FORTRESS LOGS:
Fortress 1:
And now, the location:
It is a terryfying mountain range, as you can see. It's got a brook, an underground river, magma, HFS, and, despite what the site finder says, quite a bunch of trees. As long as we steer away from the magma men, I think we should be OK.
And now, the seven suicidal fools, I mean, brave heroes:
The first two are proficient miners, with john also being an engraver and FoiL a mason. Hyper is a woodcutter/carpenter combo. Big Cheese (me) is a proficient weaponsmith, with a bit of mechanics too. Duh is our main farmer/brewer/cook, Geti got all of the leadership skills and a bit of swimming, and Lobos is a wrestler/axedwarf.
We are seven "Criminals" exiled by the great King of Dwarves Fíma Lamaamala. Our goal is to build a freakin'. Huge. Fortress. (And maybe defeat HFS on the way.)
And the people participating: (To be updated)
1- Areku (ended)
2- Duh102 (ended)
3- Geti (ended)
4- Shadow (ended)
5- Robolee (forfeited)
6- Weasel (running)
7- Duh102
8- Areku
Ruler one: Areku
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Taken from the logbook of 'Big Cheese' Arrowholds, weaponsmith:
1st Granite 203, early spring:
Eh, we are here. Here in this ELFING CARP of world's end. Sure, I was extactic when I was told that I was being released from prison, but to be thrown here, in the middle of nowhere, with orders to "carve out a stronghold to protect our civilization from the goblin sieges from the west". My elf. Not even the goblins dare come to this hellhole, with all those magma men and giant eagles wandering around. I bet they just wanted to punish me even more. I really should not have mentioned that the king looked a bit tall to be a dwarf. I was too sober at that time to notice that he, king Fíma Lamaamala himself, was right behind me (I'll never know how he does that. He is way too stealthy to be a dwarf, too). But oh well, here we are. In future fortress of PaperSacks. Lousy name, too.
Most of the dwarves in the wagon were also sent here because of some crime or the other, the only exception being Geti, this fella who was "sent by the King himself to put some order on this mess" and says he's "got all of the several qualities of a natural leader". Dunno if that's true, but he was really sad when the others chose Duh102 to be their leader. Maybe because she's the only gal in the group. Most likely because she's the only brewer in the group. At any rate, she's asked me to run the show while she "starts planning the extremely complex architecture and decoration to be used in this fortress-to-be". Hmph, I bet she's just gonna lie around for a few months resting her lazy back while I do all the hard work.
I've chosen a small grotto by a brook as our fortress' entry. Should provide a steady source of water, in case we *gasp* run outta booze. Sent both miners to carve out space for stockpiles and so on. They seem pretty competent, but this FoiL fella seems to be on a permanent state of melancholy. He is a good chap, but seems always to be on the verge of breaking down. Gotta watch him carefully.
2nd of granite, 203
Gah! Cursed elfing carp outta this piece of elephant! I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY DID THIS TO US!
As I was looking through our records to see if we had really received amount of plump helmets we had hasked for, I found a sealed envelope with the King's seal on it. I just couldn't hold my curiosity, and opened it. It read:
"My loyal servant Geti:
By the time you read this, you'll be beyond the point of no return. The other dwarves should suspect nothing, but you'll have to tell them eventually. They were exiled, because they knew too much. My secret, our secret, must never be revealed. And I'm afraid that includes you. You are now a slave, sold to the queen of the Oaken sword, along with those other six. The plan of creating an exile fortress was a fake, I'm sorry to say. May you serve queen Alath as well as you have served me.
Farewell.
Fíma Lamaamala, last Elven King of Dwarves."
That carping elf was a CARPING ELF! I've told the others, and we've come to a conclusion. We ain't gonna be no slaves to no carping queen. We're gonna build ourselves a fortress, and it's gonna be the best. Elfing. Fortress. Ever. We will show that elf who are the real dwarfs here, and send him back to the dirty forest from where he crawled off. Mark my words.
15th Felsite, 203.
Progress on the fort is going at a steady pace, though slower than I would prefer. The food stocks have already been moved inside, and everyone's got their own rooms now. Some complain that mine is bigger than the others', but hey, I designed the whole thing, I gotta have some kinda privilege. Geti kept barking about how he would take his revenge on the king for exiling him, so we just gave him a chair and told him to update our records, to keep him quiet. I've also noticed some big metal veins on the surrounding hills, even a bit of native gold. I would like to make something out of it, but we've got no anvil, so I guess I'll do a bit of mechanics and build an irrigation pump so that we can get our farms started.
17th Felsite, 203.
The pump has been built. A mighty good job if you ask me. I've told Duh to start operating it, so that she'll just stop lazing about. Now, I've got workshops to build, so gotta go.
21th Felsite, 203.
Frankly, I think that Duh is my worst enemy ever. Last night, while I was checking our stockpile records along with Geti, a faint splashing sound was heard. As I opened the door to see what it was, a whole ocean of water poured into the office. I though the river had flooded or something like that, but then I figured out what had happened, and yelled "DUH! STOP PUMPING THE CARPING PUMP!!!!!!". The water immediately stopped rising, and when I managed to get to the surface level (Geti was already there, did I mention he knows how to swim? Creepy.), Duh was just standing in front of the pump, with the most innocent face I've ever seen on a dwarf. When I asked her what the unicorn she thought she was doing flooding the fortress, she just looked at me even more innocently and said "I was just doing what you asked me to, mr. Big Cheese!". I think she is actually an undercover assassin hired by the king, trying to murder me and make it look like an accident. Gotta watch her really, really carefully.
13th Galena, 203.
Stuff is going smoothly now. Duh started complaining about how the andesite still we had had the wrong mineral composition, and how it would ruin her booze, and so on. I just shrugged and made her a microcline one. Actually, we had a ton of microcline, so I've started the construction of a microcline tower. It's even got an open shaft in the middle, so we can add a windmill on top of it when it's finished. The dining room is also finished. And Duh finally started brewing, and she's a mighty good brewer, I gotta admit. Nothing else worth of notice happened.
14th Galena, 203.
Argh. I though my room was looking a bit barren, so I told John to decorate it with some engravings. First he made one of us seven travelling, to show our origins. I said it looked good. Then he made one of a seven-headed hydra, and said it would be our group's emblem, simbolyzing the seven of us working for the wellfare of a single fortress. I said it was really cool. Then, I looked away for a few seconds, and he had engraved no less than three portraits of Duh. Now that's it. If these guys are so fond of her, then they can have her as their leader. I am retiring. Gonna go fish a bit, fiddle with mechanics, but I'm done making these fellas work as a group. Though it was pretty fun, while it lasted.
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Ruler two: Duh102.
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14th Limestone, 203
Ugh, why is Big Cheese so mean to me? I'm just a simple mountainhome girl, haven't even been beyond my village's walls until I got caught poisoning Farmer Heslorek's rum... What a creep, he deserved it.
And now I'm stuck with a bunch of leery old men who keep STARING at me. Yuk. But enough of that, I just have to grin and bear it like Pops said.
Big Cheese, the lump, got tired of shouting us around and handed over power to me, so now I'm in charge of the lot. The place is disgusting! Rocks strewn about everywhere, muddy floors (though that's partly my fault ;D), and only a hint of engraving in Big Cheese's room. I set about cleaning up immediately, creating a stone dump and ordering everybody (including myself, I practice what I preach) to dump stone. Within a few days we had gotten most of it up and I stopped bothering the guys about the stragglers. They'll get taken up eventually.
As for the mud, I suppose that can stay. It'll dry up into dirt eventually, and it's not hurting anybody. I told FoiL and John to get to engraving the rest of our quarters and the dining hall.
I hope John doesn't carve any more nudes of me, the guy is seriously creeping me out >_<
20th Limestone, 203
There's a trade caravan coming from Kindastot, I ordered a depot built under a small overhang. I think I'll have to make some doors though, we have a straight hallway right into the fortress for any goblins to walk right in.
I widened out the tunnel to 5 and put some pillars in the middle to make two two-wide openings, where I had some doors mounted. Now we can be as safe as we want, just add lava to the outside
I also carved a channel to later mount a waterwheel, perhaps I can finally stop turning that confounded pump. I don't mind the work so much as the inefficiency. It just takes so much of my TIME to turn that damned contraption, when I could have the water itself do the work.
I'm starting to wonder if this trader is from the Mountainhomes after all...
"Greetings from the Mountainhomes. Your efforts are legend there. Let us Trade!"
He seems a liiiittle too eager to assure us that we're "legend" back home, when to my knowledge I never heard anything of colonies besides detailed accounts of their demise.
Blast, we have nothing to trade with enough value to buy the anvil he's hiding. I suppose I'll have to let it go until next caravan. Not that we have any metal ores yet anyway.
24th Limestone, 203
I don't know how Big Cheese expected Geti to keep records with just a chair. I hastily had some tables, cabinets, and coffers made for all of us and installed some creature comforts into all of our rooms. Statues will have to wait, but at least we'll have somewhere to store clothing. Which reminds me, if any of the guys comments ONE more time about my boulders, SOMEONE's going to get a boulder dropped on their head.
5th Sandstone, 203
Maybe we'll be able to trade for that anvil after all! With keen eyes, John (whom I will admit is a very good miner, despite his personality faults) found some citrine in the rock hills to the north, and by chance FoiL found rose quartz while digging the cavern for the gemcrafting station.
Scratch that hope, the Mountainhomes apparently are swimming in gems. They're worth a paltry 6 bits! Now if only Big Cheese McFatass would get working on the gemcrafting that he said he'd get to doing, maybe we could find out if they want cut gems more than rough ones.
1st Timber, 203
Well trading failed miserabley. None of what we had produced thus far was of any interest to the Mountainhomes, and the traders have left just as rich as they came. However, I have hit upon one resource they can't refuse- processed metals. Looking at the maps which I must grudgingly admit Big Cheese has kept well, there is a lava tube slightly south and very west of our fortress. I have ordered the construction of a tunnel to take lava from the tube and guide it right under our noses to reduce the trip necessary to smelt metal. Many nefarious ideas occur to me that I could accomplish with this resource. I shall have to keep them secret, Big Cheese was looking at me funny while I sketched plans for lava falls in front of the main gates.
23rd Timber, 203
We struck gold! I was in my room after ordering the mining of a tunnel to get lava for our smelters, getting ready to sleep. Without warning, John excitedly burst into the room with a chunk of rock I couldn't identify at first, since I was yelling at him to at least knock first. After we both calmed down, he thrust the chunk under the lamp on my desk and it sparkled like the sun itself! I've stalled final connection of the lava tube until we've mined and carted the vein into storage. It should prove a useful resource.
19th Moonstone, 203
I've commissioned John the Shrubber to make engravings. I suspect I'll regret it, but the other dwarves will like it. Our ranks have doubled in size now, an additional 8 dwarves have come in from the Mountainhomes. Most of them stink, I suspect they came straight from the jails. At least there are women though. In fact, more than half are. Maybe this will keep the guys off my back...
In the meantime, I've had the lava tube opened and it's currently making it's way to the waiting smelter and glass furnace.
4th Opal, 203
As I suspected, I regret ever letting John put chisel to stone. Geti's study is covered floor to wall in lewd pictures of myself and the other female dwarves. All over the hallway and in John's bedroom too. I had FoiL do my room for fear of John, and while his craftsdwarfship isn't as good, at least the gauntlets and abstract shapes he carved don't have exxagerated anatomical features.
21st Opal, 203
Sometimes, I just enjoy the simple pleasures of brewing. Pops taught me how while he was recovering from a cave-in. It was just me and him, father and daughter, and the still. Big Cheese doesn't know it, but I have to have a microcline still because that's what my Pops taught me on. The familiar feel of the stone takes me back to when he was still alive...
4th Obsidian, 203
A quick quip before I go back to farming. The other dwarves seem to have one-track minds. I told FoiL to make stone statues, and when I came back in a few minutes he had made a good twenty to thirty statues, and was busily making more. Suffice to say I put a stop to his madness immediately, and he just went about his business like he hadn't processed twelve tons of stone into statues in five minutes.
I made a statue garden out of the bulk of them, out in the open sky to combat cavesickness.
28th Felsite, 204
I've begun thinking for the future. I only have so much time left in the mountain, and so I've prepared a burial place for myself and taken care of paying my burial costs. I've been melancholy lately, I'm not quite sure why. Maybe I miss the attention of the men? They're all looking at the other women, especially the provincials who came in with the latest group of immigrants. I don't know where they found these girls, they're built like cliffs of basalt and have tracts of land to match. I have a sneaking suspicion the king sent them here to placate the men. It's working. Maybe I'm just feeling lonely at the top. I think I need to step down and find a nice dwarfenly dwarf to settle down with. Maybe Lobos, he's a good dwarf, always ready to take down the nearest Giant Eagle. In either case, I've appointed Geti the scribe to take over for me. He's been leering at my office for a long time anyway, he can see how he likes it.
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Ruler three: Geti.
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Begin Diary, Year 204, Geti Onulthusest.
I've started a little late on my Diary this year, as it is already Mid summer. The previous commander, Ms Zimeshzuglar has handed me control of the fortress, she claims that she needs to get back in touch with the people.
My first movement is to Redesignate an area of our currently unused block and bar storage as stone storage, to make use of the 22 idlers.
I notice that there is a destinct lack of smooth stone around the fortress besides in the bedrooms, so I start a smoothing project at the sculpture garden that will eventually lead down to the rest of the fortress.
I take it upon my self to appoint a sheriff, Zon Shaligtulon, and give him one of Big Cheese's Extra Dining rooms.
I also Decide that having twenty idlers at a time is rediculous for a fortress of our size, and draft the peasants into the army under Lobos.
An animal caretaker by the name of Solon has gone into a fey mood, however we do not have the workshop he requires. I pray that he doesnt go insane.
As I construct one of the many Workshops we're missing (apparently we arent actually at the point where we need to make anything useful, even though we have magma furnaces and the like), a craftsdwarfs workshop, Solon runs downstairs to it and wont let anyone near. He works furiously at a... Hematite bracelet. I question his sanity. The cat that just adopted him doesnt.
As mid summer approaches, I question the direction of the previous commanders. We're lacking vital production facilities, so i set up a large workshop area near the storage areas for these, and ponder weather to set up more farms. With food stocks as they are though, I doubt we'll need the latter.
I organise a party to celebrate my romance with the hot woodcrafter in the new dining room, and get those who decide not to come to set up an area for the new recruits to spar in.
As the recruits spar, Lobos manages to mangle one of the new guy's lower body to the point of vomiting and an extended rest. I feel for him, but regret the amount of time he's going to kill and all the practice he'll miss.
I find myself wanting for wood, HyperKultra just used the last logs to make barrels, so we can have some new booze. We're all sick and tired of beer, and we just ran out anyway.
An Ambush occured in early autumn, the engravers discovered it as they were smoothing a road through the boulders to our depot. The wrestlers got their first taste of goblin blood, and we got some trading goods.
Speaking of trading, some merchants arrived just as i finished the accessway (though it still isnt anywhere near perfect).
Of note, I traded for two anvils, iron and steel, a lot of cloth, a cow, and a lot more food and booze. The goblin's clothes came in handy, and the cloth (including some giant cave spider silk stuff) should be able to be made into goods worth twice as much. All in all, I'd call this a successful trading session.
A theif, caught as soon as it gets in the door, manages to evade our armed forces. I need to improve the accessways around this place if we hope to catch anything.
Iden Oshoshmorul is the first in the military to become a champion! Hail to him.
Some migrants arrive, and make it to the sculpture garden in one piece. I promptly draft a few into the military, and as autumn draws to a close, another one of the wrestlers hits champion.
The cook gets taken by a mood, and again takes, the addlebrained dwarf takes over the craftdwarfs shop, and starts work on something made of gold. It's a ring. I curse the gods for sending me these useless ideas to my dwarves, but I cant do much about it. Whoever first wants a bracelet or ring is going to be very pleasantly surprised.
I feel almost bad for the diplomat chasing around Duh. He only just managed to have a meeting about trade organisation, and even then only got as far as "hello" before she ran off to plant more seeds. In the end, they decided they want seeds, goblets, and prepared meals, the last of which being the only i plan to prepare.
Foil Engraved his first masterpiece!
I've almost finished construction of our first outpost, at a nice choke point. Built entirely of microcline, I'll need to train some marksdwarves to make the most of it but it'll support quite a few men for quite some time if the need arrises. I'm happy with it.
With winter, I build the wall that will prevent us from getting ambushed effectively from the north. All the other directions are very poorly defended, but our fierce military should keep them at bay. With the wall's completion, Lobos becomes a champion at long last.
Some dark gnomes were pestering my masons, so i set the military on them. Stubby limbs littered the canyon. It was a nasty affair.
The Gem Cutter has been posessed, and is making something of moss opal. I've started planning out a water tower to flush away foes from our gates.
The posessed dwarf constructed a perfect opal, worth a massive 24000 bits.
The water tower poses problems to construct. Some elves have also arrived, diverting labour. This annoys me to no end.
However, In the middle of the hauling process, an ambush arrived, with many archers. One of the champions sustained major injuries, But should be fine. Noone died except the traders donkey, but the traders left.
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Others to come.