Our story begins in the spring of 1050Finally, having seen enough senseless violence and madness I had returned to the Town of Stroking. As the name of our Mountainhomes suggests, most dwarves from there are a bunch of useless bastards. We'd gotten by so far by our dumb luck. Having had an abundance of gold and precious stones readily available to us we traded ourselves to an abundance of food, weaponry and crafts. We barely needed to work.
Now that the mountain is bled dry, rather than earn some degree of self reliance, the Strokers at home saw fit to send me and a bunch of other good dwarves on suicide missions in search of more gold. Needless to say I've seen more death than gold and only barely managed to survive long enough to return home.
Our nobility mistakenly think that survivors like me gain in experience and strength through our trials. But those of us who have already played a part in this mad expansionist skirmish know only the cold hand of death which now torments us in our dreams.
Being at war with the Goblins we have been sent to this outpost regardless. Perhaps we are expected to soak up their violence in place of the bastards at home.
The elves are sure to be a nuisance to us as well. Be it by their hand, or that of some unmentionable ancient darkness lurking in the bowels of the Earth, we are certain to face hardships here.
Sooner or later someone
will come to get us. Mark my words,
they always do!As our caravan makes its way towards our final resting place, I ponder its name.
Doomforests, what kind of sick bastard came up with that? Not to mention, our group has been named
the Halls of Mortality. Not even the dullards at home expect us to succeed...
Granite 15:Fairly certain this is it. The guy next to me in the wagon is called Udib Dalzatmafol. I insisted we bring a hunter along, but the way this guy caresses the trigger on his crossbow makes me nervous.
Anyway, here we are. My fellow dwarves admire the beauty of the landscape, I can only imagine it soon to be littered with their clueless corpses.
I survey the area and order a hallway dug into the cliffs. The sooner we delve into the cold rock, the better.
Granite 17:There is an abundance of elk this time of year. Udib went hunting on his own, but the rotten bastard has yet to return a kill. His excuse today was that while returning a kill he was interrupted by an elk.
Granite 18:I don't think Udib is actually a hunter, I think he's a dwarf with a crossbow and a huge grudge against nature. Recently he's been leaving elk to bleed out and vomit themselves to death. They don't really
have to suffer that much, but I guess we're pissing off the elves, which is always fun.
We struck native copper and alunite today while digging out space for our main stockpile. When I die here, at least I will be wielding a weapon.
Granite 23:Udib finally used all our ammo. Does he realize how many favour I had to pull to bring that along for the journey? We have two elk corpses to show for it, and that's all.
Meanwhile we found some tetrahedrite ore while digging out space for the workshops. The glitter of metallic ores has for the time being distracted me from brooding over our impending fate. We're currently digging out sleeping quarters.
Slate 11:In my dream last night, my beard was trying to choke me.
Work has begun on digging out space for a farm.
Slate 22:Finally our first bedroom has been finished. As the leader of this expedition I feel entitled to the first bedroom. Zazit contested my claim, so I told him he could take over my job if he wanted.
Suddenly he doesn't want that room so badly after all.
Felsite 23rd:There are some strange creatures out and about. Would have been nice to have kept those copper bolts.
The farm has been completed and two stills have been built. I've placed a stockpile for seeds next to the farm plot where we for the time being grow only plump helmets. Another stockpile is to store plants for brewing.
We've dug out space for a kitchen, butchery and fishery. The brook is thawing just in time.
My office is complete, from here I shall oversee production. I've ordered our hallways to be smoothed.
With the next season hastily approaching we're off to a good start. The cold air has been quiet, as it always is in the beginning...