Spring of the first year is finished, going to wait a bit before going deeper into summer in the event that some people want to be dorf'd.
We've arrived! There's some nice trees with feathers, I've heard rumors that these logs are extra light so I'm going to save them for making barrels, bins, and other things we'll need to frequently carry around.
Some first orders of business were:
* Chop down the thick highwood trees
* Put all of the animals in pastures. Horses in the grass, pigs on the beach.
* Train most of the dogs to be war dogs
* Turn some of our thread into four ropes
* Dig straight down as far as we can go, I want a mineral survey completed.
Why four ropes? I want a pair of war dogs restrained right by the entrance to our soon-to-be-mighty fortress and the Doctor SWEARS that she needs two and I'm just going to trust her.
What's that red stuff falling from the sky...? Oh my god it's DWARF BLOOD!
Things are going terribly already. The doctor started barking some orders at the weaponsmith and armorsmith I managed to convince to join us about making soap. Doctor was going to butcher our horses for their fat and wanted them to burn a bunch of wood and make something called lye. It seemed like a good idea so I approved it and got back to my fishing.
Nine days after we arrived here the miners have found a cavern. I ordered them to keep digging if they could and gave orders for everyone else to wall in our stairway. There's no telling what sorts of nasties could be out there.
We found another cavern. I ordered the nearest mushroom to be chopped down and used for walls, unfortunately that second part didn't happen very quickly.
A nearby dark pit was founded. They sent a goblin messenger saying that they wished to be linked to us economically. I decided to say "Yes" for fear that the alternatives would lead to our destruction at their hands.
Just as this was going on a large rat had crawled up from the cavern and our dogs chased it off. There was blood everywhere but most if it was dwarven blood which fell from the sky.
We breached the third cavern shortly after. One of the miners mentioned there was a Giant Cave Spider hanging out in the second layer and I knew what needed to be done. Further digging would be temporarily halted and we would try and capture this magnificent beast. Thankfully we had not yet walled that section of the cavern in.
As we created mechanisms and cages aplenty the spider scampered off and some crundles were spotted in that cavern layer. I doubt they would have moved in if the spider were still around. We're going to wall that in for now.
image walls
I had the miners keep digging, while that was going on we finally made soap.
It was almost summer and high time we begin construction of the Ocean Fortress proper. Some of the ocean didn't have bits of... clotted dwarven blood floating on it and I had a series of ramps made so that we could create some sort of basic platform. We had the beginnings of a stone dock by the beginning of summer. I'm going to make sure rock blocks are being made for the rest of the year so that we can have something worth defending by winter.
image basic dock