One year has passed since we traveled to this desert.
Things have gone well. Digging down under the black sand is fairly easy, I've gotten rather good at digging, along with Sigun and 'Dantan' as our Tunneler has decided to call herself. It has been suggested that Sigun and myself can dig as well as any legendary miner from the mountainhomes, However I am doubtful.
Most of the others besides myself and Sigun have changed their names. Perhaps to represent the aspect of living a new life out here on our own.
We dug in straight down from the wagon, stairs on each of three sides, with pathways converging underneath. Easy to defend if anything from the chasm or wilderness decided to attack.
Indoor and Outdoor farms have been set up, both nearby each other in the black sand.
Digging deeper into the rock salt we ran into a marble stone aquifier. The odd shape had me moving the massive plan I had laid out for the dining hall to a smaller southern location.
Digging up from the dining hall, we have a mining tube, preparing for channeling out after smoothing for a massive several story dining room open to the sky with smoothed, and maybe even engraved walls.
Chambers around the dining hall contain the new bedrooms for each of us. These will probably be moved at a later day, but for now, they work nicely.
North of the main stairwell we set up stone works. Mason's shop, mechanic's shop, and a craftsdwarf workshop, near a fair sized stone stockpile. South of that being the prepared food stockpile and the wood work area.
This area also connects to the trade depot, even if we haven't had any visitors yet this year, I expect them soon. Defenses right now are limited, but a long tunnel with a short directive road is our current main entrance. Leading to the trade depot in a vaguely U shape. One of the most immediate projects is getting stone traps set up at several locations along the tunnel. I also have a plan to make a massive stone drawbridge crushing trap activated by a lever should anyone we can't handle get inside.
Outside, we managed to put up a thin stone wall around the farms, a strange desert pond, and the shaft heading down into the dining hall project.
Food is well seperated and organized. I attribute Hedge with that, as I've given him control of the direct management of the fortress. Along with that, Larn has vollunteered to get us started on bookkeeping, as he was getting fed up with not knowing how much food we had to cook or brew. A table was set aside in the dining hall for him to work.
I'm not sure how it happened, but it seems we men have been put in the leadership roles. I suppose this makes sense, and none of the women have complained yet. However the relationships in the fortress have been fairly strained of late. Larn and Hexed have been the only two paired off in romance. I will probably set more time aside for relaxation and parties this spring, at least until our first trade visitors.
The end of the year seems quite peaceful. Other than the occasional squeels of the naked mole rats, We have cave spider webs everywhere, so cloth works will be easy to produce once we get things up and running.
Along with the cloth works, a leather workshop, an animal processing and care area for Eli. And other projects may or may not include reinforcing the outdoor walls, creating a military section, tombs for each of us, a metal works, forge, smelter and the like. Perhaps even a treasury. Smooth the stone that we currently have, engrave some, cross the gap of the chasm, find the underground river we were told about, create a tower cap farm under the desert, add a waterfall to our dining room, and generally make this home into a fortress that any dwarf would be proud of. My only regret is that we have no magma.
All of this leads up to the goal of claiming our right to the god metal somewhere in that mountain. If we and our descendants can tackle that and survive any seiges, we will be as strong as any mountainhome ever was.
Now it's time for a prickle berry shad roast. I'll make more notes for the records at a later time.
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Topic: Of Azure and Steel, A legend of dwarven rebirth! (Read 6681 times)