-1st Galena, 251-
The work crew arrived on site with high hopes and pickaxes. Since there were rumors that the locals could be a scrappy lot, the site for the Adventurer's Guild was decided to be placed on the ridge to the south, overlooking the houses of the village proper. For their own safety, the villagers were advised to remain indoors until the main guildhouse had been built, but a half a dozen sullen individuals decided they'd be better served keeping an eye on these new dwarves hired by city folk from the Capitol far to the west.
For their own protection, each miner has been issued a war dog for protection against the various terrors of nature and evil gangs that often plague construction sites out in the toolies. These have already proved their worth by scaring off a roving tribe of centaurs who came to extort food from the newcomers.
-22nd of Felsite, 251-
The rough foundations of the Guild have been carved from the southern peak, a temporary trading depot erected using the abundant shale, and the winch and bucket system constructed and assembled over the well-shaft. Having brought a fine fungi wood bucket, rare silk rope and a block of deep blue cobaltite, the well head is a sublime looking thing indeed. Plans call for the base of the shaft to be enlarged into a collecting room with a channel leading to the local stream which will provide all the fresh water needed via the channel. The idea is to eventually situate a well on every floor, using the same well shaft, providing fresh water for washing or even for drinking, in an emergency. (Even though every true dwarf shudders at the mere thought of such a thing.) By the first of Hematite, everything should be complete except for the breaching of the stream from above. The horizontal water-shaft will cut through some pure white marble, however, so I've decided to remove the mined boulders to be converted into blocks and statuary later on before letting in any water.
As a blessing, the local population of ironclad mastiffs and turkeys found and adopted the crew's wagon on the first day of summer. The crew have been greatly enjoying the antics of this lively mob as they cavort and play over around and under the wheels and bed of their conveyance. Soon enough, a larder will be carved to store the foodstuffs, but for now, the raucious mob has done a very good job of gaurding the wagon site. The horses have been less than pleased by this racket, so were led to a patch of grass by the river a little way off from the wagon, now they can enjoy the peace of a nice browse.
-23rd Malachite, 251-
A group of dwarves looking for work at the construction site arrived today. Food will soon be in short supply unless we can convince the locals to part with some of their shadowleaf crop in exchange for future payment. Giftivory blesses us with five dwarves willing to learn how to fish. Work continues...
-28th Malachite, 251-
One of the new dwarves is a bit shifty - He said he saw a farmer and an Apostle of Armok making threatening gestures at him through their windows and just panicked. I have the daft bugger clearing marble out of the well shaft until he calms down. The other newcomers have begun fishing in earnest, netting our first catch: some black pirannahs. Nasty looking teeth on those fish...
-20th Galena, 251-
We breached the stream today. The well is now fully operational! In other matters, those black fish may look mean, but they sure are tasty!
-22nd Galena, 251-
A weird sweat thing attacked one of our new fishers: a quiet girl named Angzak Rashmonom. She and her husband have only been here a short while, so I don't know much about them. It threw some sort of frozen liquid at her, bruising her stomach and torso before running off. Looks like we need to get some dogs for the newcomers as well. To that end, I've set one of our boys to training the local mastiffs to be companion animals.
-24th Galena, 251-
We found some nice hued amethysts and prase opals while bringing out all that marble and brought them up while were at it. Sadly, it seems the purple beauties caught the eyes of some skulking thief who made off with one of them. A shame we couldn't get a jeweler to cut it properly - I hope its raw beauty was worth the theft.
-6th Limestone, 251-
That weird sweat thing attacked Angzak again! This time, however, she had a war mastiff to help protect her. It doesn't help her bruised kidney much, but at least she doesn't have to fend the gruesome thing off by herself. Another of our newcomers was attacked by this thing, an amethyst eyed woman named Besmar Bomreksosh. Lets hope the mastiffs will be able to keep it from making a third assault!
-27th Limestone, 251-
A second group of migrants came today. I think we'll start block production and set up a rockforge. Some more picks should make things go even faster.
-9th Sandstone, 251-
A stupid dwarf, fresh out of seminary decided to replace the local Apostle of Armok here. For dwarves, religious debate usually takes the form of a quiver full of javelins and the villagers didn't take too kindly to his "pointed religious arguments". Fully a third of the village decided to riot, and I had to send in more mastiffs to pacify them.
Priests...
-10th Sandstone, 251-
The traditionalists seem to have won the debate, but several village dwarves and the little idiot himself were killed during the furious discussion of ethics. Now that Armok has had a taste of our blood, I fear he may want another. Gods preserve us!
-21st Sandstone, 251-
It is as I feared. Some of the villagers who participated in that religious debate a few weeks ago and the local dogs we trained to protect us have been going at it, much to the villager's detriment up to now. Today, however, a cursed elvish monster in the form of a dog wandered in from the wilds, probably attracted by all the newly shed blood, and spit fire at three of us while we were carving away a slope!
-28th Sandstone, 251-
One of the newest group, a miner by the name of Sakzul Dobargongith, hasn't been seen by anyone for about a week. I hope she hasn't encountered any mischief, like that sweat thing or the elvish monster.
-10th Timber, 251-
The caravan should be coming through any day now and we need to have some tribute to send to our royal employers in the capitol, so I've ordered the bodies of the dead stripped to add to the nest boxes I've had made. The traditionalists have been less than pleased at this and have been resisting these attempts threateningly. I may have to round up a militia to force the issue, but I really don't want to do that to these people. We were hired to develop this area, not conquer its people! We're all Kokdathtathians after all!
-11th Timber, 251-
The caravan was sighted coming over the southern hills today. What clothing we've been able to gather and whatever nest boxes we've been able to build will have to be enough for this year's interest payment. It was headed by none other than Dodok Dumenakas the liason from Venombiles. We'll see what he has to say. In other news, I asked around to see which dwarf of the crew was the best liked, so I could make them our broker, and it was Damid Fikodmamot, Angzak's husband! After I appointed him broker, he smiled so big you
could almost hear his skull crack. "Wait until I tell the others!" he enthused.
It's days like this that make all the all the other craptastic ones worthwhile.
-7th Moonstone, 251-
We've been guesting the caravan for almost a month now and Damid has yet to actally talk to the caravan master about trades! I've had to take him aside for a "little talk". Turns out he was sweating the conversation, afraid he'd muck it up and get our royal employers upset with us. I know what he meant - royals can get NASTY sometimes, but then I reminded him that they'd probably get even MORE nasty if we didn't give them a payment this year. His slightly round eyes got a lot rounder at that thought and he hurried over to the depot to do his job. That dwarf will go far if he survives, I feel it in my beard.
The loan for this expedition was 70 gold and 3 copper coins, so the 10% payment for this year is 7,003 coppers-worth. I hope we have enough.
-12th Moonstone, 251-
No deal. The caravan master would only accept coinage to pay off the debt, WE ARE SO HAMMERED! The 7,003 coppers-worth we owe from this year has now been added to the debt, which will make next year's payment 7,704 coppers-worth. How, by Armok, will we get that much coinage together in just a year? I've informed liason Dumenakas to spread the word for adventurers to join the guild - admittance fee set at 1,000 coppersworth of coins. We'll see if that helps make up the difference. I just hope our royal patrons in Venombiles understand that new ventures often run at a loss for at least two years before making a profit. With Gildivory's mercy and a little luck, none of us will be cursed if we work our hardest to make sure we won't default on a payment again.
Damid traded what little we had, instead, for some fruits and roots to round out our diet. I've heard that up north, there's frozen rain around this time of year. Fortunately, we dwarves live in the hot and humid south. We have our share of interesting weather, of course, but its blinding sand, not frozen rain. Vukrig, (may he ever shine) knows, the world has become a strange place since the Catastrophe. Maybe it was, even before then. Only the Gods know.
-10th Opal, 251-
I've decided to send a yearly report of the Guild project's net worth to our patrons via our liason, in the hopes that will keep them happy and supportive until we can pay off our debt. I've decided to give the job to Damid as well, since he's already familiar with all this stuff. He's been trying his hand at mining, but I'm not sure that's his vocation. Odd as it may sound, some dwarves were just not meant to dig.
-8th Obsidian, 251-
The militia captain in charge of site security, Besmar Bomresoth had a nasty run-in with a wolverine today. Why she didn't have a gaurd dog with her, I'll never know, but she surprised me by competently binding her own wounds with some villager's rags. I think we may have the makings of a Guild healer here! Time will tell.
-17th Obsidian, 251-
Feb Arbostolon, one of the dwarves who came looking for work a couple of months ago, finally took care of that wolverine that's been periodically attacking people working on the site. He put his pick firmly in that beast's ear after only a brief struggle and that was the end of that! Although he's usually a simple, straight forward lad in his forties, he told me something rather disturbing: He's been seeing his lover's face out of the corner of his eye for a couple days now and she looks considerably worse for wear. His lover is that missing miner, I wrote about earlier. I suspect poor Sakzul Dobargangith met a violent end after all. We'll engrave a slab in her memory and visit it from time to time, so her spirit will know she's remembered fondly.
Wherever your body may have come to its final rest, Sakzul, rest easy in the knowledge you will not be forgotten.
-24th Obsidian, 251-
Feb Arbostolon is a fellow of many talents, it seems. He carved a couple statues for the broker's table next to the Depot, (I suspect he heard Damid grumbling about how plain it looked and decided to do something about it). While one was a simple enough study of a dwarf, the other was a badgerman striking down a xen infector about a hundred or so years ago. Just the type of statuary heroes tend to enjoy. Well done, Feb! Damid's still grumbling, however, I guess you just can't please some people.
-1st Granite, 251-
I was taking a late night stargazing stroll down by the river with a few of the mastiffs for company last night when a strange hairy person jumped out from behind a bush and tried to tackle me. The dogs would have none of this, however, and tore into the intruder as they've been trained to do. It was the weirdest fight, a dog would grab it and shake it around and the thing would just shed hair all over the place. No blood, no noise, just lots and lots of hair. When they had finally put the weird creature out of its misery I saw the truth of the matter: It had been composed of nothing BUT hair. Weird. Surreally, the specter of Feb's dead lover appeared at the end of the fight, just as the hairy creature died, and simply stared calmly at me. I nodded her direction and told her with a calm voice "You will be remembered, I promise." The specter nodded once at that before fading quickly away.
-25th Granite, 251-
I've been thinking: it's about time we dug out some storage rooms. We have all this raw wood sitting out, fully cured but cluttering up the old wagon. While it's become the traditional place to go for a quick bite, it's only guarded by some puppies and turkeys now, which won't keep a determined thief away. Besides, we'll need some place to keep the entrance fees whenever the first adventurer happens to come by. I just told the miners, "Use the wagon as your entrance point and give me six big rooms of about equal size.
-7th Slate, 252-
Its a new year and liason Dumenakas has finally gotten word from Venombiles what the caravan next fall will be wanting the most. We'll do our best, but between you and me, journal, I don't see silver crossbows in our near future.
-25th Slate, 252-
An interesting thing happened last night down at the wagon - a starving giant white cat tried to steal some fish from off of the wagon and was promptly killed by our brave watch-dogs. Poor thing looked half starved, but I've never seen a cat that's so big. It was almost as long as one of the mastiffs itself and those claws or teeth are nothing to sneer at. I thank Craterrocks that no one was ambushed by that thing while they were sleeping - they wouldn't have had a chance.
-28th Slate, 252-
No doubt spurred on by Damid's incessant grumbling, a couple more statues in the heroic millieu were carved and placed next to the trading table. One is the popping of a humanoid zit by a frost giant (gross) and the other is a butterfly. Obviously the themes of our artists transcend mere historic heroics.
-14th Felsite, 252-
A Treasury Master from the Elven nation of Mimsalo has arrived for some reason. It seems they want to trade with us too! I wonder if they have any coins with them...
-26th Felsite, 252-
Damid was doing his "absent broker" routine again, so I had to replace him with his wife Angzak. I hope she doesn't share his proclivity for "keep away if traders come stay".
-8th Hematite, 252-
No word from Angzak yet, but the elvish caravan was attacked by a white horned horse. I thought elves had a "thing" with animals? Anyway, the guard dogs took care of it. Wonder what unicorn tastes like?
-13th Hematite, 252-
Angzak blew her chance. Hanging around, playing with the dogs and turkeys, and always saying, "...later, I'll talk to the Treasury Master later..." when confronted with her extreme lack of brokering. I'm gonna have to replace her. Let's see, who's next on the list... Ducim Gearprimitive.
Ducim is the widow of the late Kadol Lorbaminem, Apostle of Armok. Mrs. Gearprimitive may not be as easygoing as Damid or his wife Agzak, but she has a fierce intelligence. Sorta the difference between a couple of fuzzy bunnies and a hunting hawk really. We'll see if she can do a better job with the next caravan to come through.
-18th Hematite, 252-
Ducim was attacked by a coyote while she was fishing in the stream, but her two mastiffs made short work of it. Those dogs really have been lifesavers.
-20th Malachite, 252-
We were finally able lay the specter's spirit to rest, after engraving a slab in her memory and placing it in the newly delved Dobargongith Memorial.
-18th Galena, 252-
A kobold was caught sneaking around the site today by one of the dogs. I can only surmise it was here to snatch more of the raw amethysts. Sneaky little buggers.
-19th Galena, 252-
Another kobold was caught trying to sneak off the site. A few more bags of their gold loot should help pay our loan down in no time!
-1st Limestone, 252-
The trees are changing into their Autumn foliage again and no adventurers have shown up this year! No coins, no coins... what am I going to do?
-2nd Limestone, 252-
Another kobold caught sneaking around the site! This one managed to evade the dogs until they chased it off the site, so who knows it the bugger made off with anything? Just talked to Damid and he says he hasn't found anything missing, which is a relief.
-28th Sandstone, 252-
We all gathered around the Dogargongith Memorial for a short while today, munching turkey and telling stories about her. As I promised her specter - she will not be forgotton. The Lorbaminem memorial is next to hers, honoring the fallen Apostle who failed to sway the traditionalist villagers last year. He will not be forgotten either. As for the various slain villagers who decided to fatally wrestle with our gaurd dogs after the religious scuffle, we interred them in the Nameless Mausoleum on the east side of the top floor. Each coffin is fronted by a blank slab, ready to be inscribed by any of the deceased villager's families, if they ever choose to visit their fallen kin.
We also finished the Top West and Top East dormitories for down-on-their luck petitioners. Just east of these is a training room for their use, this level's well for bathing and the archeology workshop. Soon we'll have the dining hall and infirmary completed and even possibly the chapel! What we don't seem to have is any more dwarves who're looking for work or any adventurers. Still, as a wise dwarf once said, "Build it and they will come...sometimes in swarms."
-14th Timber, 252-
Well, the caravan has come again, and we don't have a single coin to show them yet.
Not good.
Gildivory forgive us, but this is going not going to be easy to pay off.
-3rd Moonstone, 252-
What is it with brokers who won't talk to the caravans and actually do their jobs? Got another Kobold today - they just keep coming and giving our dogs something to chew on. Poor little buggers.
-5th Moonstone, 252-
And another kobold today. This one was wearing a silk cloak for some reason. I wonder if the whole tribe is making its way here and these are just the advance scouts? It'll be good to have scrappy villagers then, I'll warrant.
-9th Moonstone, 252-
Seems like the Village has had enough waiting for our Guild-site to be done and decided to come out en-mass in hostility. All their fellows deaths were their own faults, (well, except for the religious debate, that one I'll admit was brought here by the Guild workers), but I guess our Nameless Mausoleum isn't enough for them (or maybe they want in, in a REAL BAD WAY, which may be the final end for these rednecks. They just seem to leave their dead lying out in the open otherwise.) I think a confrontation may happen in the near-ish future.
I feel it in my beard.
-13th Moonstone, 252-
Of all the worthless dwarves - she never even set foot in the Depot, much less talked to any of the caravan about trading for stuff! If we weren't in such debt to the Royals in Venombiles, I'd take the job on myself! For Gildivory's sake, why can't I find a dwarf to BE a broker who actually does brokering? Why is this such a difficult task to accomplish?
The mind boggles.
I'm just going to give the job to a random dwarf... Zuglar Litastodur the Jeweler. Let's see if that works instead! On another note, since this is the second year running without a single payment in coins, the total loan plus interest is now up to 84,737 coppersworth. Next fall, we'll owe 8,474 coppersworth in interest alone! If we default next year, we'll be past our grace period and have no more chances to default on a payment. Gildivory have mercy... we need to start getting some coins in here!
-19th Opal, 252-
I've decided to dig down in search of precious metals and maybe just mint my own coins instead. It might help get us out of the bind we're in and even might spread word of the Adventurer's Guild here in Practiceumbral. To pet two cats with one hand, as the saying goes, I've given the miners the orders to mine out farming plots next to the well-channel. Using trap-doors and levers, we can flood each chamber a little, get some fertile mud in those rooms and start growing our own food too. Thoughts of home-grown plump helmets seem to have really galvanized the miners - they've all started in to this project with gusto.
-8th Obsidian, 252-
A new specter seems to have started haunting the trade depot. Damid was doing the books this morning, when this ghost rises up right through his ledgers! It showed him the ruler and compass of an architect then started howling fit to wake the dead. (heh.) Looks like its time to set up another memorial.
Er, maybe not - nobody from our team knows this ghost's name or anything it may have accomplished in life. I wonder who this poor restless haunt was?
-9th Obsidian, 252-
We're in some serious trouble now. I have just been informed that there's not a scrap of food left on the entire site. So busy! More later.
::Here ends the journal of Iteb Erushanil, Expedition Leader::
1 gold coin = 10 silver coins
1 silver coin = 10 copper coins
1 gold coin = 100 coppersworth (100c)
To be repaid: 70,030 coppers-worth (principal) +10% interest (compounded yearly)
Year Owed Paid Interest
251 70,030c 0c 7,003c
252 77,033c 0c 7,704c
253 84,737c --- 8,474c
Item Price
7 volunteer miners free
1 wagon (3 logs of wood) 1,800c
1 horse 2,020c
1 ironclad horse 3,020c
1 cobaltite block of stone 1,000c
1 rare silk rope 800c
1 fungi wood bucket 1,000c
7 copper picks 6,160c
25 wood logs 150c
1 male war dog 620c
6 female war dogs 3,720c
60 rations of dwarven wine 2,400c
60 rations of dwarven ale 2,400c
60 rations of dwarven beer 2,400c
60 rations of dwarven rum 2,400c
25 barrels (fungi wood) 25,000c
18 barrels (wood) 3,600c
40 plump helmets 3,200c
19 bags of gypsum powder 1,140c
3 scaleplate bags 600c
2 rare silk bags 1,600c
4 silk bags 1,600c
1 kapok fiber bag 400c
4 wool bags 800c
2 leather bags 400c
1 tough hide bag 1,200c
1 rope-reed fiber bag 200c
1 drake-scale chest 400c
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Topic: Community/Succession Masterwork mod game (Read 2298 times)