Journal of Deduk 'Shizzle' Fathemen, overseer of Eribkasben1st Hematite, 52Ugh. As if I didn't have enough to deal with, now I've got to RUN this whole blasted place. I know it's not that large as of yet, but still:
I don't know what Arbiter was thinking, dumping this on me like I've got nothing better to do. You'd think a group of seven perfectly fit dwarves would be able to get along without much direction. You'd be wrong.
I'm not saying that Arbiter was a bad overseer, or that he quit and passed the duty to me because he couldn't hack it: far from it. I'm just saying that it's a bit unexpected, to have to fill his shoes for the rest of the year AND serve another year on top of that. I suppose his work as manager, bookkeeper, and de facto chief medical dwarf keeps him too busy to handle the day-to-day. I'll let the rest of the community decide whether or not I should retire after this year is over with; the Big Chair is kind of nice, but it'd be a relief to get back to just mining.
Me? That's all I am, is a miner. I was given the nickname 'Shizzle' by some friends of mine at the mountainhome: don't ask me why, because they never bothered to tell me.
Meh. No use crying about it; let's get to work. That stockpile in the middle of the room has got to go, along with the workshops there. We'll have to move all the industry-related stuff to the next level down, maybe have a little breathing room. This first level will do fine for a dining hall and foodservice floor. I got rid of the hospital zones, maybe I'll move them to the left of the main staircase sometime later.
I immediately excused myself and Zefon from hauling duty; we've got enough to do without stopping to sweep up every stone that falls at our feet in the mines. We'll finish squaring off this large room on the main dining level, then we'll start carving out a decent area of farms. We're both a bit rusty with our pickwork, so mining out sand should be good practice. Getting sand in your beard is worth the quicker progress later on.
I ordered a staircase built to go up to the surface in an area separate from the entrance, so we can expand out to some more farmland. The crew was a bit puzzled at first, but this way we've got a sealed-off section of farms that won't get hit as often by thieves and whatnot. I don't know what the local crime rate is like 'round these parts, but I don't want to take any chances.
It's off to the mines for me; I've got some rooms to dig.
21st Hematite, 52That lazy little bastard Urvad thought he could get away with sitting around doing nothing. Well, I don't care if he's the only stonecrafter we have; if there's nothing to craft, then he needs to find something else to do. I told him to start with the food situation. Surely there has to be something to fish in all these little ponds. He grabbed a fishing pole and whistled off. Here's hoping it keeps him out of my hair.
The farm plot was done quickly enough, so I told everyone to start storing their seeds in the rows in between crops, and not in our food stockpile. The stairs nearby will keep all our crops close to the kitchens, and I'm excited to report that we've broken ground on the new workshop level.
I was taken by surprise (and not in a good way) when I saw what grievous rounding errors had crept into Arbiter's bookkeeping. I "strongly recommended" to him that he start keeping track of our inventory on a per-item basis, without rounding, and that accurate counts make everyone's job easier. He just went red in the face and stalked off, uttering curses that would curl a Kobold's ear hairs. Yeesh. I yelled after him that it'll get a LOT easier later on, but he just ignored me and hid in his office. He'll come around eventually. I hope.
19th Malachite, 52The first wave of migrants has arrived: looks like five adults and five children, none of them with any skills that stand out in my mind. Well, at least it frees up work hours for some of the more skilled dwarves here. Three of the new dwarves get placed into
DUMB, the Dwarven Unskilled Mover's Brotherhood (i.e. they haul stuff around the fortress and other such menial tasks), and one is being made a ranger. The other doesn't even have the intelligence necessary to haul a rock... so, naturally, he goes into foodservice.
Speaking of which, where in the name of
Armok's itchy right eyebrow did Shorast go? She was supposed to be in charge of carpentry, and I expected her here when the new recruits showed up. She's been bugging me to get her out of the logging business and back into the shop where she belongs. I hope she decides to get back to work eventually. In the meantime I've had Arbiter issue some work orders for a couple more training axes, and some extra booze. He only cussed at me for a few minutes today: I think we're starting to bond.
I showed the three peasants a trick I learned back in mining school: a quantum stockpile. Simple quantum compaction of stone molecules into what they call "foldspace". They didn't understand how it worked, but luckily that's not necessary for the method to be effective: all they have to do is drop a stone. (Truth be told, I don't know how it works either. But it does. And it keeps the peons busy.)
1st Limestone, 52Shorast came to me in a huff, complaining that she hasn't had a decent drink in almost a week. I checked, and it turns out that Arbiter has been SO busy with stockpile records and work orders that he hasn't even touched the stills for a straight month. That has to change. One of the peons gets promoted to Chef, in charge of the still, the kitchen, and not much else. The work orders from previous attempts at making booze were still in effect, so once I gave him the news he went straight to work making wine like nobody's business.
At least no one died of dehydration, but it was close. We're in a land surrounded by nothing but trees, bushes, grass, dirt, and water. In other words, nothing to drink but what we distill on our own. So I'm glad the error was caught in time.
Zefon and I are starting to dig out the next level, which will likely be a stockpiles-only floor. I must say, it's good to have time to just dig. Makes one glad to be a dwarf, y'know? To make the job go easier, I've divided the floor up into a couple of big sections. It's a stylistic choice, really, but what's life without a little style?
25th Sandstone, 52The second wave of migrants is upon us! Three more able-bodied dwarves, with three more worse-than-useless children. We've now got 23 mouths to feed and only 15 sets of hands to feed them with. The food situation is scarce; it'll take a lot of plant gathering and hunting to get us through before the farms are running at full tilt. I've ordered a plot built outdoors to grow strawberries, to perhaps give us some more variety in our diets.
One of the migrants is a certified mechanic, just as qualified as our mason Misko27, so I've put him in charge of mechanicking for the time being. I put another one in the fields to help Arbiter and his assistant get the fields planted. Hopefully we'll see some helmets come up this winter.
The stockpiles are more or less finished. We've got to wait for all this excess stone to get hauled out, but once it does we'll be sitting pretty.
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