Spring 207
The new year comes with a lessening of tension. Our outer wall is finished, fortifications and walkway, and by the end of the season we were well advanced in making it an integral part of the fortress. But I skip ahead. The winter over with no sign of a multi-warband goblin siege, I relax security enough to let our fisherdwarves out to try the brook. Our perimeter ponds have not been fruitful lately.
Our brew stocks are much healthier, although some dwarves have been complaining about the taste of some of it. I don't blame them. I've had some bitter drinks lately over the past couple of years. I don't find out why until the end of the season.
Another of our wrestlers reached champion status. I have him redesignated and hand him a silver axe and as I do; I realise he's wearing turtle shell gauntlets and leggings that aren't minimum quality. They're not even finely crafted! It seems I let some production orders slip past Rickvoid and they got filled by one of his lessers.
I check the armour stockpiles and discover we've got plenty of Rickvoid's best. There's a few other such low-quality items though. I order them dumped. Seems I had one of my mandates filled by posting a work-note rather than telling Rickvoid. Shows how lazy I'm getting. I get the champions gear dumped and tell him to get a few rig. I get Rickvoid to make some new gear to replace the binned rubbish.
Most of the interesting news this season springs from the Elves.
First off, another diplomat arrives. He's more courteous than the last one. He tells the countess that they'd like it if we cut our tree-fell down (HA!) to 100 trees this year.
Since we have ludicrous amounts of wood in stock, she agrees. He seems to misshear her and quickly relaxes his demand to 131 trees. Having nowhere else really to go, she agrees again. Elf dippie makes some aserbic comments about height and leaves before he gets a sore neck. Shortly afterwards the traders come.
We guard the gate, as usual, and haul out a choice selection of our clothing, a pile of goblin socks (apparently we missed these), and, chance of a mandate banning their export be damned, several piles of our poorer mudstone crafts. We get for this barrel on barrel of booze, some wooden swords for training, bucklers, crowns and earrings to please our nobles, and then we get to the good stuff.
ANother giant leopard, nice.
Two Polar Bears! And they're a breeding pair! Don't know if they'll breed at all, but it's worth a try.
A Giant Desert Scorpion!
I promptly order most of these animals tied up at the inner gate. The Scorpion I have tied up at the outer.
Immediately I rethink this. Putting the Scorpion out that far means it'll just die uselessly in the event of an attack. I'm about to order it removed when-
Our Marksdwarves on duty suddenly hear a volley of clicking sounds. The scorpion has spotted something. I take a look; a goblin axeman leading five boneunits, and they're right on top of him.
The first two wrestlers close, and are promptly smashed to the ground. I'm stupified by the utter and complete failure of this surprise assault. Beaten by a watchanimal? For shame. I'm so surprised I'm late giving orders for our marksknights to advance.
The goblins look at the scorpion, look at their two smashed chums, look at each other, and run. Our Marksknights stream out the gate in pursuit. The three remaining wrestlers have too great a head start, but the axegoblin, hampered by his armour, is run down and shot like a dog.
We've had enough goblin junk, and don't need their ratty leathers. I order the Axegoblin's shield and Halberd reclaimed, and the corpses searched for giant spider silk items. There's quite a few. It would be nice to know where goblins do their shopping. So we could put it out of business.
The Giant Scorp, now with a name, is quite unhurt. I order it brought in to be tied up at the inner gate, in the center of the other watchanimals.
Anyone who wants into Fogcrystal now is going to have to fight or sneak their way past three bears, three giant cats, and a killer scorp. Sounds like an afternoon.
As I said, the Elves have a lot of booze. With the work done by our stills we are now topping 800 drinks in stock. I'm going through the accounts when I realise that much of it is Gutter Cruor.
Gutter what? Apparently it's a fairly bitter drink. That explains the poor drinking over the last few years. But where did it come from?
The Herbalist explains that it's made from Sliver Barb. This explains why our dyers have been largely producing blue cloth; most of our potential black dye production has been going into making this swill.
I go to our brewers and explain to them thoroughly and at length that they are not to use Sliver Barbs for brewing or I'll see them thrown to skeletal chinchillas.
Another thing I wish not to speak of.
One more thing I got from the Elves was a bag of prickle berries. I'm not sure what these do, but the herbalist tells me they can be grown, are edible uncooked, and make a rather nice drink that will supplement our dwarven wine quite nicely. Useful dwarf really. I order the prickle berries planted and the herbalist out gathering more plants. I don't send him out enough, quite plainly. If only I didn't find farming such a mind-numbing topic of conversation.
Oh, someone goes all secretive, grabs a few bolts of silk, and produces a thong. Another one for the cause of artifact skankwear. Let's see, that's a tunic, a short skirt, thong and choice of amulets. Coming along nicely.
I decided to replace the scorpion at the outer gate by laying a simple set of stone-falls. They won't stop kobolds, but kobolds won't stand a chance of getting through the watchmenagerie at the inner gate, so that's acceptable. I'm glad of this, because another goblin snatcher is sighted inside the outer walls. The Elves have left and nobody's on duty, but a hastily-mustered lynch mob chases the goblin to the outer gate, where he dies on a trap.
WE receive more migrants, a not terribly useless set this time. Stoneworkers, furnace operators, brewers, actual farmers, metalsmiths, more useful clothing type-people, a woodcutter, a wrestler. Only a handful of potash-makers, milkers and pump operators are useless right now, and they can be made to fit. Probably inside an -iron chain mail-. A pity we don't have any rooms ready for them. I get to work on that.
The downside to this is that our population is now over 150, meaning we are now a duchy. The Duchess and Duke-Consort now need more furniture, and both the Duchess and the tax collector celebrate by mandating more glass. I'll work on the furniture and ignore the glass orders.
Since we have more farmers and brewers and such, I order another farm plot set up. I'm not sure what to put in it, but the Herbalist tells me we have a very small supply of whip vines, obtained through collecting. Whip vines, he tells me further, are basically inedible, but make a very good wine. He's not sure if the climate is suitable for them to mature though, and we have very few of them. I order them planted anyway, and hope for the best.
We've deconstructed all the access stairs going up to the outer wall walkways, and are instead building access towers at the corners. These towers are accessible only from underground within the fortress. We need to fortify the inner side of the outer wall, and to build these corner towers up to something suitably Fogcrystalish. A project to keep us busy.
Author
Topic: Fogcrystal. A Domestic Comedy with Werewolves (Read 11035 times)