At the late autumn of year 52 I, Oddom Safemirrors, was summoned to queen's throne room, as the queen supposed to have mission of great importance to me. Wondering what it could be I ventured to the throne room, where queen was already waiting for me.
I knelt before the queen.
"My queen, you summoned me, your humble servant."
"You may rise. And yes, I did, as I have important mission to be given to you. As you may know, this fortress can not support much more citizens."
"What would you want me to do then?"
"I want you to venture north, to the mountains month travel distance away and establish new fortress to support this one. Sadly, I can not spare many fellow dwarfs to accompany you, and there is not much equipment to spare, though enough to ensure your survival to the moment we can send caravans and more dwarfs to the new fortress."
"What exactly you, my queen, can give to this journey, if I may ask?"
"Yes, you may. I can spare six other dwarfs, one with skills with axes and wood cutting, two miners, one farmer who has also knowledge of producing alcohol and two marksdwarfs for ensuring your safety. Also, you may have two trained war dogs and one cat. As for the actual equipment, tools for the miners and woodcutter, two copper crossbows, some bolts, couple of ropes and enough food and alcohol to last until you get farming running."
"So there is supposed to be trees to support our basic needs?"
"The last reports indicate so, though those reports are one year old. Last two scouting teams haven't returned, and thus when you reach the area you should also try to find out why."
"What will be the name of this new fortress then?"
"Archage. If you don't have any more questions you should leave immediately to prepare for the journey, as you will leave as soon as the weather allows it."
And so I left my queen and returned to my chamber to start the preparations.
1st Granite, year 53We have finally arrived the area where we should build this new fortress, Archage. The first thing we noticed was that there was not a single tree around! That means the knowledge the queen possessed was either totally wrong or something has happened here since then.
We also found out the probable reason why the scouts have not returned: there is this huge pit in the ground so deep that none of us was able to see the bottom. As I fear what may be inside of it, I decided to start the mining operation some distance away from it, and try to avoid attracting anything living inside.
Excluding the lack of trees the area looks promising. There was some magnetite ore visible, and we decided to establish the fortress east of it. There was also some hematite ore visible west from the magnetite as well as a bit higher in the mountain near the pit. That area also had visible gems, but both the gems and the ore in there has to be left alone due the pit. The land seems to be able to support farming, though it's unknown at this moment how deep the soil layers go and when the stone layers begin. My assumption goes that there won't be much soil, perhaps layer or two at maximum. But even one layer should be enough to support the farms, so I'm not concerned.
22nd Hematite, year 53I know I have not updated the records of our Archage since we arrived, and I feel bad about it. The last months have gone so fast that I hardly noticed the passing of time as there has been lots of organizing and planning to be done.
Today we finally finished the area for farming. Lots of digging had to be done to reach the proper site, as made the entrance to the face of mountain with stairs leading down two floors. At the third floor, the first one being the floor where the entrance is, miners had to tunnel quite a distance to east and the one floor up again to reach soil suitable for farming. That meant lot of digging, though it revealed four small clusters of gems and a vein of bituminous coal. The coal especially was finding of great importance as it will allow us to power furnaces and forges as we haven't seen any hint of magma around here, and it's even possible that none even exists here.
As the farm is being built even as I write this, I have to decide what would the miners focus on next. As I see it, the most important thing to do right now is to get all the stocks inside the fortress, as outside there is no way to tell if the soldiers can protect them.
Writing this reminded that I have to think what to do with our woodcutter, Kib Onehandle. As there is no trees to be cut, he has been without work since we arrive. Perhaps his skills with axe should be put in use in military? Have to discuss this with him.
15th Malachite, year 53The first immigrants arrived today, which is much sooner I had anticipated. Eight more dwarfs call this fortress as home, though I wonder if the words "fortress" and "home" would be the correct terms. So far we have got farms running and food stockpile established, but that's everything so far. Miners are working hard to get area for crafting industry ready so that for incoming caravans, whenever those will get here.
Here we get to another problem. While I'm glad that we got new blood to the fortress, none of them actually has any useful skills to offer this fortress. Where do we need dyer or potash maker? Gem cutter and setter are remotely useful, but masons or stone crafters would have been far more useful. Peasants are okay, though as we have no industry running there is hardly anything to haul.
16th Malachite, year 53Earlier today I organized meeting with the immigrants to find out what role they could fill here. It turned out that most of them possessed at least minor knowledge of more useful trades, and so now we have three masons, two stone crafters, one butcher, one mechanic and one carpenter. The carpenter part is a bit tricky right now, as there is no way to produce wood here. I can only hope that we get some from caravans.
Author
Topic: The Halls of Archage (Read 1321 times)