1st of graniteI think the elders were rather harsh, running us exiling us from the camp. My trap did drive off the goblins, after all. The fire and flooding wasn't supposed to spread to the rest of the burrow, though. And the rabid bear getting into the nursery was rather tragic. But the goblins would certainly have done worse. They could have at least let us take some tools with us. Oh well; Blue claims he can turn these rusty rocks into tools once we stop. And at least I have my pets: Scales and Bitey the drakes, and my spiders legs and sticky.
This looks like an excellent place for our camp: a brook for fish and good water, the soothing sound of the waterfall, and Meph said he could make stuff out of the clay. A good thing, too. We are almost out of food; the other kobolds have been eyeing the horse for days. "Eat," I tell them, pointing at the beast, and they waste no time. Fresh meat is wonderful after weeks of nothing but dried fish. I tell Blue "tools," and he gets to work and has a pair of shovels and a chopper in no time.
3rd GraniteZimer had noticed some little dogs around, so Zimer and Jinanins take the skin and bones and fasten some bolas to catch them with. Apparently Jin knows how to put razor shards along the string, because those bolas tore those little guys apart. I train the shalswar to help him out, though they seem more interested in catching vermin around camp.
8th GraniteI choose a spot for our new home near the waterfall. Chimp and Blue start digging us out a burrow so we can be hidden before something comes along that sees us as dinner. I tell them to dig a wood chute straight down and to dump everything we brought into it; we can sort it out once we get underground.I have to keep a close eye on them to make sure they dig the tunnels straight; they would happily dig a haphazard hole in the ground, but I won't stand for that.
15th GraniteSome strange birds arrive. Zimer wants to hunt them, but I think they are a good omen and tell him to leave them alone.
26th GraniteThe burrow is ready for us to move in. It is cramped, but safer than sleeping out in the open. Things are fairly calm for awhile.
28th SlateOur food stores are very low. All we have left to eat is a little bit of fish. Luckily we have a good supply of rats. I order all but 1 of the males butchered.
10th MalachiteA couple of migrants arrive, and I put them to work as a butcher and a mason. Now that chef is free from butchering, he can focus on cooking his delicious stews and working on expanding his clay oven.
I've decided that the chasm would make a great defensive entrance to our burrow. I order our diggers to build a narrow ledge on the other side that I can cover in traps. I also build fortifications on our side so that we can rain death at them from safety.
21st Malachite Zimer is scouting the cave and spots a strange little creature. It appears to be a small statue made of shiny metal and makes a strange ticking noise. I decide that I must have it for my own. I can use it to crush my enemies, or just use it for target practice.
It wanders out of the cave, and I set up a cage trap in case it goes back in. I also order a large ditch dug to funnel creatures into a set of cage traps, with a bunker next to it for legs to hide and spray them with webs.
18th GalenaA couple of caver dwelling nith kobolds exit the cavern, and one of them is caught in the trap I set up for the statue. I send Zimer to question it, but it seems to be hysterical and just runs back and forth. It is attracting the attention of the statue, so I tell him to kill it. It is surprisingly delicious. We keep the caged one; it might prove useful.
28 GalenaThe elders were not content to exile us; they sent thieves to steal from us! One of them injures Scales, but we drive them off before they can steal anything. Zimer has great aim and a wicked sense of humor. He is apparently collecting buttocks as trophies.
1st LimestoneAutumn is upon us, and we are settling in nicely. The burrow is well-defended and spacious. I wish I'd kept on top of the diggers about digging straight hallways, though.
The first level below ground has the trapped entryway, where sticky can shoot webs through fortifications and catch intruders in my cages. I'm also using it to store finished goods and furniture.
The level below it has our clay and metal workshops. It was well worth all the metal to make the grate for Meph's clay oven. He can make almost anything out of the stuff. Our evil little chef has many talents. It also contains my control room, where I direct the fortress's defenses.
The third level has our woodworking shops at the bottom of the wood chute (the next kobold I hear make a joke about that name will be fed to Scales and Bitey). It was a very efficient system for moving wood into the burrow, but I couldn't convince the workers to watch for falling logs. After the two kobolds and a drake got knocked unconscious I had to stop using it. This layer also has the rat room and the dining room behind the waterfall. This is also the level where I will concentrate our defenses across the chasm. I can station spiders to web invaders while traps throw them off the cliff and we rain bolas down on them.
The lowest level is where we process the animals we kill. Chop them up, skin them, and have our chef make delicious stews.
26th LimestoneOh Cavernshadow, what have you sent to torment us? Zimer got too close to the statue, and angered it. He led it right into my cage traps, but it just walked right through them without triggering a single one. Zimer surely would have been mashed to a pulp, but Scales and Bitey tackled the statue so that he could get away. The drove it into the ditch and have it pinned against a wall, but their claws and teeth can't even scratch its metal body. They keep it held back for hours, but eventually they tire and it bashes Scales head in and then finishes Bitey. My poor babies. But they distracted it long enough for me to bring legs over near the cage traps. There isn't a creature alive that can escape my traps once Legs covers them in his silk. I've heard horrible stories of beasts that can, but those are just told to scare children.
The statue climbs out of the ditch and gets sprayed in the face with web....
...and proceeds to walk through it as if it wasn't there and tear of Legs's legs. Then it walks back through the web-covered traps without even slowing down and wanders off. What kind of terrible beast is this?
Zimer was enraged by the loss of Scales and Bitey. I tried to convince him not to, but he went after the beast himself. No one dares to go retrieve his body.
OOCI checked the raws, and I think this creature needs to be looked at. It is a trapavoid, webimmune, lockpicking, mischevious, predatory, swimming metal creature with no internal organs or bones that doesn't need to breath. This thing is harder to deal with than most megabeasts, and it has double the default spawn frequency. I could have caught an actual bronze colossus easily, but this thing killed my hunter, my two drakes, and my spider and walked away through my webbed cage traps. I edited the raws to remove trapavoid and webimmune from it, and I suggest the next overseers do the same and see if you can catch it. It can't be hurt by bone ammunition, so it would be great for target practice.
Late AutumnThe camp is still recovering from the tragedy caused by the statue, but at least the beast has left us alone since then. A few immigrants have arrived and I've assigned two of them to replace Zimer as our defenders. A band of Gnolls arrive, and one of the new defenders decides to get himself killed by attacking them without armor or weapons. I station Sticky at the entry way in case they decide to attack.
But a kobold caravan arrives, and there is no more time for moping. All we have to trade are Meph's stews, but once they have a taste, our Eagle Devourer convinces them to trade all of their food and most of their cloth, leather, and metal junk for a few barrels of the stuff. He was sad that they didn't have any eagle meat to sell, but Meph says he can turn the food into even more delicious stews and Blue says he can melt the metal crap down and make weapons from it. We bought one banjo that looks pretty shitty to me, but he said it was made of some magical metal that could cut right through the metal demon. It cost us quite a bit of stew, but Chimpanzee got it. I got a new trap spider, too. I'll never be able to replace Legs, but at least I have enough to cover both entrances, now.
14th TimberOh Cavernshadow, things just keep getting worse. One of the gnolls tried to force its way into our burrow, and Sticky did his job by spraying it with webs as it walked across the cage traps. However, somehow it managed to dive into the ditch I dug next to the traps and not get caught.
My kobolds were not so quick. Two of them were caught in the cages, along with the kobold diplomat.
They are not happy, but with the webs everywhere and the gnoll scaring everyone it takes awhile to get them out. I finally order everyone back and let the gnoll leave, so that we can release them from their cages and finish carrying in all of the goods we traded for. The Diplomant leaves very unhappy, and I don't think he will be bringing the ogres I wanted next year. At least they left one of their horses, though. It bit me when I tried to feed it, so I think we will use it for target practice and then butcher it.
WinterThings deteriorate rapidly during winter, and I can barely get the kobolds to do anything. Everyone is unhappy, and they keep getting caught in webs. Meph does manage to expand his clay oven, and I Jinanins expands his workshops to make armor out of the fish refuse our new fisherbolds are bringing in. I did get a room built where our bola throwers can use captives for target practice, if we ever get someone with free time to learn to throw them. One of the gnolls was caught in a cave; the other gnolls are standing around it, as I found out when I tried to retrieve the trap, but I am having a hell of a time keeping the other kobolds from wandering over there. One of our masons just got killed, and I can't even figure out where Deep Blue went off to.
I can't take any more of this, I am just going to deal with my traps and my animals and let someone else be in charge.
Beginning of year 2 save
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