27th Limestone
So when will someone explain me, what the point of those artifacts is?
At least we learned, that our enemies are not quite allied with each other. That's good to know. But don't ask me, where the maker of this amulet knows from.
15th Sandstone
10 more dwarves have joined our course. At least the first few rooms were finished, but it is still a long way to go, to give every dwarf his own property.
2nd Timber
Our bone and food industry has finally moved to it's new home above the dining hall. We also included new stockpiles for drinks, food, refuse/corpses and furniture. While this made a lot fo space at the ground level, it also caused a lot of hauling jobs. Looks like we will busy for quite some time.
We also prepared the second half of the Heartgrinder, but won't open it yet, as we expect hostilities soon and don't want to be caught with an unfinished and undefended track way. And the the bedrooms are also making good progress... In general Pascale is leading his masons quite well and efficiently, with them by now making one quarter of the fortress population (24 / 97).
15th Timber
So one apparently one of our spear weapon traps had killed an Orc thief. One of the haulers went there and instead of giving a report decided to just haul the corpse home, finding another thief... That one then got killed at exactly the same position as his companion by the same trap.
OOC: It is weird to find corpses without battle report, but hidden units do NOT produce a combat log, even when they get killed by the trap.
16th Timber
The caravan from the mountain homes. Finally! I'm not even sure, we have anything of value for trade... But we surely will find some junk and leftovers to sell them.
17th Timber
Not only the Orcs found us... Meph spotted an Automaton. Even though it was just a single thief, it means, they know we are here... Things are heating up.
(Mephs color is because her being legendary and blinking)
18th Timber
To underline my words...
A siege! Ferric Elves! EVERYONE GET IN!
Well everyone is... except Meph, who got scared by the Automaton. Hopefully she realizes, that she is running out of time and has to get in here... And the caravan is also still out there, luckily on the other side of the fortress. Still, if the Elves decide to go for the depot instead of the Heartgrinder... Things can get ugly.
Meph is still running like crazy, even though the Automaton is also running from her. And just when the first one finally had left our sight, Meph spotted two more, causing him to run further away again.
OOC: (Meph is northeast, Elves west, caravan southwest)
But she would be lucky. As the Elves could not decide which direction they should go, he finally found her way back into the fortress. At the same time the caravan made it to the trade depot and the Elves finally decided which direction to go... they went... north! To the Heartgrinder. Now please, dawnofdarkness... stay here... and let the machinery do it's job... I told the militia to hide in a corner, so they could not accidentally get a sight of some Elf through the door, the trapway and the Heartgrinder...
And then we let the minecarts go...
Obviously not knowing what awaited them, the invaders went into the Heartgrinder...
19th Timber
They would quickly learn to know it... While the first strike threw most of them back, and the second round killed two, in the third round everything was over...
With their leader dead, the remaining 4 Elves obviously didn't know how to handle the situation. They would neither move onto the trackway nor would run away... They were just standing there... leaderless and without any plan.
As they would not fall for it anyway, we were turning off the Heartgrinder, but to get rid of them, it would need some manual work. The militia got themselves ready. As charging through the Heartgrinder seemed like a bad idea, instead we lowered the bridges through the depot, so they could go around.
27th Timber
After some delay (dawnofdarkness needed some provisions, her kill list made her quite a diva) they finally engaged the Elves. Even though ColdBones forgot the ranged aspect of his equipped weapon, with the 2 legendary warriors on our side, the Elves didn't last long.
The siege was lifted! None of the attackers had escaped. And finally the civilians could go back outside. The elvish equipment, consisting out of iron mostly, would be smelted down again. Why would anyone dig deeper, if you can gain everything from your enemies?
1st Moonstone
Winter! With the clothes from the Elves and some other stuff we could now trade with the caravan.
Autumn has proven, that we are no longer unknown to the other races. With Ferric Elves, Automatons and Orcs we had met 3 new enemies. But the Heartgrinder proved to be worth its long construction time and the many tests we needed to make it work. We now have some time to also finish the second half of it, it would probably only require a week to do so, but there is a small problem. A minecart is stuck in it, bouncing back and fourth right now... We somehow have to get it out of there without it getting accelerated again and driving over the worker. Let's see what we can do about that...
But there are more projects planned. We have to reconstruct the fortified positions for the axethrowers as the old ones proved to be almost useless. Maybe also add a few new ones.
Even higher up in the sky the new apartments also still need roofs and furniture.
Oh, and as Tenderroast has almost finished the spears he was supposed to make...I expect we can see something here as well.
PS: It looks like the Ferric Elves also know quantum stockpiles:
One of the two (the other one looks the same) end tiles of the Heartgrinder: