002F-04 103A.A., Fortress Year 04 A cave crawler in the deepest cavern and a cave croc in the 1st cavern strike out at a weaver and fisher, respectively. We muster a force to kill the VCC, but the croc intelligently hides in the depths of the cavern lake. We have dubbed it 'Thocitnanir'.
In early Hematite the goblins return for their third siege. The force is perhaps 30 strong, with a large portion of it consisting of hardly clothed foreign troops. Given a metal mask to hide their faces, these troops came into battle wearing rags and without weapon. They are sadly the probable result of child kidnappers. While we rejoice that there were no dwarven children amoungst the besiegers we could not help but cry out at the cruel methods that were assuredly used to twist these children into bloodthirsty and desperate monsters.
The savage creatures were sent over the walls one at a time, launching themselves at the closest critter, be it civilian, animal, or militadwarf. Those unarmed monsters proved no threat, but an occasional bowgoblin would snipe at our forces when they could muster the courage to face us. We have left at least 2 squads topside at all times as a result of this behavior.
Below, we have spotted the sphereoid shapes of the caccodemon in the caverns. We investigated the downward passage and found it dead-ended a short way, so we can only conclude that this is the third cavern we have struck. The caccodemon attacked our best animal trainer and his personal pet, then wandered inside the fortress access tunnel, chasing the chief medical dwarf intil a pack of dogs proved more intimidating. It took a scrambled seabee to finish it off, but by then it had already eaten 4 more dogs and a few lambs that were pastured.
Back topside, a Roc had smelled out the filthy goblins and attacked them. inevi Ethedaecu Are Ethithi, the famed killer of our cousin's monarch, had been known to nestle in our range for quite some time, but had never really bothered us too much. The roc attacked an armed merlock squad, ripping the head clean off one and plucking the eye from another before it had its wings sliced off. It managed to gut a third merlock before its death, but we lost an oppurtunity that day.
Though our more thorough explorations of the caverns we found a magma pipe that extended to the bottom of the world. We cleaned away the excess from the area, securing the one entrance left with cage traps. A pack of crundles kept bothering the engineers, so we send t a squad after them. one recruit is now missing, and assumed to have fallen into the pipe itself.
Towards the end of summer a human diplomat arrived. His arrival meant the goblins were gone, and we set about large-scale tidying up of the surface. Finishing up buildings and digging out proper rooms for out stockpiles, we are making large strides towards making our courtyards defensible.
The human diplomat was excited to share every detail of the human's court politics, but we had little to share of our own. Humoring the creature, we were finally rid of him after hearing about the uptenth revolution and attmepted assassination attmept. What we do for good trading partners, eh?
The dwarven caravan arrived as he was leaving, and the liason appointed us a duchy of the mountainhomes. Great, except our mountainhome is abandoned. Still, this marks us as the most important site left in the kingdom, and we shall do our best to earn that title now.
We exported our best armors, and whatever weapons we could spare in exchange for all the metal we could obtain. In addition, we exported almost 20 thousand urists in wooden crafts alone, quite a feat if I don't say so ourselves.
While the broker was dickering with the merchants, some real work was finally done to dig out and smooth our arena. It has a containment pit, an arena proper, an exercise room, a pool, a training room, and the arena itself. As well as the containment room, of course. And all of it is protected by our best and bravest. The tombs are being dug as we speak, and we have extended our plumbing to water the cleared away plateaus that we have created for our cavern entrances. We will have grazer there, or so we plan.
In the winter, 2 forgotten beasts of the depths arrived at our fort. one was a dead monster of unknown discription. One might ask how we know it was here and how we know its dead. Well, we know it dead because we cant find the body. Duh.
The other, a green glass spider with a rounded shell named 'Rohin', is haunting the first caverns, making false charges at our entrance before receding back towards the mysterious far shore. We have since begun working on contructing a path to that shore, so we can spy on the spider, but we can only assume it keeps finding meals over there. For now we can do nothing but station troops and wait. But, at the very least the spider's presence has spooked the local wildlife. Thocitnanir has run into a cage trap after eating a giant olm and several pond grabbers. and both he and Rohin are wisely leaving the quite muscular cavemfishmen alone. The female wields an unassuming club and the male a spear, but have quite the kill record and seem uninterested in harassing us, so we let them be.
Thocitnanir will be our first arena contestant, we wage We already have a breeding pair of crocs, and even have 29 eggs lain.
While waiting for Rohin, our scouts notice that, from the depths, a Giant Fire Snake has emerged! 20 million cm
3 in size, this creature is known for its relatively weak attacks. Relatively meaning for its size; I mean its still large enough to pummel a dwarf and is hot as magma, so it is liable to burn anything it touches.
Well, anywho, the fire snake came out of the pipe, and actually burnt its way through our cage traps. We stations marksdwarves on our platform, but it seemed more interested in wandering around than killing us. Good.
A goblin, Stasost, escaped from his cage topside and chased down a furnace worker. Killing him and a dog with a silver spear, the creature was soon hacked with an iron axe. His escape smacks of kobolds, who are known to be mischievious in nature. Buggers.
Rohin made his move at the end of the year. Trying to sneak into the fort without confronting our militia, an adriti returning to duty shouted the alarm and it started spewing webs at us! With its attention turned to the adriti it left its backside exposed the the rain of iron and steel weaponry we cherished, and it was soon crippled. Flailing its massive legs around, it struck a guard in the stomache and broke her spine. We'll see how she recovers . . .
She is apparently fine. Recieving suturing, she is
walking to her training post! Amazing!
As amazing, we have discovered that snow will stick above the ground
Our buildings have accumulated dustings of snow!
Mappy