25th of Timber, 104 S.B.S.Unum came to my office today. He demanded that we should bury the dead warriors immediately for the sake of souls. I must admit that I agree with him. Even though we have other things to take care of, like security, we must make sure that the morale doesn't drop. Without hope there is no future.
Fortunately we have all the coffins and slabs we need for proper burial. Sometimes it pays to be farsighted. So we only need to engrave the slabs and carve out the tombs. Unum said that his loved one is more than willing to help. So be it. I have also decided that all our citizens will get personal tomb, carved inside the cavern. Just like Baran did.
I have already made the plans for tombs. After a quick calculation we need eight tombs more.
I also made some drafting in our military. First of all I made sure that Nix's squad is full again.
Next I choose one of the male peasants and made him our new captain of the guard.
After that I assigned nine other dwarves to his squad and made them our new archers.
I decided to give them few days to prepare themselves before sending them down to caverns to deal with the beast lurking there.
6th of Moonstone, 104 S.B.S.It's finally the time to kill the ladybug that has been living in the underground sea for some time. Our miners have been carving a small landing looking down to the sea.
I had hoped this to take place sooner but it was quite big task to organize both squads down there at the same moment. So, the first step was to make sure that we had at least few soldiers stationed at the entrance of the cavern in case the beast gets angry and tries to attack.
Next I ordered our archers to station at the landing and start shooting bolts towards the beast.
Of course it was too much to ask from our archers to be effective. Even though some of them knew how to handle crossbow the distance and situation were so difficult that most of the shots missed the beast, either by going wide or over or the beast just evaded the bolt. I heard that the first direct hit was after dozen or so bolts.
Lots of bolts were fired and slowly the beast received more and more injuries. And suddenly, after one bolt, the beast died, the corpse beginning to float at the surface lifeless.
The threath of Bosa the Hell of Caves has ended! All praise our archers!
Unfortunately the corpse can't be accessed since all of our dwarves refuses to enter the water. And that's a wise decision since the blood of the beast has already contaminated the water.
26th of Moonstone, 104 S.B.S.All our dead citizens have been buried properly.
The biggesst part of it was hauling all those slabs and coffins down there. Do you know how much those weight? Way more than I expected! Few or our haulers are already complaining about hurting back.
Our miners have begun carving out the quarters for our captain of the guard. I'm also considering drafting somebody to be our hammerer. I fear that we may have few tantrumers here and thus we need a way to force some justice. And oh, to do that we also need a jail. Fortunately we have enough iron chains somewhere in our tradin goods storage...
13th of Opal, 104 S.B.S.The jail complex is finally ready. Twenty cells with iron chain in each and just enough room so that sentenced dwarf can move a bit.
I know somebody is going to complain the lack of beds or chairs or food access but to them I say: "Screw it! If you break the law you are out of rights." And if somebody does happen to die in cell, well, hopefully that remains everybody else how bad decision becoming criminal was.
We also have hammerer now.
She was the only peasant who knows how to use hammers. And by that I mean how to use hammers to kill others.
17th of Opal, 104 S.B.S.One of our dwarves has made a rope. Very, very expensive rope.
It has several decorations, like studdings, spikes and so on. But the most disturbing thing is the picture. Picture of forgotten beasts.
Not one but two forgotten beasts. The other one is the one we killed some time back, the ladybug, but the other one is too obscure to be properly identified. The dwarf who made this doesn't remember where the image came or where she saw the picture of the other beast. Oh well, I think this is one of those mysteries which will never be solved.
26th of Opal, 104 S.B.S.Our miners have begun another project; the arena.
As our cage storage is slowly getting full of captured enemies and animals we need a place where our soldiers can kill those things without being disturbed. It also need a section where our archers can stand, behind fortifications, and practice with live targets.
We are still waiting for more doors to be produced by our masons before we can finish up the next batch of bedrooms.
7th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.The arena is ready!
Yeah, it's not as big and grandiose as the ones back in mountain home but at least it will offer proper execution place. And I think there are few goblins in our storages who are eagerly waiting for to see it... from inside.
13th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.Curse it!
Lashers, crossbowmen, swordsmen and so on... I say we must lock us inside.
I may be too careful here but the tragedy from previous siege is still in my memory. And the goblin archers are making things more serious, especially since they are using crossbows.
But perhaps we should raise the inner bridge so that at least some of the invaders are trapped or slaughtered by our traps? Yeah, that's what we are going to do!
14th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.Our fortress is currently locked. Nobody is going in or out without my permission.
As I suspected, even though there is no open path to our fortress, the goblins are still approaching and haven't made any camps yet. I also noticed that bringin amphibious animals into combat as mounts is never good idea.
Yep, instead going around the crocodiles, which goblins are using as mounts, are going straight in the pools of water. The result? Living goblin when going in, drowned dead goblin when coming out. And the poor crocodiles don't even realize that the rider is dead already.
15th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.The goblins have halted and are now wondering what to do. To our luck one of the invading squad halted right next to small pool of water.
That's right, it's the only squad that is using crocodiles and olms as mounts. Remember what I wrote yesterday about amphibious mounts and sieges? Well, now that the squad has halted few crocodiles decided to dive in water, which is their natural environment. Sorry poor goblins, your mounts really don't care if you can breath underwater or not!
The construction of new bedrooms is finally completed. While not every dwarf has own bedroom we don't need to make more right now. That's because those few dwarves are still babies and thus they won't need a own bedrom in year or two.
I think it's time to grant Unum what he has been asking for as long as I remember; I will let him make some statues. Right now there isn't much else our masons can do
17th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.Ah crap!
Guess what I forgot? Yep, the cave dragons can and will destroy any building they can find. And can you tell me which is the only building those overgrown lizards can reach? Yep, the depot!
On the other hand, the most dangerous goblins squad, the archer squad, has entered the killi... I mean trap area!
Perhaps we could try the same trick as last time? This time we just need to be sure that nobody gets past the outer bridge.
26th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.We are preparing the goblins for execution. The ones that are trapped that is.
The cages have already been installed. Next we need to build a lever, connect the cages to it and make sure that none of the goblins are fearing anything nor holding weapons. After that we are ready to go.
28th of Obsidian, 104 S.B.S.Another year has come to an end. Our population is over one hundred and forty dwarves and we are quite wealthy already.
We have more than enough of food and alcohol, though there is never such thing as too much in case of alcohol. We have enough bedrooms and in fact we have more or less all the basic things real fortress would need.
The goblins are still out there and so far I'm going to keep the entrance sealed. Perhaps we could try some tricks when the goblin archers have decided to kill themselves in our traps. In fact, there is only one such goblin left. Without crossbowmen our archers actually could cause some havoc since the invaders have no way to respond. But all of this is plausible only if the last goblin archer dies or gets trapped.
We have had some tragical incidents during the year, most notable being the invasion that killed half of our military and few civilians or incident where our former chief doctor died.
My plans of getting away from here are at hold, again. I have begun to fear that I can never pull it off.