Alright, it's finally time to talk about the fort and what it's been doing. Which is little, and you'll see why. Part of it is this-
That's the whole fort, included the two dwarfs, kitten, and muskox that populate it. Welcome to the Little Fortress on the Haunted Prairie. Libash and Cog while away the days building a retaining wall around the "fortress" entry (a staircase), carry rhino-lizard remains outside, make orthoclase crafts, grab a few dwarf clothes near the stairs, and generally doing nothing. Thus pass Spring and Summer, in a haze of staring at each other across the furniture stockpile.
Then comes Autumn, and with it, the Outpost Liaison.
Good thing he's Legendary. The liaison manages to run like the wind away from the myriad undead beasts he decided to sneak past, despite spending most of a month taunting the same skeletal stingray. Eventually he manages to reach the staircase. For the first time I've ever seen, he actually conducts a meeting with Libash while he's painstakingly toting slightly used clothing to the depot. There's only one bin, so it takes a while, but eventually Cog heads out to trade.
The abundance of dyed giant cave spider silk clothing grants me plenty of credit. Somehow Cog already knew the prices. I bought everything edible they owned (mostly plump helmets), including a bunch of milk and flour, all both logs, some cheap metal, barrels and bags and ropes, a couple animals in cages, and a bronze hammer and spear for eventually starting a military. The stupidly powerful heat claimed some meat before they got it inside, but it was a good haul altogether. The Dwarven Two set about the equally painstaking process of getting it all back inside, when something troubling happens...
One of wagons crashed into a herd of undead gazelles. Scattered bones all over the damn place, but one of the wagons broke, dumping all their fancy goods on the ground. Decorated steel toys, GCS silk bags, the clothing I gave them, a bunch of large gems, and the featherwood of the wagon itself. In other words, we might not be seeing any more traders for a while. The probably negative haul of the caravan also has more immediate repercussions-
Normally I consider it a curse to have 25ish Dwarves dumped on me in first-year migrations. This time I was banking on it to get a working population again. That right there is the whole dang wave. A peasant, a cheesemaker, and a pet donkey. Technically doubling my dwarfpower, but still: Fuck. Okay, so it's going to be a long Winter and Spring until I have a real population again. Anyway, I put them to work dragging all the dumped trade goods and gazelle bones (I'm obsessed with hoarding bones, even if it is kind of ridiculous on this map). Also, I'll be desperately low on wood until I have more Dwarves. Oh, I've got an axe, but-
Three tiles below the frame are about a billion undead hippos. Yeah. I'll get it back eventually, but only after the next migration wave, and then it'll be
The Last Ride of the Wrestler Rush, and whichever Dwarf is left standing will get to wield it. Be back soon.
List of people wanting Dwarves is coming soon. I'll be leaving the original two as who they are, because I think they've earned it unless there's two people here who want to named into a husband and wife pair. And there's the two new guys, Mr. Useless and Mr. More Useless. And how many times do I need to tell you that
there's no magma. None. It's a very basic fort.