1st Granite, 1056
I have come into the position of manager at Ardentdykes. This after writing so many complaint slates over the years, regarding the defence of this fortress. The entrance is barely defended and the military are a few ill-equipped dwarfs...
I have talked to the counter of items and found out we have only scraps of armour and weapons. There are barely any trained dwarfs to use them either. I have thus chiselled out my to do list:
1.Set up a large army to hold off all future invasions and allow deeper digging.
2.Make a low grade set of steel equipment for the new grunts.
3.Set an efficient training timetable for the army.
4.Construction of a dedicated military wing, storage and extended training rooms.
5.Train up the armourers and weapon-smiths.
6.Build a funnelling structure to make invasion difficult.
This worry has had me paranoid for years, but every time, the tablets just got chiselled away into trade goods. But now I have the power, I will mandate this construction to save my.. our lives.
It has been a very busy day, Tobul Kezatrigath has claimed a craft-dwarf workshop, The food Stockpiles are overflowing, so I told them to dump everything in a spare room, designating more room to be dug out.
5th Granite, 1056
mad old whats-his-beard has started work, took him ages to collect up his gear, though I saw some wood in there, so it can't be a good outcome...
9th Granite
Well, I suspected, Elf (Tobul) made a birch cup, the engravings upon it are quite nice, but it just keeps coming back to the fact its made of pointless tree, I am tempted to use it to make charcoal for steel, but I don't like the look in that Elf eyes, so I will place it in the grand dining room out of the way.
14th Slate, 1056
The emergency defences are in place, three weapon traps and three war dogs, this should provide an early warning and small defence, trimming down any ambush to military manageable levels.
20th Slate, 1056
The guards are a real rag tag group, I can't remember there names, so I gave each one a pebble inscribed Axedorf1, Axedorf2 and Bowdorf1 to assign them.
27th Slate, 1056
Flux, that's it, I knew something was wrong. The smelters had been yelling at me for days that they want stone, so I kept throwing it off my office floor at them, turns out they wanted a specific stone. I have no idea if we have it or where it could be, so now I have a chicken and the egg, I need stone to make good armour, and I need good armoured dwarfs to dig deeper..
7th Felcite, 1056
Huzzah! I am saved, I mean the fortress is saved.. Exploratory mining has found marble, such a lovely rock, I think I will get a few marble statures commissioned for my tomb. But more importantly, the steel production is under way. We dug down though a central column in the cave and hit marble.
20th Felsite, 1056
Invasion, there are elves!, lots of elves!, with beasts loaded with...socks? Oh, its a caravan, far too many elves I say..
Thing is, our food stockpiles are overflowing as it is, I suppose I could offload some rock bits and bobs for cloth, not that we need that either.
21st Felsite, 1056
Cursed elves, lulling me into looking out on the other side of the fort, while goblins and a human sneak up from the other..The military isn't ready, oh carp were all going to die whipped to death!
Whew, panic over, the wardogs and backup traps killed off enough to send them into retreat..
25th Felsite, 1056
Aaaaaaargh Iamgonnadieinahorribleway, got to go hide, hopefully your corpses will block the way and let me live.
Um, they left, weird, they managed to make it past the traps, and just, left... how odd. I didn't mean that stuff about corpses, was a joke, yes.
2nd Haematite, 1056
Summer has rolled around, and with this lack of enthusiasm for military might after the recent crisis of almost everyone being killed but not. I have devised a plan, but I dare not record it here.