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Slate, 42.
A migrant wave of 22 brings our population up to 38. The great news is, there were about five dwarves in that group who were veteran warriors, and know at least a bit about armor and axes. The bad news is, twice as many mouths to feed, and our food supplies are getting really low! We need some gathering ASAP, and trade goods for caravans too.
Two more of the migrants are acting strangely, spying out the production facilities, and the refuse pile. I don't really know what to do, noone back in my home village would ever behave this way! I remember that the previous overseer Meph mentioning that prayers to Armok can soothe and perhaps cure the poor souls. But that seems like a lot of trouble. That's no way to run an efficient fortress! It will be much easier for everyone if they just sacrifice themselves to the blood god.
Felsite, 42.
Paper Plague and Fissure Steelpoint didn't die the first time they sacrificed themselves to Armok. But they were good troopers. They went to the med bay to lay down for a moment, went right back and sacrificed themself again. Armok must have been double-pleased, because the armory stockpile sure is filling up with wonderful bloody axes. So I was thinking, we have a bunch of skilled axedwarves, but not enough axes, and a lot of surplus peasants, but not enough food. I'm going to ask Priest Bane if he can come up with a plan to solve this puzzle! I'm sure whatever he thinks of will be great.
The lookouts spy some elves, luckily, they're friendly Silvan elves! Well, maybe "friendly" isn't the right word. They were actually pretty condescending. But for a couple handfuls of stone crafts we gain some badly needed wood, and a couple dozen of strawberries to brew for booze and to create seed stock for a farm plot. I hope it's still early enough in the year to get a crop in. Fortunately Meph's work crews swarmed to the plot and planted a whole bunch of seeds in just a moment.
Hematite, 42.
Today we open the magma-gates and begin powering the new furnaces. The mechanics are very excited about how safe it is, with obsidian mechanisms, grates and floodgates to protect against the Firemaidens and other creatures we've seen flitting about in the fires. But of course they did a good job, they're dwarves after all! Right now I'm more concerned about getting some iron and silver smelted fast. We still need armor and we need much more and better goods to trade with in the future.
We also set up water-plumbing to drain the local murky pool to a convenient cistern deep in the fort. It uses special diagonal pipes to depressurize the water. Too bad we forgot to use a water pump to destagnate it too. Also too bad, that an evil elf assassin snuck in under our walls in the drained pond bed. Our guard kitten spotted her and scared her away! And also the cat died. These Ashlanders use glass daggers, but they're some kind of super-sharp volcanic glass, not very much at all like our regular soft glass.
Galena, 42.
The furnace-dwarfs are smelting some little clusters of platinum and aluminum we've found so far, and building clay furnaces too. I think we will have some nice crafts soon. Rattlesnake men and especially Nymphs are being quite annoying thieves. They're so fast! I killed one of them after a hunter clipped it with a bolt, so I think we should make some more crossbows and maybe some copper bolts.
Outside the gates is swarming with Warlock snatchers, and wild dire lions. We could use some turrets or war-pets, badly. We do badly need the wood and gathering, though, so I am hesitant to simply shut all the gatherers in. The hunters say that if we draft them into a nice crossbow milita and have them patrol the wall perimeter, maybe they could keep things under control too. In happier news, a nice strawberry harvest is coming in, so we won't starve or become a dry fort quite yet this month!