Limestone 7, 251Trading went well with the silver xelic merchants. I’ve acquired a fair amount of cloth, leather, and food from them. They also brought a single ward iron bar with them as well. This will prove extremely useful. Ward iron makes armor that is far superior to steel. The only problem is that there is one bar with which to make something so we can only make a small object. I believe I will have it saved until someone attempts to make a ward iron armor piece during one of the citizen’s strange moods. Surely such an artifact will be extremely powerful in the hands of a worthy soldier.
Limestone 16, 251The Xelics have finally left the fortress. Since their arrival I’ve had nothing but complaints from them. Next year they will not receive such a kind welcome as they have this year. Actually maybe next year I should have them greeted with fine dwarven presents. I wonder if they like crossbow bolts or perhaps even swords. I guess we will have to find out when they return.
Sandstone 1, 251More dwarves have decided to emigrate to Sharksilver. Another seven have arrived this summer. This time we have greeted a few military dwarves among the newcomers. A group of three swordsdwarves lead by a swordmaster named Grau has decided to make this settlement their home. Grau is a great swordsdwarf, armor user, dodger, and shield user and his two accomplices are competent swordsdwarves themselves. He and his men will prove vital in defending the fortress. Without hesitation I’ve made Grau the militia commander so that he may train the dwarves with his superior skill. With the addition of Grau and his men along with another migrant we now have a total of eight militia dwarves. The list of recruits now consists of two marksdwarves, two speardwarves, and four swordsdwarves. The other three migrants were a hunter, a cheese maker, and a woodcrafter. I’ve had the woodcrafter replace myself as the carpenter, the cheese maker will now aid Ironeyes in smelting steel, and the hunter will now take over for Fishybang as the mason. With these new citizens production should continue to increase. Hopefully even more dwarves will choose to live here in the coming years.
Sandstone 4, 251The snow has already started to fall in Sharksilver. We have only had a few months without it. The ponds around us froze about a month ago. I’m not quite sure how the area is considered temperate. The earth is frozen for about nine months out of the year.
Sandstone 12, 251I’ve decided to take up the trade of gem cutting. We have a large amount of gems due to our mining efforts and no one knows how to cut them. To remedy this I’ve started to cut microcline in my spare time. The stone is plentiful and will serve as excellent practice. Once I know what I’m doing I will start to cut actual the gems. I can later use the cut gems to encrust furniture with. Doing so should greatly raise the value of any items encrusted. I’d rather be making soap but what wood resources we have are needed for the production of steel at the moment. I can’t be wasting any of it to produce lye.
Timber 10, 251Fishybang has been taken by a fey mood. She quickly claimed the mason’s workshop and seized three sandstone rocks for her construction. Seeing as she is a mason her project should be something of use. With any luck it will be a valuable piece of furniture. A table or a chair for the new dining hall would invoke joy in the citizens anytime they see it. A new weapon rack or armor stand would surely boost the soldier’s morale while training. Perhaps it could even be a statue depicting a legendary event.
Timber 15, 251Fishy has completed her project. She has created an artifact quality bed. While it’s not as useful as the other furniture items I was hoping for it can still be used. As soon as the miners finish digging out the living areas I’m placing it right into my room. I was a bit confused by what she carved into the side of the bed though. It contains an image of “The Tower Explained” a dog leather book. After asking several other citizens I still have no answer as to what the book is or what it contains. Luckily we brought several history books when we first moved here. Perhaps they will contain some information on this book.
Timber 17, 251I’ve managed to find out more information on the book. It seems that the book was written by a frost giant necromancer almost hundred years ago. The book contained information about the necromancer tower “Rockstrained”. As far as I am aware the tower still stands to this day. I don’t know why Fishy would craft such an object into an artifact but it does concern me a bit. Perhaps she has been tainted by the necromancer who created the book. She might be serving as a spy for her. I will have to keep my eye on Fishy. If a necromancer were to find our fortress I don’t know if we would be able to defeat it.
Timber 19, 251The dwarven caravan has finally arrived. I’ve ordered all of Stodir’s goods to be taken to the depot. His hard work combined with the value of stoneware has resulted in many high quality goods that we can use to trade. This will be most fortunate as his crafts will be our only form of trading value this year. The other industries are all producing items that we require here in the fortress rather than items we can use to trade.
Timber 26, 251Trading went well with the merchants. While they did not bring much to trade I purchased all of it and gave them an additional 8,000☼ in goods. I wanted to make sure the merchants knew to bring more next year and it also cleared the fortress of all of Stodir’s crafts. While they are certainly high quality crafts they were starting to clutter up the fortress a bit. Besides now he has a year to create even more crafts for the next caravan. The only ones I’ve had saved were figures of specific historic figures. When I was looking at a few of them it gave me the idea to construct a museum of sorts and fill it with all sorts of artifacts depicting the history of the world.
OOC: So I didn't notice the water had frozen early and as a result everyone almost died. Luckily I managed to make more barrels for booze quick enough and the disaster was averted. Other then that little incident everything is going well. Grau, do me a favor and ask for more swordsdwarves. This is the highest trained one I've ever had migrate to a fortress that wasn't a resident of a previous game. As usual the new dorfs have been added to the main list. If anyone has any comments or suggestions feel free to let me know.
Yay! If chaos dwarves invade, use the bones to make tower shields! I know from experience that while they're no more efficient then, say, steel, shield material doesn't matter for blockage, and CHAOS DWARF BONES.
But if we are attacked by a dragon or come across magma crabs the shields will start on fire/melt.