First Quarterly Report, Year 110
To my investors at the Merchant's Guild,
I regret to inform you that all shipments need to halt. An epidemic has gripped Cursecoppers, and this situation must be brought under control before we can continue normal operations. I urgently request all travelling migrants to turn around immediately. The more dwarves live here, the more difficult it will be to manage the situation.
Expedition Leader Lor Pickfluke, Merchant's GuildOur fortress is scarecly more than a year old, and it is in it's first real crises. A massive outbreak of pneumococcus (I think) has infected most of Cursecoppers, and the fortress is now in full disease containment mode. Our top priority is medicine production, and taking steps from keeping this fiasco from occuring again.
Thinking back, I ask myself how this could have been prevented, and my solution is to build an apothocary in the quarantine ward.
Fortunately, an elven caravan laden with plants has come in. I intend to empty it of it's plants, by force if necessary.
We're low on barrels, which is restricting our medicine manufacturing, so I order the production of several dozen barrels.
A dwarf I was grooming to be a miner has gone missing as well. Now where could he have gotten off to?
Oops, my bad. Memo: Digging exit paths is generally a good idea. It has now been O days since a workplace accident.
Anyway, by mid-summer, medicine production is in full swing, and I stop gathering plants on the surface.
We'll live off of medicine for the rest of the year, and allow migrants in only after they are cleared through quarantine. The epidemic is still in full swing, but with nothing to drink but medicine, hopefully the fortress will get back to normal eventually.
Anyway, my goal is still to have magma by spring, so I get to work on my research. I make some magma tankers from my copper, and get to work.
To get magma, I'll need Teduk's Fine Goods, which means another trade license. I modded the embassy to sell trade licenses for 3000 gold, so I get to work on making money and building the embassy.
Huzzah!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
I had a fair amount of money saved up, so I was able to get a new trade license forthwith.
Anyway, I build Teduk's Fine Goods, and dig out the magma cistern underneath the forges.
However...
A bunch of goblin archers and a voracious cave crawler. But wait...
Voracious Cave Crawler is opposed to life, apparently? The cave crawler and the goblins start tearing into each other, and immediately run away. Cursecoppers has survived it's first ambush in a way that can only be described as Stooge-esque.
Also, Kobolds.
This'll be profitable.
With my facilities being dug out in preparation for magma, I send the militia out to hunt some snow leopards (I really should place some traps out there so I can train them as pets).
While I was raising money to purchase stable warpstone, the season came to an end.
PHWEW! What a season. We started in the midst of a huge epidemic, but with hard work, determination, and shaking down an elven caravan, we produced 240 medicine in 3 months. For more than 2 months soundsense was an unending stream of "HORK! GWARKS!" and the surface is covered in a thick layer of vomit.
Smells like dwarf fortress. Also, vomit. It's worth noting that we don't have a well, so the interior will be stinking for a while. But the treatment worked, and all of my dwarves are now disease free, and we still have 123 doses left.
Plans for next time include researching warpstone, buying another trade license for the pet shop, and researching alchemy. I'll also need to start producing alcohol again, since I'm locking away most of the medicine for a vomity day, and using the rest to screen migrants. Which reminds me, we got 10 new dwarves this season, and our first birth.
Just as an aside, I've been trying to induct dwarves into Guilds but it isn't working. Does medicine interfere with changing guilds?
Again as per usual, the first post has been updated.