New embark. It's icier than I realised: Even in the height of summer, the river is frozen. Okay... But the aquifer? It's not frozen. Right.
So, after trying and failing with the aquifer-drop-a-lump-of-dirt-pierce method, possibly due to the whole thing freezing as it fell (wow) I'm now somehow down three miners. I had one, and he suddenly disappeared, and a while later I realised that things weren't being mined. No worries, brought two spare picks. Assigned another miner, all well. He was the expedition leader. A while later, I get informed that I have a new expedition leader. A week later the expedition leader gets reported as missing for a week...
Dig dig dig then suddenly... Urist McSURPRISE is the new expedition leader. There goes my last pick. We seem to have just about the right amount of room left for our remaining four dwarfs to survive till the migration... which should have happened by now, I would have thought? Perhaps it was delayed by that snowstorm...
We've hunkered down in there collecting clay and shaping it into crafts which we can sell for new picks, and possibly new migrants. Here's to hoping someone will turn up in this land of ice and snow. I have no idea what happened to the missing miners and picks. Not so much as a pig tail sock has materialised.
In other news, I've discovered that yaks aren't shearable. How odd. They are in real life: People have been making yak hair felted and knitted coats (and hats, and friendship bands and the like) for as long as the yak has been domesticated. Darn. What am I supposed to do with these yaks? Milk them?