~~Journal of Dolwin, Chief of Staff, Charmcrafted Medical Squadron~~Much has happened this spring. Unfortunately, most of it has been rather mundane. Working down my agenda, I designated a mausoleum to be dug. I also added an area for Carpenter's Workshops seeing as we need quite a few wooden items made: beds, buckets, crutches, etc.
The new hospital area has been designed, situated right underneath the old hospital cistern. This caused Puutuulion to come complain to me every few feet he dug due to damp stone, but that is just a prelude to the drama to come.
After just a week of my oversight, the dwarven ambassador finally confirmed our Baronetcy! Puutuulion himself was elevated to Baron, which might not have been my first choice. I have nothing against him personally, but the fact that he is our only miner and we have more pressing dig orders ahead of crafting rooms for him has ruined his mood rather substantially. I let him continue digging the priority designations, which cause him to come dangerously close to tantruming. When ordering his new chambers dug, I gave him a not-so-subtle reminder that he needs to stop being so angry.
Speaking of quarters, I've designated a personal room off of the back of my own room. As far as everyone is concerned, this will be for my own office, and I'm content with them thinking so. Exodius needs quarters of her own, but those will have to wait. We have too many necessities for us to construct more bedrooms at this time. Necessities like tables, chairs, and lots and lots of rock blocks. Our legendary mason was released from his accidental caging, but required over two months to recuperate in the hospital from the broken leg, dehydration, and starvation trifecta. Two more mason's workshops have been built by the overflow stockpile for temporary work orders. All the workshops have been restricted to highly skilled masons, which enables the general populous to put up any walls and flooring that need to be established.
I'm usually far from the last one to criticize someone based on their personal lifestyle choices, but Danmanthedog managed to leave me speechless with her latest request. Since she's such a good friend of mine, I bit my tongue and just nodded. Whatever floats her boat I suppose.
I've ordered a ton of cage traps constructed until we can get an automated defense system up and running. We also have a few bars of soap made, along with many more queued up. This has allowed a lot of the blood to be cleaned up, as well as lessening future infected wounds. I have plans drawn up for a defense network, but a normally mundane issue has become critically important. We have too many dwarves and not enough food. I've expanded the farms, but we are still eating plants pretty much as soon as they are ripe. We need to subsidize our stocks with meat soon or things will get out of hand. The elven caravan has been waiting on Woobmonkey to come up and trade, but hes been rather busy lately with other fortress needs. I've requested any idle dwarf to come up and trade in the meantime. While gathering items to trade, it has come to my attention that we have no items to trade. At all. I hope they like some old clothes, because that's what they are getting. I've made a note to request a handful of golden tradegoods to be made, but for now that will have to wait. The first day of summer is upon us, and with it comes a goblin ambush. I hope our defenses are good enough to hold, or else our fortress has fallen before truly getting started...