Overseer’s Log
1st Granite, 6I would like to preface this log by saying that I’m not your average duck lover. Some people migrate to far off lands and strike the earth in search of gold or adventure, but as for myself, I came here because I love ducks. A little over a year ago I was still living in the Mountainhome, busy making my living making wooden furniture when one day a soldier named PsychoAngel approached me with an offer. He said he was putting together a team of duck lovers to found a fortress dedicated to raising ducks. I was sold before he had even finished his proposal.
Right now we’ve been here for almost a whole year. I’ve been working as the manager of the fortress, approving production orders when I’m not fulfilling my duties as a carpenter. I was just sitting here in my office not even five minutes ago now when PsychoAngel strolled in and shoved this book into my hands, saying that I was the overseer now. PsychoAngel had acted as our guard during the journey here and had continued that duty during his overseership, but now it seems like he has aspirations of raising a real militia, and apparently the duties of being overseer are too much to juggle alongside training a small army. He also mentioned something about needing extra free time to take up animal training, and said that he had some sort of special project he was planning. When I asked him what it was, he didn’t say anything, but just grinned deviously.
All right, I guess I’m overseer now, but I have other work to do for a while. Before he left I asked PsychoAngel for the stockpile records from the past year to look over. His response was to just raise his eyebrow at the question and leave the office shaking his head and chuckling to himself. He never actually ordered anyone to take up bookkeeping duties while he was overseer! I guess militia-dwarves don't care about how much the rest of us have so long as they have a weapon in their palm. Well, I have an office and I don't trust anyone else to do this, so I'm the bookkeeper now.
Once I'm done with this (i.e. at least a month from now) I want to pick up my axe once again and cut down most of the trees on the surface. All of the roots in the walls of the uppermost level of the fortress look unsightly.
5th Granite, 6PsychoAngel's little "project" is ready, and it's more than I could have ever expected. He burst into my office carrying one of the ducks in his hands. It was probably the meanest looking duck I've ever seen, probably meaner than most dogs I've seen. It would try to pry itself from it's carrier's hands to get to me and quacked aggressively at me. Occasionally it would let out a sound resembling some sort of snarl—I didn't know ducks could even snarl!
So the commander of our future militia has taught ducks the art of war. I don't know how they might fare against creatures bigger and meaner than them, but this first encounter with one of them has convinced me that one of them could probably tear
me apart if nothing else.
12th Granite, 6I had to take a break from counting today to get some good rest and good booze. I've been so absorbed in taking stock of what we have that I've hardly noticed how much of a mess our fortress is with vermin remains on the floor everywhere. I'm not going to wait around until these little pieces of trash start stinking up the fort and make us all go crazy. I told the miners to dig out a space to dump the trash.
13th Granite, 6I heard the sound of commotion coming from up above and rushed to the surface to see what was going on. Dwarves were all pointing to a couple of figures at the edge of our lands, inching closer and closer to the fortress. When they were close enough to see clearly, I could see that they were in fact two elves carrying goods to trade. I ran back to my office to check the records I have taken so far to see if we have anything non-wooden to trade with. I noticed that we have a few golden statues which I'm sure the elves would be happy to take. No real loss on our part, as the statue was pretty average quality anyway. I'll have more made, and these first few can be considered practice for our metalcrafter. Plus, the statues serve to signal to the elves how much we love ducks here!
15th Granite, 6Trading with the elves concluded pretty quickly. Apparently just one of our statues was enough to buy anything they had that was worth buying, and the statues are too heavy for their animals to carry more than just one anyway. We now have some more food, a few extra buckets, a handful of splints and crutches for emergencies, and a bunch of exotic Elven instruments to amuse the fortress. I went up to the surface to talk to the elves briefly. They said they'd stick around for a little while longer to enjoy the scenery and in case we decided we wanted to trade more (with lighter goods). I told them by the time I come back to the surface they'll probably be gone; I'm going down below for at least the rest of the month to finish off the stockpile records.
12th Slate, 6Apparently the elves left today, but I didn't see it happen. As it turns out, my prediction was right, for I had just finished my task as bookkeeper as they left our fortress. We now know exactly how much of everything we have, and now I can get back to work chopping down all of those trees. Maybe it was for the best that I didn't finish until the elves were gone.
A short update for the day. Fixing the graphics was a real pain.