2nd Hematite, 53.
The dwarves gathered around the rough wooden tables, chewing dried and salted meat, quaffing rum and strawberry wine.
"All right, everyone." Glacies cleared his throat. "Lissen' up."
Everyone turned to look at the expedition leader.
"I got some ideas! First, we ought to gather refuse from outdoors! But not vermin remains."
There was a pause.
"And only farmers should harvest!"
Nobody said anything.
"And, uh, we shouldn't automatically weave thread into cloth."
Erith raised her hand.
"Yes?"
"So...who's been weaving thread?"
Glacies considered this for a moment. "Uuuh, nobody, yet, but it may come to that in the future. Y'know, just settin' things up ahead of time, like."
"Right, that's settled. Pass the sausages." Doshet said.
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Limar is a deity of The Trustworthy Standards. Limar most often takes the form of a male alchemist's guild dwarf and is associated with trade and wealth. In the midautumn of 36, Limar cursed Ablel Metallicfever to assume the form of a lizard-like monster every full moon in Bowlhearts.
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20th of Hematite, 53.
The dwarves gathered around the tables again, parchments and charcoal sticks scattered haphazardly across them. Glacies spoke.
"All right, everyone. Let's talk about why we are here. As you all know, we're here to build an outpost for the Trustworthy Standards. Not just an outpost, mind, but a fortress worthy of our ancestors."
"This means that soon, migrants from the Mountainhomes will arrive, hoping for a new start and new opportunities. It also means that our foes, the goblins and orcs, will likely try to kill us all before we dig in too deeply."
"It is not my way to see Dwarves killed, either by carelessness or by stupid glory hunting. So while I cannot promise you an end that bards will sing of, I can promise you I will do my best, and I hope you will too, to have a comfortable life here."
"Now, I've drawn here a series of diagrams which outline what I think we ought to do in the long term. Look over them, and tell me what you think."
Glacies passed out a series of parchments to each of the dwarves assembled there. That evening, they worked over the plans and edited them until they had a blueprint that would work.
It was planned that the first level of the fortress, a layer of fire clay, would be primarily an agricultural layer. The fortress entrance would sit atop it, and around a central mound of seed stockpiles and underground farmplots a sunken pit would be channeled around it for aboveground farming. The second level, of yellow sand, would be the industrial level. Great stockpiles of wood, stone, bars, furniture and the like could be excavated quickly and easily, and then later reinforced with stone blocks. The third level, of stone, would be where the dwarves lived, slept, ate and trained. Dining rooms, barracks, offices, bedrooms. The fourth level would be for the tombs of the fallen, and for plumbing. Here there would be a cistern that would feed underground wells. The fifth level and beyond would be the mines for quarrying out rock for the masons.
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21st of Hematite, 53.
Oklit dismantles the wagon.
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26th of Hematite, 53.
Some migrants have arrived. Seven dwarves trudged towards the fortress from the west, and Oklit waved in greeting at them. The apparent leader of this group was a woman who introduced herself as Frontestro. She had a wolfram crossbow strapped to her back and she wore a quiver of lead bolts at her side, but Oklit knew by the way she carried them she was highly inexperienced.
With a wink, Frontestro introduced her husband Wodan. As they told it, Wodan was a brilliant tinker and chemist back home who was not understood by his peers or elders.
Also among the migrants was a dwarf named Bodkin, who told of his education among the masons. He brought his wife and two children with him.
Also among the migrants are Bot Egenmothram, a fisher's guild dwarf, Bodkin's wife who is a *wrestler*, and his two children Bem and Genlath.
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And by the end of Hematite, plans are laid out to excavate new rooms, an archery range is planned for Frontestro to get some practice in, and Gosmer is busy digging out stockpiles.
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All right! First migrant wave arrives. No dwarves with medical skills yet, so I'm gonna hold off on creating The Master's dwarf until then. Vanzetti, I don't actually know the name of the tileset. I think it's the one that Masterwork defaults to? I tried setting it to ASCII but I'm not sure it's taken correctly. Drawing coming later today.