cemir leads us in a prayer to the god who created this world and us:

"May high as Hope upsheer our towers, our fair-dawning garden thrive,
May deep as Faith and dark as Judgment our unplumbed foundations dive.
May wide as Mercy, white as moonlight, stretch our fore courts to the dawn;
May we dare this, bright commandment: ‘Let it rise as it is drawn.’"!

(adapted from Runyard Kipling's poem "Akbar's Bridge")

[ September 25, 2007: Message edited by: Fedor ]

<<Ebe>>
Calmed down, we sleep the sleep of the hard-working.  Nothing like hitting a hard stone floor sweaty, exhausted, and proud.

Late Slate:

Soothed by the sweet darkness and quiet waters we all oversleep, but soon forgive ourselves as we see each other competing to be the one of greatest benefit to all.  As is now making beds; she promises a bunk for each of us by the time we nap again.  Thimeth and I are past the river.  We'll extend the main corridor well into the mountain, as past that natural moat is where we intend to mostly live and work.  Mechanic Ongu is most valuable dwarf right now; she has to get two floodgates working and do it quickly; we're running out of food.

Early Felsite:

On the 7th of Felsite, our farm is ready for flooding.  A door-locking and a couple of lever pulls later, and two very happy farmerdwarves are racing each other to be the first to get a plant into the ground.  Plump helmets will be our staple crop, but we have the seeds, the time, and the dwarves to get at least one crop of sweet pods and one of pig tails to add variety to our meals.  I get dizzy just thinking of the coming parties...

My happy thoughts are interrupted by Cemir the Mason approaching.  Cemir spent an apprenticeship with the flood engineers of Kingsmountain; thrown out on the street to make way for a nobleman's younger son, he nevertheless didn't waste what time he had.  She explans that, firstly, seasonal and accidental floods are two of the most dangerous things in a dwarven fort; apparently, more dwarves die to floods than to any wild beast.  She's already designed our new riverside gateways, now the floodplain is her topic.  Given that the raw materials of the cave river and its floodplain will be important to our prosperity, she earnestly proposes that we cease digging west and immediately set up two fortified floodzones, one on each side of the main corridor.  Both will only be accessable though a set of doors and traps; movement in and out will be carefully controlled.

I immediately detail myself and Thimeth to dig out her northern zone; we have plans for those herbs.  

Mid-Felsite:

Our farmers are hard at work.  Cemir the Mason and Ongu the Mechanic both shift their production closer to available stone as they exhaust the supply near the entrance.  The two of them have grown thick as thieves during the construction of the farm and now appear to be plotting something rather ambitious as a permanent path across the river.  The diagrams have more traps then I personally think necessary.  But, then, I'm not the boobytrap layer.  Leave hard-working dwarves alone, unless you want an axe in the head, that's my motto.

I catch our farmers wandering around between seed-planting jobs and lock them in the farm room.

Thimeth is also caught; he's grabbed our last turtle.  Now, the LEADER is supposed to get the last tender morsel, and his punishment now is to be cook for a while.  Dwarven wine, plump helmet seeds, and prickle berry seeds will be his menu options.  Boys are so cute when they sulk.

We also have two mules that need slaughtering.  We're short on labor (which is why we haven't done it yet), but now sweet Ongu is persuaded to become part-time butcher.  She is promised lots of time with her traps once we can get food on the table.  I mentally kick myself for not setting up an initial farm plot on the ground wetted by the intitial flood; would have let us get in a quick crop of plump helmets to tide us over until the floodgate farm could yield.

I wander past the kitchen ... and there find Thimeth sweating over a gargantuan meal.  He's stuffed in 25 units of dwarven wine - most of our stock - and two seeds to make enough food to feed the seven of us for half a year.  I congratulate him in front of everyone (and suppress my opinion of the taste).  The mules - and Ongu - are given a reprieve.

Of course, that does leave us with the small problem of a 5 unit liquor stockpile.  It might hold out until we get something to brew, and it might not.

We strike copper ore.  We also see tin right in the area we plan to excavate for our southern floodzone, and zinc not far south of that.  This mountain is really growing on me...

Late Felsite:

I dig out the copper seam north of the corridor but more than half of the metal is destroyed by my clumsiness.  Thimeth catches me wrecking a nugget and glares.  I'm still embarrased when I think of it...

Cemir sets up a statue just past the river and calls it a garden.  It's about the crudest thing any of us have ever seen - even the slums of the old country are better chisled - but it's what we have and we're grateful for it.  Dwarves without a sense of beauty are moles.

Early Hemetite:

Summer is here.  Cemir warns of seasonal flooding and so I brusquely order a farmer (all the tilled land now being cropped) to finish up the fortification holes in our northern floodzone and thereby turn it into a natural herb farm.  He gets let out when he is well and truly done the job.

Thimeth discovers a massive copper seam in our main corridor and just to the south.  He sets up "do not dig here" signs all around the juicest-looking beds; we'll practice some more before tackling anything so valuable.  I do the same with a Chrysoberyl cluster that looks wonderously rare and terribly fragile.  This is such a change from the old country.  None of the seven of us ever owned anything made of chrysoberyl; we would have given a year's hard labor to have something so wonderful as that for our own.  Now, with gems for the taking, we keep them encased in rock for fear of breakage.  So strange a change in our hearts has our change in fortunes wrought.

Cemir complains of having to drink from the river.  I sheepishly promise booze soon.  That what leaders are for:  hear the complaints, take the blame, and make promises.  You ask for a solution?  The solution lies with our farmers, who truly are doing all they can; all I can do is not get in the way.

Early/Mid-Hemetite:

We get a few days warning of the coming inundation by a slow rise in the water level beforehand.  I've locked all six doors on both sides of the bridges, but it's quite unnecessary; everyone except me is fast asleep on new-built beds in the barracks.  As the flood proper hits, it pours through the fortifications to the north, just as most excellent Cemir said it would.  I - O, virtuous I! - am beavering away south of the main corridor.  I'm getting more and more good at this mining stuff and find my Toughness increasing daily.  Thimeth became Agile a while back and - until I put him to cooking for Totally Unrelated Reasons - was actually more skilled at mining than me.

A little damp but quite safe, I gaze with quiet satisfaction at a more-or-less-tamed flood.

Mid/late Hematite:

I join the others in sleep.  When we wake, those of us who thirst must drink from the river.  There is grumbling in my direction.  There is most especially grumbling in my direction when I time my own thirst to happen 2 seconds after the first first plump helmet out of the field is brewed.  Here you see me guzzling.  My, I can pack it away.

You also see Cemir's latest project; a bridge faced with dressed marble blocks.  It's not the most impressive span in the world, but it outdoes the grey rock slab currently over the river as much as gold outdoes brass.  Since I can't understand her and Ongu's diagrams, I leave all this to them.  Yessir, I'm GOOD at this delegation stuff.

Early Malachite:

Thimeth taps into a siver vein!  We are finding treasures everywhere.  It begins to dawn on us all that, if we survive this adventure, we're going to be seven extremely wealthy dwarves.  One by one, we each take a few days off to give thanks to Armok, master-forger of the created world.  Newly marveling, newly hopeful, we return to our labors.

Mid-Malachite:

We miners have carved out both Cemir's floodplains and my own cloverleaf workrooms.  Thimeth gets put to hauling (everyone's gainfully employed and we lack hands to shift stuff) while I head deeper into the mountain to discover what mysteries it hides.  Ore and valuable gems are amazingly abundant and accessable; we can but wonder what kept the mighty crag of Palath-halir from becoming a magnet for brave dwarves long ere this.

Erod finds a quarry bush!  Quarry bushes are the well-established dwarf's best friend:  Good to eat, wonderful in stews and roasts, nothing packs so much good taste into such a small space as a stack of quarry bush leaves!  Yummy for our tummies!  But not this year; we lack bags and dwarves who know how to thresh.

As is happily taking a break from farming to brew up more delightful nectars.  He's offering free samples of not just Dwarven Wine, but Dwarven Rum and Dwarven Ale as well.  Productivity has, naturally, gone to the dogs.

Late Malachite:

A 1-gram dead monarch butterfly releases a massive cloud of miasma, disgusting most of us as we pass by the food-preparation area.  Happily, our stockpiles are unaffected.

Roughly 155 spaces from the front entrance I find what seems a void.  It is only with much shining about of lights that those I call realize what we've just found; a long - we cannot see either end, deep - we cannot see the bottom, pitch-black fracture in the mountain.  We have none of us ever seen such a thing at home, but we've all heard stories.  Most of the stories have unhappy endings for the dwarves involved.  Ongu the Mechanic takes a couple of days away from her mechanism-making to study the area and scribbles out a temporary plan of defence.  To no-one's great surprise, skull-smashing traps are featured on the menu.

As the Brewer has been hard and effectively at work turning fresh plump helmets and sweet pods into delicious alchohol.  Only lack of labor prevents us from making food and drink for an army!

Thakom and Ongu have a mutual project going:  "Make lots of cage traps before Ebe puts us to hauling!"

Me?  I am lost in thought.  I now know enough about the structure of the depths of Palath-halir to make major decisions on what our new home can look like.  My problem is deciding what it should look like.  In the end, I decide that I lack the skill to determine over-much and cut my musing short having scribbled out the following sketch:

We will not cross the chasm soon.  We will someday need to cultivate tower-tops on a large scale for reasons both of potential wood scarcity and outside perils, but our focus now will be on building a proper dwelling-place between the river and the chasm, with farms, food processing, Great Hall, and (temporary) living spaces all housed within a vast complex that should, hopefully, be convenient, defensible, and expandable.

This is my most important decision as leader.  I took it after seeking counsel of each of my companions, but the responsibility for any failure will be mine alone.

[ September 25, 2007: Message edited by: Fedor ]

The list so far:

1st year:  Fedor
2nd year:  Adalor
3rd year:  Arkan15
4th year:  (none)
5th or 6th year:  Turgid Bolk
5th or 6th year (2):  (none)

(give me a hour or so and I'll have the first few game months up)