Goldpraised, 201.
From the outside, barely an unassuming warehouse-like modest structure with a dinky bridge facing a trade depot made of ice, standing alone in a desolate glacier.
Inside,... an equally unassuming big communal space carved out of the ice, with jumbled workshops and beds in ridiculous places, and a staircase plunging vertiginously into the darkness.
This because I'm very much a theorizer more than a doer. But no worries, the seeds of greatness are there.
- The first year went well, but not without turmoil. Mainly, the settling was slowed down by having only one pick and no trained miners, and for the first time in a long time my dwarves ran out of alcohol and had to drink water from the well. No biggie, the construction of farm plots irrigated by the aquifer was already underway and food and booze production became stable shortly after.
- 21 strong population after the first two migrant waves. Many of them have some degree of military training, given that the parent civilization has been waging war almost effortlessly since year 11 against various civs, mostly elven since they seem very disapproving of their cannibalizing ways, according to the legends mode scholars. I have three veterans of the elven wars, and I'd make the 149 years old crafter and marksdwarf with 137 elf kills the militia commander, but old age may claim her soon.
- First two moods, legendary weaver and mason that made a nice native gold statue of the crowning of the first ruler, with a not ominous at all image of a flash specter in rubicelle on the side.
- Spotted a GCS in the first cavern, near the small enclosed pasture made for the sheep.
Just seeing that 'S' scuttling around and reading about his brown chitin and eyes and how he bears untold amounts of fat over a gigantic frame gives me a deep down soul shudder no picture could give.
It's going to be tricky to capture him.
- The evil dust so far has enthralled only a yeti that was milling outside, which was promptly captured by a cage trap and hauled indoors.
Apparently, cats can enter cages and interact with whatever is inside, because my only cat managed to get himself zombified off the evil dust coating on the caged yeti's right upper arm.
I have a save before it happened and can reproduce the contagion, I just didn't know it was a thing.
No special plans or long term goals at the moment. Magma forges and smelters are already set up and I'm going to have more picks soon; once I took care of better lodgings, and built a defense system for the trade depot not consisting of a single cage trap, I'm going to hollow out part of three z-levels of glacier to make space for the fort proper, to have it standing on a solid siltstone foundation, just because.