He was our broker and the original expedition leader and in less than three years guided Roughstrike to a community of 100 beards. All was well in the fortress, with the food situation well under control and multiple industries chugging along nicely. Booze was never a problem, as a talented Brewer Rovod saw to that personally. Aside from an early run in with the were-elk Leba Innahade which cost the fort a hunter and a herbalist, you had to concede he did a pretty good job.
He had just fully outfitted the hospital and supervised the completion of private bedrooms for everybody with plenty to spare. Roughstrike had long outgrown the cramped twelve seat dining hall, but the new 11x21 Great Hall carved into a magnetite deposit had just started dishing out lavish roasts.
The curtain wall was up in the first year and the roof was well underway. Snatchers and thieves were pretty constant and soon being supplemented by goblin ambushes, but with a dozen steel axes always training in the courtyard, the drawbridge was never raised, with Roughstrike welcoming all comers, though invaders found in that welcome a rough strike indeed.
That was the beginning of his fall. The second migrant wave of the year 253 brought more strong backs to carry stone and ore, but it also brought the bewitchingly charming Melbil Paddletwisted. Rovod's life was to serve Roughstrike, to keep thirsts slaked and the drawbridge lowered. He had proven himself a capable leader and justifiably anticipated being named mayor. It was not to be and it was for Melbil that the mayor's quarters were commissioned.
And then the bloodless body turned up. No one cared too much, Zas was once a Fish Dissector but now spent most of her days carting stone from one pile to another. But, no one wanted to be next. Within the walls of the fortress was a cursed being, one that had somehow so profaned a deity that he was to sentenced to forever wander the earth with an unslakable thirst for blood.
It didn't take long to find him. Despite the plentiful bedrooms, one dwarf had not claimed one. One dwarf who was a former member of over a dozen different groups. One dwarf who despite needing alcohol to get through the working day, had never even tasted Rovod's fine brewings. The mayor.
Being overlooked for mayor was an insult, but knowing that the dwarfs he nurtured chose a creature of the night over him was too great an indignity to bear. Oh he put up a brave front, claiming to be ecstatic with his modest quarters instead of the decent office that should have been his. But then, with No Job pending, he walked past that infamous open drawbridge and discovered the ambush squad of goblin pikemen (pikegoblins?). He was struck down before the Axe Lords could do anything about it.
He will be missed. You can tell by how far the happiness levels have dropped. It was a lot, but I think the fort has weathered it without any tantrums.
Moral of the story? Dang, I really gotta figure out how this civilian alert thing works.