The fortress is named Avuzritan, "Minebegins."
It has been several seasons and the Old One, named Guthstak odubbul Rurast Vetek, is still wreaking havok upon the local wildlife. The ravens, turkeys, wild boar and great wolves seem to provide a constant supply of targets for it to destroy. There have been no migrants since its arrival either. We believe we may have seen the last for a long time, though we now number 130 dwarves and 1 human monster hunter. However, we DID have two more Paladins arrive a season or two back. We lowered the bridges and they ran inside. We think the Old One was too busy chasing down and slaughtering some turkeys.
Sadly, we have had to move all our operations indoors. The kitchens, butcher shop, and tannery have all been moved already, and we have begun digging out a large cavern in which to grow trees. We have also begun the planning stages of bringing magma closer to the surface... the lack of wood is hurting us. The magma we found in the first layer of caverns appears to be a tube, which is lucky for us as we haven't had to dig TOO deep yet. We created a small chamber with an alunite floodgate so we can have a controlled flow to draw from.
Our need for more metal equipment in order to pump the magma has forced us to create a smithing chamber down near to the magma tube, just above the artificial pool we have created. Opening the last wall into the tube itself resulted in a death, luckily it was not our Queen who mined that particular wall, but one of our doctors. Also lucky that we've had several skilled doctors arrive, so it wasn't as harmful as it could have been, though the loss weighs heavy upon our hearts. We will engrave a slab in his memory. We also lost another dwarf, a wood cutter. She seemed somewhat melancholy to begin with, but started a couple fights with others in the colony and we had to put her in jail. She kept muttering about how her life was a nightmare. We did what we could for her, but during her sentence her condition continued to worsen. She apparently felt extremely embarrassed about being incarcerated and had a small mental break, but seemed to recover from it. Some time after her release, she had a total meltdown and eventually went berserk... we had to put her down before she could hurt anyone. She will be buried in our mausoleum. We will have to consider making that chamber grander... it is not fitting that our dead lie in a rough chamber. Another project to add to the list.
We have also begun digging out a way to safely enter the caverns below... we are planning to create some fortifications to allow our marksdwarves to fire upon enemies more safely and watch over any workers that enter. We have heard a distinct lack of screams from below for over a year now, so hopefully the great beast from before has traveled far from us.
We have much to do!