Before I delve into that, however, I feel we should take the time to document all of the changes that have taken place over the last year.
We had 3 dwarves become incredibly moody this year and they produced the first Artifacts to come out of our fortress.
Not long after my previous entry, Eshtan Fathsemor withdrew from society and claimed a Craftsdwarf's workshop for herself. We were all extremely excited to see what she would create.
Oh...
It's pretty I guess...but I'm not sure when this event actually took place. I think Eshtan may have some clairvoyance related to the unexplored caverns deep below our fortress. We'll have to reach those some day soon and see if she is correct about the presence of Rodent Men and Troglodytes.
Our second moody dwarf took place not long after the expansion of the kitchen. This time it was the child, Thikut Calmtreaty who arrived last year with his parents and his brother. I remember that migration very clearly. It was just the family of four and their pet peacock.
He also claimed the Craftsdwarf's workshop. Note to self: Suggest adding more Craftsdwarf's Workshops to the Mayor, so we can avoid having the craftsdwarf interrupted every time one of these moody dwarfs gets busy.
Thikut sat in the shop looking moody for quite a while and scribbling away at drawings. It took us a while to interpret his drawings as the materials he needed to complete his task. Unfortunately, we didn't have access to the bone and cloth he wanted.
We'd already carved out an area for expanding our workshops and we had sheep and alpacas, so we quickly set to work shearing the animals and built a loom to create the cloth.
The other task was a little more grisly. We conducted an assessment of our available livestock and decided that the majority of them were necessary to our day to day operations. Ultimately, it was one of the stray cats that was sent to the butcher so that little Thikut could get the bone he needed.
No sooner had the cat been slaughtered, than Thikut set to work gathering his materials and toiling away.
Honestly, we weren't expecting very much out of him and we were surprised. Another useless artifact to go gather dust in some chest somewhere.And now he'll be a legendary bone carver when he grows up. I suppose that might be useful, if we suddenly have a lot of bones and nothing to do with them. Which is a distinct possibility.
Our third mood was more like a possession. This dwarf, Thikut Labordikes, took over a metalsmith's forge. Finally we might get something useful from these moody Dwarves.
Finally a useful item! This spear will be much appreciated by our fledgling militia which has been struggling to find enough materials to create the armor and weapons they need.
Speaking of the Militia, we began recruiting dwarves into two squads and created a rudimentary training room for them near the entrance.
Yes, that's a baby, her mother is standing behind her. She's the first born child of our Captain of the Guard who is none other than Eshtan Fathsemor, the very dwarf who created our first artifact.
Eshtan was chosen for the position of Captain of the Guard based on her distinctly underwhelming strength. The mayor thought it was best that criminals survive any beatings they receive at her hands. She hasn't needed to use those skills yet however and has spent most of her time training with her squad of crossbow dwarves in the armory.
In fact she gave birth to her baby in the middle of a training session. Now that's dedication!
We had one other baby born this year. Little Dastot Gladeinks was born to one of our Leatherworkers, Moldath Magicfountains.
Another child arrived with one of the migrant waves this year which brings the total number of children in the fortress up to 5. While it is good to know that our people will continue to repopulate after the devastation of our nation by the elves of the Youthful Jaws, having children within the fortress at this point in time simply causes more strain on our already struggling supplies.
We desperately need to expand our industry and production of critical items, namely food and drink. Too many of our dwarves still drink water on a regular basis! This is unacceptable!
We made some progress this year on beginning the expansion of our fortress.
Things have been peaceful here, but a healthy dwarf is a prepared dwarf. We focused on shoring up our defenses around the entrance to our home. Eventually there will be moat separating the main entrance from the rest of the outside world with a retracting bridge that we can withdraw during attacks.
The small hall way on the right will eventually be lined with a myriad of dwarven traps. We'll weaken our enemies as we funnel them towards our militia. There are a few different images here to help give you a clearer idea.
You may have noticed that we moved the livestock away from the entrance and off to a roofed pasture off the side of the main hall. Now that we have some defenses in place there's no need for them to keep watch any longer, they've also become one of the few things keeping us from completely starving and it would be a massive blow if we lost one of them to a stray arrow.
We expanded the workshop level this year, but we're running into production and supply issues again. We've realized we're going to have to migrate all of our production to a new level with a better lay out and better organized supplies. Just storing all of our resources is becoming an issue.
We may have to take advantage of the massive feat of dwarven technology known as the "Quantum Stockpile." Otherwise I foresee us dedicating multiple levels just to storing resources.
The farms that we were just starting at the end of last year are now in use. They're struggling to keep up with the demand of the fortress, however. I think this may be due to the fact that too many of our people are tasked with too many different projects. We may need to revisit our policies on assigning labors to dwarves.
As I mentioned previous, we expanded the kitchen and also added on to the dining hall. The majority of the walls and floors within the dining hall have been smoothed and engraved which now allows our people to relax and socialize in a more attractive environment.
In the image below you can see the farms a bit more clearly. I think there will also need to be some investigation as to the exact nature of all of these seeds we've been accumulating. I believe the majority of them are for surface plants that won't grow in our underground farms.
As much as it loathes me to suggest it, we may have to consider expanding our farming operation to some "surface" farms.
We have access to an excessive amount of lignite, between this and the wood on the surface we should be able to power a massive industry. We just need to build it.
The area near the cistern was expanded and we began work on a hospital. It currently has a very low capacity as there hasn't been much call for healing. We'll look into adding more beds in the near future.
Each hospital bed is separated from the rest of the hospital by a door. A single space is left at the end of the hall. Should we be attacked by a were-creature and one of our people becomes infected the door can be locked and a wall can be erected in front of it to prevent further spread of the disease. We'll be incorporating secondary doors at the end of each wing and if all else fails we can wall off the entire hospital.
We've heard too many tales of past fortresses that have fallen to a spiral of were-creature infection and re-infection. That is not how our fortress will die.
We have nobles! Originally this level was designated as offices as it's situated right above the bedrooms and allowed the Book Keeper and Manager easy access to their work. However, with the election of Ineth Zatadumat as our Mayor and the addition of a Captain of the Guard, we were forced to build better quarters, as well as offices, for the both of them.
Our illustrious mayor has been in charge for less than a year. In that time he forbid the trading of Breastplates (he defended this decision by telling me that we needed to expand our militia and trading away the few breastplates we had would be folly). No sooner had that mandate ended then he instructed us to make even more breastplates, which we were already doing.
Long story short, he's basically just been telling us to do what we were already doing, which I suppose isn't such a bad thing as far as noble requests are concerned.
The bedrooms for the rest of us have been expanded greatly. We now have ample room for everyone. Every dwarf has a room of their own. The walls and floors have been smoothed and engraved with detailed depictions of our history and culture.
If you remember last year's update, the stairs were flood due to the overfilling of the cistern. We've since drained the water from that location and are now able to access these stairs to proceed even further into the earth.
Last year we hadn't yet built an office for our Book Keeper to conduct his work so I was unable to include an accurate final tally of our fortress's wealth and stocks. This year I am pleased to present you with this.
We are slowly but steadily accumulating wealth. Our number of citizens has continued to climb and we've officially reached village status. Our military consists of only a handful of dwarves at the moment, but we'll be looking to expand once we have access to a steady supply of metals.
Our greatest concern at the moment is our store of drinks. The current number is unacceptable for any fortress belonging to dwarves. We can't allow this to continue. Beyond that, our secondary concern is food production. At the moment we're getting by on eggs, cheese, mussels and turtles, and what we can buy from traders. We need a more reliable source of food and we need it sooner rather than later.
Our population has reached a grand total of 67 dwarves, with roughly 20 migrants arriving this year.
We have much to do this next year. Expanding our industry and especially building up our food stores is going to be our primary focus. We'll also be searching for iron and other metals, up until now we've only had access to copper and silver, We'll need more than that if we want to survive whatever the future has in store for us.
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