15th Hematite, 209, Early Summer
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The human caravan from Pesor Siti is on the way. I unforbid ten stacks of roasts - this alone should be more than enough to pull the entire caravan. If not, there's plenty more where that came from. At this point we're creating more wealth just for the fun of it.
"Ah, Zon," the wise Quietust flags me as I'm ordering the roasts to be moved to the depot. "A word, please?"
"Hm, I'm becoming quite popular all of a sudden! What is it?"
"During one of my daily meditations and wanderings about the fort, I stumbled across a tame dragon tied up near what appears to be adamantine! But, alas, there is very little of the precious metal mined out. So I must wonder, what is the dragon guarding if you aren't giving it the opportunity of something to guard against?"
"If you're asking me to have more of the adamantine mined, you can forget about it. There's no need for it. We have all the wealth we could ever want, our soldiers are well-trained and well-armed... and that stuff spells death to the fortress if we take too much!"
"Only if you mine it carelessly! Should you find it necessary to dig out more adamantine (in case further moods require it, and they very likely may), I would advise using the trick of smoothing the walls and carving fortifications to reveal the tiles beyond - the fortifications can be mined out to get the stone, and clowns won't path through them (though they may cause a lot of lag nonetheless)."
"Clowns? Lag? I don't understand some of your wise-man talk... but it is a good suggestion, I'll give you that. Still, I don't see the point. Personally, I don't
want to see beyond those walls, and I don't want any more of that cursed rock in my fortress. Sorry, but it stays there."
"At least put the dragon to better use! A dragon such as Nelare is a rare catch indeed, and could be put to great military use! Why don't you set her upon the enemy?"
"Too much fallout! That flame breath will cause far too much damage to our own military and animals. It's better that she stay down there, where she can only be of harm to whatever danger lurks down there."
Angry shouts from outside... as usual, this can only mean one thing.
((DFMA)) ((Movie)) I send the champions and marksdwarves out to fight, but it's too late by the time they get there. I hope this won't hurt our relations with the humans much!
Pethit, one of the human merchants, was stabbed in the
liver, forcing him to crawl all the way to the depot with his mule. This slowed down trading with the humans considerably... What's more, I think the merchants were more than a little disturbed that our first response to the ambush was to run past them and grab what we could off of the goblins' still warm bodies.
Asob was re-elected as mayor again. Surprising that someone who tends to avoid crowds should get elected so many years in a row. As always, I'll probably have to put up with her getting a little stuck-up for a while again, like she does every time she makes it back into office.
I decided to build a bridge for crushing rocks and unwanted items inside of our indoor refuse pile, but this turned out to be a mistake. I intended to place the bridge in an easily accesible spot that wouldn't have too many paths in or out, or be covered in a high-traffic area. We don't want any bridge-related accidents! Unfortunately, dwarves will be coming and going through miasma pretty often as they're moving items into the crusher. I carve a second path coming in from the south to act as the entry to the crushing room. A door has already been placed on the original entrance, but we can keep it forbidden. The new lever out in the hallway will act as the bridge's control.
Of course, we didn't want the entire caravan - I claim we can do it just as a joke - but still, we get everything we want from the humans, including a lot of metal bars, for seven of the ten roasts sent for trade. This really is too easy... makes me wonder what we're going to do with all the goblin clothing? Probably crush it along with the rocks, I'll bet.
Quietust comes again. I see our philosopher is very talkative...
"I see that you've used the fortification trick to peek beyond a bit of the Adamantine - I thought you weren't going to do that."
"Hm? I didn't. Why, what did you see?"
"Oh... those weren't your orders? I didn't mean to get anyone in trouble--"
"
What did you see??"
"Really, I can't bring myself to say something that might incriminate another... so, I'll draw it instead."
Asob!! This has to be your doing! This has gone too far...