Note: This is not a succession game or community fortress as such. Just a fortress on an interesting location that i thought i'd share.
Log of Olon Roofhoisted18th Timber, 273:I can't believe this. Sure our people have dreams of the sea, but this is ridiculous. Our great Queen Tholtig Dodokenas has purchased an island on the other end of the world from the humans of The Confederacy of Bites (Apparently named for the way they divvy up their land. I don't really understand it.) This would normally only puzzle me, but they've chosen me to lead the expedition to this island, The Scoured Land. Now that's a name to inspire confidence.
I'm frankly perplexed by my choosing. I'm just an apprentice of the miner's guild. Alath, who has also been roped into this mad undertaking, says she heard that the Queen had told her aides to grab a handful of miners to send off. I believe Alath of course, we're almost like sisters.
So me, Alath and five other miner's apprentices are to travel all the way down to the human town of Onustado to take a boat down to Zozkogan, the name they chose for our would be settlement. I'm sure we'll do lots of pondering on the boat there, but i'll take us all winter to get there. As if it wasn't bad enough, they're making us go there in winter!
25th Obsidian, 273:We've finally arrived at Onustado. Only a day's boatride down to the island. The locals talk about the island being volcanic, which is somewhat heartening. The humans don't understand how i could mean this, volcanoes are merely a danger to be avoided to them. I've also heard that the island is well forested and many deer roam there. For some reason the humans shun the island (hence the name) and will only consent to bringing us and traders from the mountainhomes there. Must be their distrust of volcanoes.
We're to take the journey at the end of the month, once the weather clears a little. This may not be so bad, islands are pretty safe and the volcano will save us from having to make charcoal. At least we won't have to worry about kobolds and goblins.
1st Granite, 274:Why weren't we told of this before!? To our great dismay, the sailors aboard our vessel just informed us that there is a cave full of giant bats and giant cave swallows on the island. Worse still there is also a giant... well, giant.
I've asked around the ship, and they happened to have a record of this giant's exploits.
Turns out that Kesting the Climax of Courage has never actively sought out harm for others, but has twice been attacked and left his cave after chasing off his assailant. He appears to have retreaded to this island to get away from all the annoying adventurers. He won't be happy to have a group of dwarves squatting on his turf i wager. No wonder they don't want to set foot on this island.
Dangers aside, we have no choice but to pull the wagon up the white sand beach and wave goodbye to the ship.
7th Granite:We've been pretty busy digging a hasty cave in the seaside cliffs to bring our supplies into. A trio of raccoons had been hanging around, but our pack animals made them too nervous to actually grab anything. Unfortunately our muskox and horse decided to wander off a ways today and i told Thob to stand guard over the wagon. He killed all three raccoons once they got too close. I'll have to get someone to butcher the corpses so as not to waste them. I'm just worried that the giant will follow the raccoons' example...
20th Granite:We've managed to bring in all the supplies and dug a shaft straight down to sample the stone here by the beach. A few layers of dirt and sand, then some layers of obsidian follow by layers of other stone. Of interest is a vein of garnierite we've dug through on the way down, and a vein of galena.
More importantly, Alath had the perfect idea for how to keep ourselves safe from the cave denizens. She said we should just build a floor over the cave entrance to lock the whole lot of them in. It was done successfully and without incidence. Won't have to worry about them until we can take them.
For now we'll just stay in this rat and roach filled hole and dig out some stone. I plan on digging out the fortress proper next to the volcano eventually. Until then, we'll just have to put up with Mosus' screams whenever she sees a rat. We've been catching the things as fast as we can and putting them in a cage, but they just keep coming. I've heard horror stories of cats overflowing a fortress, so we didn't bring any. We'll probably be happy of the snacks in the long run anyways.
(I'd just like to note that i myself am male, Olon just turned out to be female. Also, while the island does only occupy a single region tile, some parts of it touch the edges of the map and should allow migrants and traders to arrive from the mountain homes. I've observed tons of deer and foxes wandering in, much to the horror of my FPS. I'll only update when interesting stuff happens.)