2nd Hematite
Another one bites the (coal) dust was never more fitting then now...
13th Galena
Wow, what a boring season. Actually a lot of small steps have been made, that improved city life, but nothing groundbreaking has happened. Even though some bird was always scaring our researcher, we made some progress. We have built some workshops for chemistry, toolmaking and a coin mint and started work in those. Construction of the hospital is already done, and another floor for scientific tasks is added to the building. Sadly our miners are quite busy and were unable to dig out the cistern yet. Also we continued our work on some new features of our entrance defense.
Also some guy had made a steeloak cup, but we have stopped caring about those random artifacts. In that case I may interrogate the artist later on, just because his secret love for elves is disturbing.
On the outside there were some Automaton thieves mid summer but nothing worth mentioning had happened with them.
17th Galena
Humans. They sent another caravan. Considering what had happened last year, that's surprising. But who knows when they will strike back. Maybe that caravan is just spying on our defenses? We better strike first and let no one escape.
18th Galena
Hmm, it looks like their lesson from last time was to just send more. There are more then 50 humans and pack animals in the city right now. Including 15 guards Fighting those could actually turn out to be more dangerous then we thought. But also the reward would be far greater!
23rd Galena
Hunting season has begun. We spotted an Automaton ambush, almost in the same spot as last season. As we are used to attackers around that time, everyone was already prepared. We would let them come...
26th Galena
History repeated. Again they didn't bring any more then 7 invaders. Again the Automatons were suffering under the fire of axes and javelins. Again they approached the entrance just to be ambushed themselves by our stout militia. Again the fight wasn't fair at all and they were quickly overpowered. Whatever, we won't complain on our enemies going easy on us. There were enough challenges up ahead!
1st Limestone
Summer has ended and no other enemy dared to come close to our city. Our militia is now preparing the assault on the caravan. Again it was a quiet month. But we won't stop. We always have to be ready, for whatever may be out there.
4th Limestone
Today we started pumping water into the cistern. I was told that way the water would be cleaned. Some magic by our mechanics. But the cistern is filling quickly and wells are constructed. Our hospital is now only missing a few traction benches before it is completely functional.
11th Limestone
After some preparation we have finally assaulted the caravan. It was another battle repeating history. Even though they had the better numbers this time, still they were unable to critically hit any of our well trained dwarfs. Their steel armor helped them greatly against our blows, but in the end, time was running against them and they succumbed under the attacks of our militia.
Only one human managed to escape, and their diplomat tried hiding in our dining hall, creating a huge mess, when our bloodthirsty dwarfs dragged him out and slaughtering him right in front of it. Couldn't he chose a better place to make his last stand? The city was now littered with corpses, and we started to clean up. The smelters would run for years now, and we already more then enough steel.
20th Limestone
We have begun construction on a new industry building. The plan says that there will be metal industry on the ground level, stone industry on the the second floor and later various other industries on the third one. Once this is done, we can finally clean up the clutter in our city and make space for more buildings in the center.
4th Sandstone
Tenderroast the weird one has stopped his training in the barracks. Instead he is now sitting around in some sort of altar, studying all the time.
He doesn't talks to anyone, doesn't even go out to grab something to eat or drink... just sitting there over his books. He is really odd.
But the townsfolk has no time to care about him. Right now everyone that has no more important task is hauling, hauling hauling. Some dwarve genius has built some new kind of stockpiles in the new industry hall. With the help of minecarts items are stockpiled in a way that requires almost no space... Don't ask me how that works. It may prove really useful in the future. But right now it just keeps everyone busy, because all the stuff lying around has to be hauled there.
25th Sandstone
Watson was always working on his archaeology. But there was nothing new or impressive all that time in his finds. Until today. He found what we, and especially the miners and me had desired all that time.
A rare jewel called blood of armok. It is supposed to be a source of magma!This may power our forges! No more coal would be needed in future! No more losses of dwarven lives to that black dust! The miners were celebrating and I was already thinking how to plan out our new forges. That would be glorious!
18th Timber
The dwarven caravan has arrived! Again the merchants arrived before any invaders. Times were changing. And it seems there is a high demand for our goods. Again more then 50 dwarves and packanimals arrived. An endless convoy streamed into the city. But Mosey put on a worrisome face. Would there be enough haulers to actually bring all our goods to the depot? Because everyone was still busy with those new stockpiles. And this would probably remain like that for another couple of month until everything was cleared up.
24th Timber
Still no enemies. Where are they? Are they hidden somewhere? Or are they scared? It looks like out of boredom our jeweler decided to make a barrel out of an amethyst. Yes, only an amethyst. Nothing else! Not sure how that's possible. Whatever...
1st Moonstone
Beside some Kobold and Goblin thieves no one else was spotted. That is the first time for 2 years. In general this year there weren't any major attacks on our fortress. Only 2 minor Automaton ambushes, but nothing else. Did they lose interest in us?
But right now with everyone busy we don't miss those uninvited guests. We found some haulers for the depot and can trade soon, hopefully. The stockpiles will take longer. The amount of items in the wrong place is endless. But once we are done, we will have an wonderful clean city. Our goal for the winter is to slowly move our metal and stone industry to the new building but there is still some work to do for our masons.
OOC: Right now there are quantum stockpiles for cloth/leather,wood, bars, blocks and weapons/armor/ammo. This alone are 5000 items to be hauled. Easy way to keep a 180 dwarf fortress busy. (not like there wouldn't be enough normal work...)
Also action/contentwise this update seems like this was a boring period, but tbh I'm very satisfied with the progress. There was a lot of advances in research (magical and normal) and the new industry hall with it's QSP is finally allowing me to restructure this mess of a city. Once this is done I can finally launch more building projects. (Mosey really needs more then his 4 tile wooden hut he has since year 1 ^^)