From the diary of Arcvasti, Immortal King of All Cats:11th Malachite:
One of the miners in the cavern pool is still alive. She’s drowning, but every so often she manages to surface and get a breath of air before sinking down and drowning again. If she can learn to swim before she dies of starvation, she might just survive.
12th Malachite:
In more miraculous happenings, one of the scholars ventured too deep into the caverns and got assailed by crundles. In response, they proceeded to beat the critter senseless with A Wizard’s Guide to Grammar. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still dead and I’ve reached the afterlife reserved for the mad.
22nd Malachite:
The swimming miner is still alive. Their perseverance deserves a reward. I have some steps carved down to near where she comes up out of the water.
4th Galena:
This could be tricky.5th Galena:
Dishmab is out surveying the caverns for the advancement of kitty science and is assailed by the beast. Luckily, they escape without serious injury, save being covered in deadly dust. A nearby carpenter is not so lucky and is exploded with a single kick. I mobilize both spear squads to deal with this intruder.
6th Galena:
The forgotten beast spends its time toppling bookcases while reinforcements arrive. Unfortunately, a couple haulers bite the [deadly]dust before the spear squad arrives and quickly kill it. But not before being exposed to its deadly dust
8th Galena:
The dust, whatever it is, acts quickly. The speardwarves and poor Dishmab quickly begin to swell up and become dizzy. The next stage appears to be rot and extreme tiredness. I don’t yet know if its lethal or not, but Speciesunknown was affected too. This could be bad.
14th Galena:
The dust rot, whatever it was, thankfully wasn’t lethal. All three dwarves, after medical attention and bloody surgery, are quite healthy. Mostly. They’re also all blind. I don’t know how this will change Speciesunknown’s combat effectiveness, but I doubt it will improve. Dishmab, by contrast, is still rotting. They seem to be perfectly healthy and not blind at all. Just sleepy and decomposing, peacefully purring.
15th Galena:
Thankfully, Dishmab is awake now. Still not blind. Apparently the forgotten beast dust is less deadly to cats then to humans. How odd. The scholars will have great fun dissecting THAT weird fact. Speciesunknown seems to be able to spar as well as ever, despite their blindness. Still, there’s no way I’m sending their squad in without backup, like I did this time.
30th Galena:
The swimming miner is dead, finally. Still, I’m going to pump out the cavern pool so they can be given a nice burial.
2nd Limestone:
There’s apparently a goblin ambush. One of them got caught in our cage traps. Spooky. I feel no real desire to try to drive them off. We’ve got plenty of cage traps yet and our best warrior is blind and might not be able to drive them off.
5th Limestone:
The goblins brought trolls. Lots of them. Maybe eight of the brutes, all told.
6th Limestone:
Our best chef, who was outside for some reason, is now dead. Beak dogs. Also, scholars keep arriving. And the goblins don’t seem to be bothering them? Maybe they know what Snow does to scholars and are exerting what little mercy they possess?
7th Limestone:
Rimtar, one of the Fortress Guard, charges out to fight the goblins. His armour protects him against the beak dogs’ sharp teeth, but not their potent neck muscles. They break his knee with a shake, then his neck. Rest in pieces.
9th Limestone:
Another soldier, this time a swordsdwarf, charges out to kill the beak dogs. And this time, succeeds. He killed six beak dogs, all in all, most of them in one slash. That said, he is currently passed out in a heap of beak dog corpses with a broken spine. He bled to death quickly from there. Nice work, though.
10th Limestone:
The military gets sent out piecemeal to skirmish. They kill some more enemies, but sustain a few injuries. The goblins still outnumber us, so attacking them outright is foolish.
11th Limestone:
And here come the merchants. Perfect timing.
12th Limestone:
A few more military people are dead, including the captain of the guard. They keep sprinting towards their enemies and then dying when they pass out from over-exertion. Screw this, I’m leading the charge against them myself. We’ll see how they like being attacked by over twenty war dogs!
14th Limestone:
Its done. The goblins are driven away or dead, the battle decided before me and my dogs could join the battle, but we lost more then a few people. We’re going to have to draft untrained civilians to fill the gaps. Also, being blind apparently makes it really hard to fight things. Speciesunknown is now retired, living the cushy life of the baron consort.
16th Limestone:
I get Northwinds to ask for steelmaking supplies and cats at the meeting with the outpost liason. He looks skeptical of the latter, but agrees anyways.
18th Limestone:
We complete the trading. We give them a bunch of old clothes in exchange for some platinum nuggets and steelmaking materials. I also offer them our very best food and a cat. Now, even if my precautions fail to ensure that every cat in Sneaktunels does not die, there will still be a way for me to resurrect.
19th Limestone:
Dishmab is dead. The deadly dust finally got to them. At least, in their last months, they have contributed immensely to cat science. Being able to witness a living cat decomposing is apparently very enlightening biologically. But mostly it is just sad. I’ll make sure they get a decent burial, but they’ll have to wait in line behind all the others who’ve died recently.
25th Limestone:
I’ve reauthorized mining the magnetite clusters, to supply more iron for our new recruits. This time, with precautions in placee to prevent cave-ins
6th Sandstone:
A leatherworker withdraws from society. Spooky.
11th Sandstone:
We’ve finally run out of logs. I decide to unforbid all the heavy logs in the caverns, hopefully this won’t take TOO long to haul properly.
16th Sandstone:
Some more migrants have arrived. More recruits. The influx of dwarves swells the Skinning Blades and the Parched Anvils to ten members each.
20th Sandstone:
This is dumb. Still, poisonous vapours could be nasty. I have the military draw lots to decide who faces this thing. The Big Silvers draw the short straw.
…
And kill the thing with a single solid mace blow. Good job, I guess?
21st Sandstone:
A baby ghost throws a tantrum and knocks the arm off of an engraver. Which is fair retaliation, seeing as the engravers are SUPPOSED to have memorialized this kid for months now.
22nd Sandstone:
Apparently, one-hitting a watery enemy counts as a fabulous enough achievement to justify
naming a weapon. Huh.
24th Sandstone:
The secretive leatherworker has started their project. They have lots and lots of leather and silver, which could be interesting.
1st Timber:
The leatherworker is all done their project. [http://imgur.com/ZK3um1U.png]Its quite nice[/url], and goblins dying is even topical.
9th Timber:
One of our chemists has discovered the construction and use of retorts. Yay science.