Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 13th of Timber 168It is winter now in Smallhands, and with winter comes two things. Chilled booze and angry Overseers who are unable to fulfill their ideas because the fortress population is too busy socialising and drinking! I have three months left in my reign and I don't trust my successor overseers to memorialise our dwarves properly!
At least I can somewhat rely on my successors to want to correct the recently discovered issue in the magma works for the Tall Bar should I be unable to rectify it after yesterday's test. That being the pump stack materials were not magma safe resulting in magma almost flooding the trade stockpile. I thought I was going to need to replace some of walls as well to prevent leakage into the tavern itself but fortunately a miner who assisted Nogood with engineering the temple recalled hearing from the man that magma sealant was a part of all standard dwarf constructions.
A pity I had to knock down the surface tunnel anyway as it was causing issues and confusion for the migrants. I have thus had to begin the magma works almost from scratch with orders for the miners to dig from the same floor the West Access Shutoff Z-1 lever. Honestly, I'm not sure what that lever is supposed to shut off but I'm not pulling it in case it triggers an earthquake that sinks the whole west half of the fort into the caverns.
Only a week since those two elf lovers went missing? I thought it was longer than that.
Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 4th of Moonstone 168As the weather chills and the light fades sooner, we work evermore in the darkness. Little has happened these last few weeks beyond continued hauling, smelting and carving of stone.
I have decided to make use of the floorspace I had excavated for materials to build the Tall Bar with by having a masonry and a craftsdwarf workshop installed and a pair of stockpiles put down. Being opposite the Hall of the Hallowed Dead, this shall be thus be named Memorial Manufactory. Or it would be had the Overseer's office not run out of parchment this morning when I was drafting work orders for our ghoulish fevered blacksmiths to kindly refrain from making subpar statues and instead let our living, focused, non fevered metalsmith get to work. Vabok especially shouldn't be smithing as he's supposed to be on military training.
I am thoroughly pleased with Kosoth, our mason who underwent a fey mood last season. Initially just a mason in training with his dog, he got inspired while hauling a statue of myself and made a Galena armour stand with a drawing a Salmeuk surrounded by snails. I'm not even sure that qualified as an artifact it was so plain and I confess I missed out writing it in the overseer logs.
Since then he has gone on to produce masterwork after masterwork for our fallen. He is going to get a better room and I hope he finds some friends here. The man deserves them. Till then, I will install a statue of his goddess Kovest. While I think little and less of all gods below Armok, I cannot deny that she who oversees Metals, Minerals, Wealth and Jewels is a reasonable deity to worship were Armok not around.
Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 19th of Moonstone 168What's that shouting?
Kib...instead of complaining your water source has vanished, how about using the stairs and getting some booze?
Speaking of stairs, I was looking through some old fort documents and I couldn't for the life of me work out what these stairs were for. They are above the asylum which doesn't exactly bode well.
I vaguely remember the asylum. That place must be covered in dust and cobwebs by now since all the dwarves that were going insane are now better, dead, both or currently held by goblins for streaking that I absolutely had absolutely not seen coming just like every other dwarf in the fort.
But those stairs got me thinking, if they link upwards to the aquifer...maybe we can build ourselves a drowning chamber for goblins as a contingency.
After rereading my journal last week and the last words of Nogood, I slammed my flask for quiet in the tavern that night for quiet as usual and ordered every dwarf to declare their religion to me in writing by the end of the month for two purposes. Burial rights, and preparation for a purging of anybody worshipping an elf, beast, monster, goblin, demon or necromantic deity.
My time as Overseer will be at an end soon, and I must set the stage for later.
The results...were unexpected:
Why do we have a 9x7 Urist temple devoted to the God of
Murder? Especially when we don't have any followers of him.
There are 3 misguided souls that worship the deity of theft. Whats more they have named their shrine "The ungodly chapel" I'm not even sure what to say to that. The shrine barely qualifies worth an estimated 4 urists. I had to down a flaskfull of foxtail millet to get that idiocy out of my head.
We still have a single foolish dwarf devoted to Weevilmessiah the god of Thralldom. The one whose been behind so much evil in this fortress through giving slabs to the necromancers. This traitor must be slain like his followers in Sinewsabres. An age of dwarves will only come once dwarves and dwarves alone rule the world with someone like myself at the helm of such a golden age.
Moving on, was a pleasant surprise- 21 dwarves, more than half of our population worships The Helpful Saint, deity of forgiveness. Two small temples but apparently 11 worshippers just can't be served in them.
The same cannot be said for the 2 followers of Arkoth, a deity of Fate and Rain. Rain is a blight on dwarvenkind, its an elven influenced belief! Rain is evil, just look at those clouds of goo!
Finally...there's still somebody who worships the goblin god Lidod Dungsspit, god of depravity. A quick atom smashing is what needs to happen there.
Annoyingly, I was unable to list Armok in the deities list. Ran out of room on the parchment. Save the best till last they always say...curses, I need another drink.
Several reminders to deduct different alcohols from the stockpile line the rest of the pageJournal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 11th of Opal 168The days continue to tick by and the new memorial hall is smoothed into resplendence. Three have already been put to rest here- Bim, Salmeuk's wife and founder of Smallhands. Kib, creator of the glass chain and hero of Sinewsabres and Rigoth, Hammerer of Smallhands.
All three have been given superb statues and slabs. I have also instructed our idle dwarves to stop socialising and start getting shut of the old memorial statues that were wholly inappropriate. While I won't have them melted quite just yet, the smithies having enough work as is, they will be needed next time.
I have had our best engraver Udib work purely on our Hall of Legends engravings beginning with Nogood, then Salmeuk and finally myself.
A note to my successors- if some ungrateful bastard puts a floor engraving that needs to be removed, force them to run some minecart tracks over them and then grind the tracks into dust. Then you will have a nice clean floor to make them do it again until they are respectful enough to get alcohol privelages.
Here's some samples of the work our new living dwarves have been making.
I have done my best to ensure the glorious deeds and crafts of our dwarves were shown correctly. Nogood's strike with his shield was in honour of a particularly good kill I saw him do once bashing a goblin's head off with the edge of it.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of potential engravings that weren't perfect because one of the engravers started on the wall before I could tell him what to put there. He's only getting one pint if he comes to the tavern tonight!
In other news, our sole Bowyer has become unusually secretive lately. Wonder what he's up to.
Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 5th of Obsidian 168As the last few weeks of my term draw to a close, I have to concede thanks to the workforce being chattier than ever, even the ghouls, that I am unable to guarentee the implementation of either the new magma system on the Tall Bar, or the inductions into the new memorial hall of smallhands.
of the 38 work capable dwarves in this fort, today I counted no less than 30 of them socialising, drinking or sleeping. Some were shouting down in the farmer's guild hall even though they weren't farmers. I did see Imic dancing with Vabok though despite poor Vabok being down an arm and undead. Vabok's been coming to the tavern a lot after training. Seems its given him much better peace of mind than before.
I also noted that there have been several library complaints about unreturned books- unheard of in peace time. The curious thing is, one of the most popular books being checked out was Start The Day Cleansing Wounds by, who else, Ushrir the necromancer.
It really has been peaceful here. Both of my reigns have had zero incidents involving goblin and necromancer invasions or echnidas. I suppose that all those statues of myself we exported have lead the goblins to realising that Smallhands is just not worth the effort when I'm in charge. Which it isn't of course. When the best are in charge, we boost up everyone beneath us, and though smallhands has a lot of potential, it loses its way once in a while, but we will always endure.
Just like I hope these memorials will
The top left is Nogood's room, complete with a Masterwork Bronze replica of Ravenwind on a golden pedastal. There is supposed to be another on the other side with a replica of Quicknesshawks but its not been made yet. Engraved are various scenes from his life such as capturing Kol Namedpillars. To the top right is Salmeuk's room, the artifact coffin going to him and a Masterwork Diorite coffin on the opposite side for his wife Bim. Bim I should add also has a memorial in the regular citizens area plus a statue, her body is buried here.
The bottom right one in this etching is my tomb. There's not as many engravings here. Why would there be when there are still great deeds I need to accomplish after all? The other reason is because those blasted engravers STILL spend more time socialising than working! Now they are listening to stories and praying!
If only some of our fort members weren't permanently afflicted with fever then they would be able to contribute to the high detail work thats required at the moment.
Much to my frustration though, the same can't be said for the magma works. The tunnel I had ordered dug by Kib ended up flooding during break time. So the next overseer will have that to fix if we're going to bring fire down upon the hordes of goblins.
Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 28th of Obsidian 168It was wet and miserable outside, but dry and merry inside for a change this year. I've never served so many drinks on new years eve party. We also had quite a lot of candidates this year for Overseership next year. Stories were swapped, songs were sung...I even saw a poetry performance by a ghoul. It was quite riveting even despite his current physical status making it difficult to discern at times.
Momuz turned up as well which was a surprise. I guess I can let her off slacking so much recently given what she was carrying
The sound of a crashing platinum flask on a stone mat distracts the crowd
Citizens of Smallhands!
Tonight we celebrate, both the new year and the old. We have come far this way, partly because of me, and with thanks to all of you. 5 years ago we started construction of this tower and today we can look upon spring from up high. 5 years before we even begun this tower Smallhands hit sunlight once more as the fortress recovered from Sinewsabre's slaughter by destroying cactushexes. Yet here we stand, while Sinewsabres does not. On high our enemies build and in numbers they fight, yet Smallhands is here triumphant!
With the sacrifices of our predecessors and hard work in the present, we can look forward to a glorious future. Now raise your mug and toast to ourselves and Smallhands!Thus I spoke to the crowd. As I walked out on to the balcony to see the dawn's rays, I felt my eyes drawn to the ruins of Sinewsabres in the distance, then down to Smallhands' entrance. Behind it was the perpetual goo cloud that encapsulated Spriggan's tower. After all these years he's still there shouting and screaming till the end of time. Or at least till a drunk dwarf decides his decimation is due.
I'm proud to say I've left Smallhands better than I found it in once more. I did what I set out to do even if I didn't finish my side projects. Those are now in the hands of my successor. No rigging this time. Smallhands deserves a fair election given how much its trying to improve as a whole. They may not be up to my level, but they are certainly on the way. I can be proud of myself, and proud of them.
And they can be proud of themselves too even if I have to shout at them sometimes. But what sort of dwarves would they be if I didn't?
A question for another day.
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Topic: Smallhands - nearly 40 years and still tiny! (Read 441805 times)