Diary of Salmeuk, Arrival at SneaktunnelsAfter a week of traveling through the endless sand and dirt, climbing dune after dune after dune, we have arrived at the bend in the stream that marks our new home.
This desert wasteland, known to dwarves as The Big Dunes, seems like a great place to die and less great place to build a fortress. In fact, I wouldn't have recognized the site if not for Carefulrogues, erm, careful mapreading. This sunken canyon seemed no different than the last five, but apparently it's the one our venerable King wanted us to settle in. The stream is full of carp, but otherwise this land is barren and dull. I'm just glad to stop walking - it took us seven months to get here.
This site is barely a stones throw away from the forest retreat known as Lizardveil, which we suspect to be full of dirty elves. I have no idea
what they were thinking settling in a treeless desert, in fact you would be hard-pressed to call it a "forest" retreat, but nevertheless we need
to be wary of ambushes. The whole thing just goes to show you: elves are dumb, yet dangerous.
Day 3I saw a strange creature today. It was short, slow, brown, and looked kind of like a turtle but less tasty. I asked Carefulrogue what the hell it was, and he didn't know, but Glittergold chimed in.
"It's a desert tortoise. I used to trade for their shells, back at the mountainhome, when I was a trader. They made great sink basins, you
know, and you could make a really decent profit if you knew the right people, which I did. You have to be careful, though, because the shells can have invisible cracks running through them that only open up once you fill it with water. I lost a good deal of money that way once, if you can believe it, when a strange-looking dwarf by the name of Ivi-"
"That's great, Glittergold. That's great."
I don't trust the thing, it might be working for the elves.
Day 5As the Architect, I've been sort of tasked with designing this place from the ground up. I've never designed for warfare, really, since back home it was all about building for aesthetics. Lots of pillars, buttresses, and grand hallways, things like that. Truth be told, I'm excited to work with the most basic of Dwarven design principles: brutal pragmatism.
The entrance is coming together.
At first, it was just a footbridge and some rough tunnels:
Now it has become this:
A simple granite bridge, just large enough for trade caravans, crosses the stream and leads into a downward ramp. After a makeshift trade depot of rough granite, the ramp doubles back and continues downward.
Oh, did I mention? We've already struck the caverns!
Only a few meters beneath the hard-packed soil sits an expansive underground lake, replete with cave fish and lobster. The winding passages boast an impressive array of fungal growths that we can process into wood, while the cavern floor is absolutely covered in edible plants. Sadly, the open space nullifies my earlier designs and now I'm just sort of winging it.
From now on I plan to spend less time drafting and more time digging.
Do you feel that? It's progress! Things are coming together! We might not die after all!
Day 7Our mechanic Arcvasti, for some unknown reason, brought a number of cats from the mountainhome. The kittens are cute, sure, but I don't see how relevant they are to killing elves. They mostly wander to and fro, exploring and hunting vermin as they please.
My god, they are viscious little creatures. In their explorations out in the sand, the kittens discovered a den of rats and proceeded to
systematically exterminate the entire cluster.
Piles upon piles of dead rat started to accumulate outside, and in this oppressive heat the corpses worked up quite the stench. The kittens would then have the best time rolling about in the refuse and grime, mewling all the while.
I never thought genocide would look so cute. . .
Day 14Gwolfski volunteered to scout the surface for edible plants, any sort of tree, and elvish spies. He found a few Sagauro cacti to the north, which we then cut down. With the planks from the broken-down carvan, that brings us to about 20 units of wood, enough for a few beds, barrels, and whatever else we need. Onciblu, our smelter, went ahead and burnt some of it into charcoal. He can then operate the forge, and with that silver we struck we might make some useful items. Still no sign of any other metals.
On another note, I spotted that damned tortoise again. As I was bringing in one of the horses for butchering I saw it suspisciously munching on some greenery just outside the entrance. I swear to god it was glaring at me as I walked past. Something needs to be done, but no one heeds my warnings.
"It's just a dumb tortoise." - Gwolfski
"I could probably kill it, but it's kind of cute. It's not hurting anyone." - Carefulrogue
"I mean, if you want me to make a sink out of it, I could probably work with some of that nice cactus wood and jerry rig a few. . ." - Glittergold
*sigh*
Day 30Considering how eclectic our group is, things are going well. The lottery managed to pick two administrators, two specialized craftsman, and only a few dwarves with the more practical skillsets of mining and farming. I didn't expect much from anyone - take Glittergold, for instance. He's a self-proclaimed trade wizard and apparently knows how to cut gems to exacting standards. Both of these skills are questionably useful for a death-dungeon, but he's made himself useful by carving out nextboxes for the hens, working hard to move our supplies inside, and at one point he even worked with Snow to mine out some rooms. None of us came here by choice, and our basest motivation is simply survival, but we seem to be making do.
As for the fortress itself, the designations are laid out and now all we have to do is get to digging. We're currently all packed into a single
room, and half of our time is spent moving things about to make room for other things. It's cooler down here that the surface, with the
occassional breeze floating up from the lake, but I still sweat after hauling so many boulders.
Enough for today, I need to get back to carving tables.
Day 60 More rooms have been dug. A number of bedrooms,
some food stores, a dining hall, chicken pen, spaces for farms, and a couple of
miscellaneous craftrooms. I've been extremly busy carving stone blocks and smoothing walls, and it seems like no one around here really
knows how to build anything without a little input from yours truly, but then again everyone seems to have a number of tasks that require
their dedicated focus so I can't complain.
I haven't seen that tortoise for some time. It's probably going back to the elves and delivering intel on our settlement, or maybe Gwolfski was right and it's just faffing about doing whatever a tortoise does. Either way, I hope it falls in the river and drowns.
Day 90Summer has arrived! Not much has been done over the past month, mostly a lot of organization and consolidation of supplies. A number of migrants showed up at our gate today, as well. Apparently the mountainhome rounded up various "dissidents" and shipped them off to this place as punishment. The extra hands will be appreciated, though I don't know if we have enough beer to go around.
The migrants are as follows:
1 gelder, Litast Whiprises, who is pretty good with a sword.
1 milker, Stodir Treatytours, who is pretty good with a spear.
1 metalcrafter, Degel Outragerags
1 potash maker, Atir Quakebud
1 glassmaker, Unib Endwheeled
I have already informed them that their old professions are largely irrelevant at Sneaktunnels, and despite some grumbling they seem to be getting along nicely.
This summer, we plan to flood the farms. The water will be pumped from the lake by Arcvasti and, after depositing the rich lake mud needed to grow our crops, will drain into a cistern. In one fell swoop we will secure access to both food and water.
Damn I'm good.OOC: Anyone is welcome to claim a migrant, with Sanctume and Vikram having priority!
Also snowdwarf, you should edit the thread title. And yeah, they will start attacking at 20 dwarves, I couldn't find a way to make them ambush us any sooner. This is good though because I don't want the fortress to wipe too soon.
Author
Topic: Sneaktunnels, a CATastrophic dungeon (Read 74875 times)