[I was WAY ahead of you on the burial level. However, on the other stuff, we already have a skulls/bones/shells stockpile. You can see it in the screenies. Your boneworkers shop is already dug out on the screenshots. It's the room on the workshop level, fourth on the right going west from the stairs. There's some stairs been built since so it's pretty close to the skulls & bones stockpile. Of course if you WANT to work way down in the Gabbro....]
Autumn 202
A lot of digging and building got done last season. Our wall is now completed and we are beginning to put up walkways around it to facilitate the construction of fortifications. Our central stairway now goes straight to the bottom, to the depths where dwarf was not meant to go, and it is now supplemented by secondary stairways connecting the three main levels at the ends of the corridors. We can now estimate our stone resources. We have 6 levels of Mudstone, 6 levels of Slate, and 1 of Gabbro at the very bottom.
That means iron and coal from the mudstone, zinc from the slate, and the probability of nickel in the Gabbro. Also, the possibility of copper everywhere. The possibility of copper.
Why is it that you can never find the right amount of copper? You're either drowning in the stuff or it's just not there.
Incidentally, we nicked a magnetite pocket extending corridors on the residential level, so iron ore isn't going to be a problem. Fuel might be. I've got Rovod and some nameless sucker out chopping trees. I want to see how much progress we can make on clearing all the forest out from around the walls. Fun game, with Young Toby out there.
The injured raccoon is staring at me. It's trying to make me feel bad. Since taming, the things just hang about the dining hall looking windswept and interesting. Dwarves are standing around, complaining about the lack of chairs. Fair enough, I really should put some more furniture in here. Somehow there's always other stuff to do.
We felt secure enough in our food to plant a crop of pig tails a couple of seasons ago, so I had a farmer's workshop and loom put up. We don't have a clothier yet but no reason we can't make the cloth. I don't want us to wind up with our nuts scraping the earth like those guys in Nist Akath. This led to dwarves wandering out to COLLECT the phantom spider silk.
Well, I almost had a heart attack when I found out, but apparently nothing bad was happening, so I let it be.
Then I get the word that our brewer (that's his actual job) is cancelling his silk-gathering on account of Werewolf.
He's not far outside, but Young Toby is close. I use the mystic dwarven discipline of [TOO HORRIBLE TO TRANSLATE] to draft our hapless zysmologist and station him within the fort, also mustering the other founders to rush to the gate.
Well, actually I run around screaming "Code T! Code T!" until Kubuk slaps me and gets me to explain.
Anyway, our brewer makes it within the fort with Young Toby in hot pursuit.
Young Toby is not one of nature's evolutionary survivors. He takes a jolt from a stone-trap, then crawls out BACKWARDS, prowls to the left a little, and runs right into another.
He pulled himself out in front of the gate, and passed out right as we arrived. Anyone could have got the kill, but it was Ubid first on the scene, and Ubid for the win.
Drama over. Of course, another werewolf was sighted far to the south only minutes later. We're calling this one "Anita Pallenberg" for reasons that escape me.
Oh, and we never got to do anything with Ol' Toby's bones. We shall see what happens now.
Shortly afterwards, our friends the merchants return. Thanks to my strategic brilliance in never designating a finished goods stockpile, most of the stuff we piled up for the Elves is still there. We also have more of Ubid's crafts, including a rather superior earring, and Rickvoid's totems.
We sold Ol' Toby's skull and a whole bunch of stone rubbish (sorry Ubid) for booze, meat, barrels, some bins of cheap leather, and a selection of the cheaper metal bars and ores.
And One Log.
Stupid merchants.
We're no sooner done with the trading than I get the word that Neo has risen from his bed and is moaning on the floor of his room. He is frothing and screaming and passing out every few seconds and generally making a complete Elf of himself. He appears to be trying to leave his room and fetch something, but between the "Missing Leg" thing and the "Fainting with the pain" thing, he's moving at about 6 feet per week.
"It's a possession" said Rovod gloomily.
I squinted. "What, the chest he just fell over? Yes, that's his. But I hardly see how relevant the statement-"
"I mean he has been seized by an extradimensional force that wishes to manifest itself on this material plane in the form of an artifact. He has been chosen as it's creator, and he will go hopelessly insane unless he completes it."
"Oh, a POSSESSION. Could be worse. Could be a useful mood wasted. Oh well. Just lock the door Rovod, just lock the door. I want to remember him the way he was. Stupid and useful".
He was never going to complete anything the speed he was moving. Time to start planning his death.
With the hamlet liason following me the whole way, I go down to the Gabbro and carve him out a 3x5 tomb. A coffin of Jet (how appropriate) is installed, and our two migrant engravers smooth the walls. We add a wooden weapons rack, in honour of his service to the community as somebody that hit trees with an axe.
While we're about it, we carve out some more tomb spaces in the event of more cases of natural selection.
Neo goes beserk shortly after his tomb is finished.
One of the blacksmiths has been given the job of turning out iron armor (the second blacksmith takes over jewellers duties). We're making chain mail, helms, and shields. I've got Rickvoid on making gauntlets and leggings out of bone and shell, and our tanner is making boots and leather armour from the leather we now have. We have a barracks, a large clay room right below the surface. It features Ubid's artifact weapons rack, since that's the only other one we have. I draft our 2 trappers and a miller and set them to sparring.
I want more recruits, but amazingly everybody is doing something useful and can't be spared. I've even got somebody making silk robes.
Oh, dear. More migrants. Another metal crafter, a bowyer (hmmm), a milker (will be drafted), a woodcutter (oooh! Free axe!) and some farmer, peasant types. Damn. We just got the bedrooms finished for the last set.