Tombcoasts, Year 3
There are two normal reanimated corpses strangling a heinous gloom zombie cat outside while dozens of other corpses and zombies chase around all the migrants who show up. We have abandoned the upper world and now dwell solely in the caverns.
And there's a forgotten beast fighting the continuously reanimating corpses and skeletons of a bunch of rodent men that I was ignoring. Maybe some day we'll have a military capable of beating it and the corpses long enough to get them all atom smashed, but for now we'll just have to stay safe in our own little airlocked section of caves. Most of the first year was spent securing enough land for farming.
We also have two blind cave ogres in a pit fighting all the reanimating skins and hair of the various cave creatures and migrant animals we butchered. Unfortunately, their continued presence prevents other cave creatures from appearing around the edges of the map, so sooner or later I'll have to kill them... somehow. I'll ponder various solutions to that particular problem.
My first child, a beautiful daughter, was born last winter. It's had me pondering the strange circumstances of life and death in this Armok-forsaken wasteland to which the king has banished me. Despite all the desolation beleaguering our tiny outpost, despite the continual flood of migrants who die and rise again in undeath, despite the clouds of gloom that invigorate both live and dead alike and transform them into ravening monsters opposed to all life, still new life is born and new love blossoms. Tragedy compels us to write records in stone for those who come behind us to this place, whose lives we cannot save. Ghosts of dwarves we do not know haunt our dreams, both waking and sleeping. Beasts unlike anything we have seen or imagined or dreamt fight the living dead just outside our walls - living dead who, while living, would have slaughtered us mercilessly. Countless shrieks and groans come from the pit where the cave ogres fight their endless battle. And still we live, still we thrive, still we farm the soft cave soil and reap the plump helmets. Still we drink the wine and eat the cave crocodile egg biscuits.
Ah, perhaps I should cease these philosophical meanderings... they're what got me thrown out here in the first place.
Kivish Titthallogem, expedition leader of the outpost of Tombcoasts