Spring 514:
The weather might be the same as ever but I’m feeling invigorated this spring all the same! Things have finally been going well for once. For one, some elves somehow found us and traded us a bunch of wooden goods that we are desperately in need of. We were able to stock up on food and clothing too. Our population was more than doubled when nineteen more dwarves arrived in Slate. Makes me glad I used the winter to prepare a bunch of new bedrooms to accommodate newcomers. To my surprise, among the new arrivals was the eldest son of the Baron of Boulderrace, Udib Udibamkin. Unfortunately, shortly after he arrived so did news of his father’s untimely death on the end of a goblin spear. So, now this hole in the ground is housing the baron of one of the most important sites in the kingdom. Had to hastily prepare appropriate quarters for him; hope he likes silver because that’s what he’s getting. More welcome among the arrivals were a number of hunters which promptly killed all the camels in the area, bringing our food supply to an all time high! On top of that Dakost, our mechanic, had the idea to erect a bunch of cage traps outside to catch wildlife to train and breed, and it worked! We’ve got ourselves a two-humped camel now. Hopefully, we can get a mate for him soon. Another good thing is that we’ve got enough people now that we can spare some for military duty and training. The problem there is that between the lack of fuel and how busy we’ve been we still don’t have their gear put together yet. We do have a potential solution to that lack of fuel issue now though. Inod and Ast finally managed to find magma to power our forges and furnaces with. The problem is that it’s deep. REALLY deep. 130 z-levels beneath the deepest level of our fort deep. Not going to stop us from setting up shop above it though. We’ll definitely need to find a way to bring it closer to the surface though; the time it takes to transport stuff to and from there is just far too long right now. Dakost has a wild plan involving an enormous stack of screw pumps that will supposedly do the job, but it’ll be one hell of a project and cost us almost all of the wood we have available to us. Probably worth it though; we’ll never be a functioning military base with the rate we’re producing equipment at right now. The Pages are counting on us, and if that means we have to pump magma half a mile to the surface that’s just what we’ll do. In the meantime, we’ve made a small moat utilizing that aquifer and walled off the entrance to the fort, so we have some defense should the Jackals attack before we’re ready. Oh, one more thing. Dodok, our master gem-cutter, produced the most amazing citrine gem I’ve ever seen. He even named it; “Boarobscure the Slippery Homage”. Not sure what’s so slippery about it, seeing as it’s covered with citrine spikes, but he assures me the name has good meaning behind it. In any case it should fetch us a lot of supplies should I be able to convince him to part with it the next time some traders show up.
Summer 514:
A human caravan from the Confederation of Cremations arrived, bringing goods and news with them. The news was even delivered by one of their dwarven diplomats. Courteous of them. Good to know that not ALL our neighbors are trying to kill us. Shame the news that they were delivering was so grim; more attacks, refugees flooding the places that haven’t been hit yet, the king of our kingdom dying during a raid. Not very heartening stuff. Shortly after they showed up we had 7 more immigrants arrive, including a master blacksmith. Once we have metal to spare to make things other than weapons and armor, they’ll be nice to have around. Speaking of that, we’ve resorted to making equipment from our leather supplies so we can get our militia up and running. The goblins have to have noticed us by now. It’s only a matter of time before they attack so we can’t wait on our laurels just because we don’t have proper equipment. Should have a couple squads ready to go by autumn. Hopefully, we have that much time. On a lighter note, the humans brought a number of books and scrolls with them and we were able to procure a few of them. We’ve set up a small library so that everyone here can stimulate their brains a little bit. Or, maybe just distract themselves from the heat and constant stream of stress and work. Hopefully, Dakost’s magma pumping plan will reduce the load a bit once its complete. We’ve got it all planned out now and have started digging the tunnel for it as well as manufacturing components. Still, looks like it’s going to be a long time before its ready. Could take a year or more to finish it. Hopefully we haven’t been overrun by goblins before then.
Autumn 514:
The yearly supply train from Boulderrace has arrived and brought with it metal and wood, which is what we desperately need. They also had a surplus of leather we were happy to take off their hands, and some more water buffalo to give our breeding program a boost. Less happily, they also brought more bad news. Even more attacks, more important nobles and leaders dying, more refugees fleeing. I’m starting to get paranoid as to why the Jackals haven’t come for us yet. Surely by now they’ve noticed us digging right on their doorstep, right? I’m terrified to think of what they’ll do if they learn the current baron of Boulderrace is here. Starting to really wish he wasn’t; he keeps making demands and him just being here is putting us all in even greater danger than we were already in before. At least the demands he’s making are reasonable. We can definitely use more battleaxes. We’ve got enough equipment to start training some dwarves for the militia but we need more still. More dwarves keep showing up and we’re running out of things for them to do due to the resource shortages. Kind of ironic considering how busy we all were in the winter, but there weren’t 52 of us back then. At least one of them was very nice to see though; a properly trained glassmaker. The only material we can make pump components out of that can withstand magma is glass, and we need a lot of pump parts. Oh, work on that project is going well so far. Hit a couple minor snags with the design and hit another cavern we didn’t know about, but Dakost was able to work around it and it’s coming along smoothly. Still, 130 screw pumps and 43 windmills are going to take a while to install, so I’m expecting my metal and glassworkers will have to be making the long trip to and from the magma sea for a while yet. Other interesting tidbit, our broker Adil showed me a mitten that one of the dwarves we’ve drafted into out militia made when in a strange mood. It’s an impressive piece of work, and Adil tells me it’s worth over ten thousand Urists. Which is kind of crazy to me because it’s just one mitten! I mean it’s nice and all, but what are you going to do with just one mitten? Oh well, I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if that horse comes bearing a single fancy mitten for some reason.
Winter 514:
The winter months were mostly uneventful this year. Digging on the pump project is nearing completion with no major problems so far. We’ll have to see if it stays that way once we start actually building the thing though. In other news, Vabok has taken to hunting camels with her teeth, imitating her hunting dog. Not sure what to make of that. Another oddity, one of the haulers got possessed by something and put together an incredible barrel encrusted with emeralds that Adil says is worth a whopping 55 thousand Urists. I’m just waiting for some absent-minded idiot to fill it full of tripe or tallow or something and ruin its value. I doubt I can get him to sell this one so it’s just one more thing on my mind. More than anything else though, I find myself wondering where the Jackals are. I mean, I know where they are, but why aren’t they making any moves towards us? We’re seeing visitors to our library and temple on the regular these days, there’s no way they’re unaware of us. Maybe they know we’re under-equipped and don’t see us as a threat? No, I don’t think so, that’s not a goblin way of thinking. If they see weak prey, they’re inclined to take it. They must be up to something. I just can’t think of what.