This is very rushed, so sorry. I have to get to class.
1st Obsidian 508
I now have only a month left in my time in office. This coming spring we actually have an election planned, and fingers crossed I don’t get chosen. Technically, it would be legal, because I’m technically not overseer this year. There isn’t one. So they could legally elect me without any political backlash from the higher-ups. Hopefully, though, I’ve let Nexus murder enough people that they won’t choose me anyway.
Nexus, in fact, ate that child. That one Aussie kid. Rotten little 2-year-old, but apparently not too horrible that his death didn’t affect the population. Strangely, Nexus immediately reported her crime and blamed it on Phlum. The Sheriff intends to hammer the living hell out of her if he catches her. She’s been accused of both his and Ncommander’s murders, now, and rightfully so. However, she’s too valuable to us as the only dwarf the undead seem to ignore, so I stuffed her out the airlock and told her to escort the liaison inside.
The Liaison did in fact make it inside with cover from Nexus and the marksdwarves, and I’ll probably get around to meeting with her after the elections, when I’m less busy. Trade with the caravan also went smoothly and they hauled ass out of here afterwards with no casualties. I dumped a bunch of mechanisms on them, for a very unreasonable 300% profit or something. I actually tried selling most of the junk for much less, but after buying everything we wanted I decided to just give them a heap of masterwork mechanisms in return for a single barrel of ale. I could technically have dumped even more weight on them, if I wished. Hopefully that will convince someone to immigrate here; population has been low.
20th Obsidian
More coffins are being prepared. Always need more. It’s amazing how quickly work is getting done, recently, though. All the horrible time-reversy-issues are apparently done with, and we’ve had the chance to accomplish a lot. The dead are getting buried whenever we have their corpses available to bury, and that’s all that matters right now.
Oh, I did have a chamber dug out which we can train beasts in, without fear of them escaping. Hopefully it’ll allow us to breed those crundles we’ve caught. They need to do that outside their cages. If whoever is in charge of animal training can keep them going for a little while, we can butcher the weaker males and keep one strong male and the only captured female for breeding. Then again, we now have enough cages set up in a column in the third caverns to catch all the other crundles sitting out there, some of which are probably females.
Nexus has been given another very special digging project; a massive store room in which she can place all the items she collects from the surface (We can of course lock her in her mansion while we take them to our stockpiles), starting with some of the more valuable things, like weapons and armor, then the corpses of the dead. Have her collect the corpses of the undead, too, at some point, so we can control their spread better. I hope she doesn’t get mauled by goblins if any show up next year. This year hasn’t seen more than a snatcher or kobold thief. Rather pleasant, which is good since we have no real military.
23nd Obsidian
Bastard ghost ripped off Gizogin’s right hand. I think the results of future surgical operations may be sub-par…
Can’t believe I forgot to slab the bastard!
28th Obsidian
Can’t believe it! The Liaison is making us a barony! Who to appoint, though…
I have chosen: Myself! Why? Because I’ve been running the place for the last year, and I know roughly how to keep it going smoothly even if the next overseer shirks his duties for some wild, hopeless dream. I’ve read enough books about warfare and defensive strategies to know, even, how to get started on our path to proper defensibility. And what this fortress needs is bolts, armor, especially chain mail suits, and preferably some high-quality equipment. Bronze will do for now, since we have so much goddamn copper and cassiterite and the iron industry is shut down for the moment. Need to mine some hematite.
I swear, I won’t make any unreasonable mandates! Bolts, Mail shirts, and other bronze gear are fairly reasonable for our short-term needs anyway. But I’d like some nicer quarters, damnit. Something that’ll keep nexus out of my bedroom.
1st Granite, 509
Looks like the elections are about to begin, so I’ll write up my final report here. Hopefully it’s taken seriously.
First of all, I’ll need to finish my meeting with the liaison, and we need her to get the hell out of here alive afterwards. I haven’t decided yet what we’ll need from the caravans yet. I’m sure that topic of discussion will come up soonish.
Almost as importantly, we need to begin producing more military hardwear. We desperately need more and better-quality: gauntlets, high boots, mail shirts, breastplates, helmets, and greaves. Leggings would technically work, but are generally less protective. Copper shields should work wonders, if we’re short on shields still. In fact, some copper maces and hammers should be ordered up if we don’t have a silver supply sufficient to provide ~10 of each. After that I’ll dedicate already-smelted copper bars to be used for bolts, and further copper nuggets be used with cassiterite to produce bronze. It’s faster to smelt directly from ore, than to smelt both ores then combine the bars they produced. Copper should still be smelted from tetrahedrite, though, which should supplement our silver stock a little bit.
I’m having a spiked training zone set up just below the catacombs, where the militia can be trained. They’ll need that armor, first, and I haven’t built any of it. Standard danger room design, though.
We’ll also need a secondary, trapped, entrance hallway to deal with goblin sieges that are sure to show up this year.
Nexus should be allowed outside sparingly to drag in any equipment left out there. If goblins are killed and converted into undead, consider them her body gaurds. She ahd another problem last night, though; got caught in a fetid muck rain, which she promptly began screaming about like a wus. You probably heard the screaming, I guess, but acknowledge that that DOES cause severe blistering, and she could be in serious danger out there without medical attention.
And make sure the dead get buried, for Armok’s sakes!