It has been an eventful winter in Drunkensteels.
First, my legendary miner decided to take another inexplicable leap down the mineshaft- this one fatal. I STILL don't know why it is happening, which frustrates me to no end. Since the lack of willpower on my dearly departed miner meant he took a long time to train, I decided to interview the candidates for his position more closely. His replacement has an iron will and a good kinesthetic sense, and while not agile is at least not clumsy.
While I closely monitored the replacement's first digging routes (avoiding clusters of minerals, excavating around bluemetal veins, so on and so forth) the Beak Dogs took advantage of my distraction to return in force. A random potter was mauled to death, and when my military was dispatched to combat the threat they managed to find the one hand without a gauntlet in the whole bunch, and rip it off. The hammerdwarf died of blood loss shortly thereafter. My military finished them off rather quickly- what's left of it, anyway. Half of the military is currently grizzled vets with grasping problems and jagged scars, and the other half is fresh faces who learn fast.
Its been more than a year since my last migrant wave, and the strain is starting to show on my military. I have four squads with nine soldiers among them. I may have to relax my recruitment standards to bring my squads back up to strength. Normally I only allow dwarves into the armed forces if their physical stats are a net positive, but if I take any more losses I'll have to draft some skilled-but-flawed dwarves to fill in as sparring partners.
I did mention the bluemetal earlier, right? My Pit of Eternal Falling and Dying has gone as deep as it is going to, and I've started exploratory veins along the contour of the magma sea. I've found quite a bit of galena down here, which is welcome news since I prefer to inter my dead in lead.
Speaking of the dead, the ghost problem has escalated to a ghost situation. That miner who died at the start of the season decided to open Spring by coming back- with a vengeance. He is murderous, and the first I heard of it was when he scared a Potter to death. I suspect this has something to do with the ghost that taunted him during his convalescence- knowing that nobody gets a casket unless they have a damn good reason, he decided to just start murdering people until he gets a proper burial. I'm currently cranking out some rock coffins to finish the ethereal menace once and for all- I can recycle them in a pet cemetery later.
About the only good news is that my hospital cistern is nearly completed (again,) with a new subterranean well. I should be able to start filling it before the month is out, barring unforeseen circumstances.
EDIT:
In the Spring, a giantess came to Drunkensteels. After an initial scuffle where an axedwarf maimed her arm, she led the military on a merry chase through the town. Distressingly, the fun came to an end after she fell to the ground. Completely paralyzed. Near the corpse of the dead Forgotten Beast.
Presumably she would have suffocated like my unfortunate soldiers did, had not the Swordsdwarf Sigun Boulderprairies the Tight Hawk stabbed her in the brain. Sigun is the only dwarf with a title in my military, and he's one of the oldest surviving members, having been drafted in the first migrant waves. He was instrumental in repelling the goblin ambushes in my second year, with 6 kills in the year 309. He now leads The Livid Clasps in battle, has nine notable kills to his name, and is the second most skilled combatant in Drunkensteels, behind my militia commander, the Expert Hammerdwarf.
In any event, I'll have to monitor whether any civilians or animals start dying of FB extract, and start designing a magma purification system in earnest.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6217300 times)