Shoruke's Log. 21st of Hematite. (early summer, year 27)
I have been re-elected recently. I am ecstatic, because being re-elected never gets old.
The humans are here, and have been here for a while now. We've been hauling stuff to the depot ever since we saw them on the horizon, and pretty soon we get all their stuff and they get all the goblins' stuff. It works out nicely for us.
I had Lambskin remove one of the axles that we're going to use to transfer power underground (apparently we're going to need at least two more windmills to generate enough power), and we turned it into ash, and then potash, and then pearlash, and then raw clear glass. Now the fey engraver has everything he needs, and is working furiously on some mysterious construction. It involves two kaolinite rocks, an iron bar, cow leather, a goblin bone, raw clear glass, a rough black zircon, a bolt of giant cave spider silk, and some pig tail cloth. It should be... interesting. It will probably menace with spikes, just like all our other artifacts do. And the spikes will be clear glass.
The best thing about trading is that we get logs from the caravans. This time the logs will be used by the mechanics, though, not the carpenters or wood burners.
Shoruke's Log. 22nd of Hematite. (early summer)
Man. Trading is so mentally strenuous. I had to count to over 100,000 in my head today, to keep track of how much worth we had just offered to the humans.
But they gave us lots of wood logs. Lots and lots and lots. Something like 80 logs. That's way more than enough to finish off our power system, so we're going to put the rest of it towards clear glass and keep building The Tower up. Someday, I want to have that tower reach as high as dwarven architecture can make it go, and throw people I don't like off the top of it. Then they can fall to their explosive, gory death.
Shoruke's Log. 25th of Hematite. (early summer)
The engraver made a kaolinite idol. It's not the most imaginative idea in and of itself. But it doesn't menace with spikes of anything, it has a picture of the queen herself on it, it's worth 75,600☼, and it made the engraver legendary (which is going to save a LOT of time on The Archives).
The Queen took a peek at it, and seemed impressed. She's used to the mountainhomes where there's lots of variety (such as maggot milk and cheese, things like that which we can't make here), but nothing is as professional as it is here. Everything is mass-produced at the old mountainhome, so that there is enough to send to the various outposts. Here, on the other hand, we suffer from a lack of resources (besides rock and, recently, metal), so we have to make the best out of what we have. Hence the military's equipment upgrade project.
Speaking of which, Dracnor's armorsmithing skills are coming along nicely. He's now a professional armorsmith, and he's made us something like half a dozen masterwork helmets.
On the topic of the queen, she's been wandering around, familiarizing herself with the Red Sands of Doom. Except for the fact that she's gone a few months without her own dining room (the poor baby), she's quite happy with our place. We're currently working on her platinum furniture. Her husband is going to have to put up with less extravagant furnishings, however. Or at least, non-platinum furnishings.