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[Malorn]

I summon my powers of thread necromancy.  I ask now, what shall become of the dwarven child who bears my name?  Have our brave magma-divers gone missing?  Shall the story of Rockfalls, the Depths of Volcanoes, languish untold?  Nay, let this not come to pass.

[Shiney]

Today is The 1 Month Anniversary of Dante Claiming to be back in a week or two.

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?!?!? WHY?!?!?

[Yoink]

Saaaaad. This has happened to so many of my favourite community forts...

[davros]

Rest in peace Rockfalls.

[Dante]

Today is The 1 Month Anniversary of Dante Claiming to be back in a week or two.

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US?!?!? WHY?!?!?

I know I know, it was a shockingly false promise.

Here is the deal guys: I am starting postgraduate study in a couple of days time, and utterly bogged down with enrolment difficulties and dissertation readings and last-minute prereqs and things. The gap between the end of exams and the start of this hectic racing around was smaller than I expected.

Assuming everything quietens down a bit, I really will get back to Rockfalls - I hesitate to say 'soon', but 'eventually'. Hopefully before the next version of DF comes out, but if necessary I will come back to the story despite the update.

[Yoink]

Don't worry Dante, I completely understand! Sometimes it seems like the entire world exists solely to hamper my DF playtime!
I'll work foward to it. Definitely one of the best community forts.

[Dante]

“Updates.”

“What?”

“Updates.”

“What?” Squadron Leader repeated, putting down her chisel and scowling at the dwarf across the room from her. “Have you been sick recently, or what?”

“Updates. I call them updates.” Mrs Oassis pointed to the caption carved into the stone wall. “See? When you sign and date your engraving, you can make the text vertical, rather than horizontal. It saves a lot of space. Updates, instead of sidewaysdates.”

“...Get back to work.”

[Dante]

Journal of Catalyst the migrant, some time after time has lost all meaning

Here in the desert, time has withered and died and its dust has blown away on the relentless desert wind.

Here in the desert, time is marked by cycles. Traders arrive, goblins arrive, goblins die, goblins leave, dwarves die of infection, dwarves trade goblin clothing to traders, traders leave. These are our seasons.

Here in the desert, it is never rain time or growing time, flood time or harvest time. Any moment of time is a dry, granular thing, capable of being piled into a little drifting dune of duration, but too fine and errant to place in any box marked 'time'. One moment, not even a never ago, I found a rock that was less hard than other rocks. A 'stone plant', a tiny grey desert cactus disguised as a pebble. I pulped it between my gums for whatever juice I could wring from its gammy fibres.

This is life on the surface. Beneath, there is water.

Cavern water. Dark water, forbidden water, dangerous to access water – glorious water. And with the arrival of Lye Lord Shadenight, there is soap.



The recent [recent? Pah. 'recent'. There is only now, and then there is later] business conducted with the elves has left us with a gigantic panda and a giant capybara. These wretched creatures sit locked in tiny cages in our stockpiles, slowly becoming indistinguishable from the black desert dust.

There is no grass in this wasteland. There is certainly no bamboo.

In the evenings, lacking the energy to haul a stone any further, we sit and brainstorm ways to use every part of the beasts.

Enormous panda blankets. Capybara fang spearheads. Panda spine flagpole. Capybara hide armour. Panda hats and capybara whistles for the children.

[Dante]

Cook's Log [by me, Yarf], 9 Hematite 204

Hey-o, world.

I've been trying a few new things lately, so I've decided to commit a few recipes to paper (well, wax tablet).

Firstly, people often ask me, “Yarf, how do you make your water buffalo kidney roasts so crisp yet so large? Mine always collapse in the oven!”

Well, the secret is a little thing called dog lung padding. Take your finely minced prepared water buffalo kidney, and mix it with two handfuls of minced prepared dog lung. Make sure that lung is exceptionally minced! Dog lung has a different 'mouth feel' to water buffalo kidney, so unless you want people to notice, run it back through the mincer another three times to be sure. Finally, just a dab of finely minced prepared cat intestines will help the mix stay cohesive. Bake it slightly longer than you'd leave a straight water buffalo roast, and voilà. Enormous, yet crisp, water buffalo kidney roast.

And the best part is, if you're low on dog lung you can substitute that horse spleen you're never sure what to do with!

The second recipe I had in mind is really, really simple. Just mix up your ingredients, boil them in a cloth bag for an hour, and you get this mouth-watering treat:



And the third recipe I wanted to mention is chopped crundle liver roast. Now, this one is tricky. The base is just your typical blend of crundle chops and finely minced llama intestines, but you need to actually stuff the chopped crundle liver into the intestines. You might ask, “Yarf, what's the point? It's a waste of time! Nobody will notice!”

Well, my friend, you'd be wrong.

The liver will actually steam inside the intestines, causing the flavour to permeate the entire dish. However! This alone, I find, won't do. You've got two of your three basic flavours in there: crundle and organmeat. What's obviously missing? Eyeballs. Yes, see how it nicely ties in with the last recipe? You've finished pretty much every part of the water buffalo, and now you've got a pair of rubbery eyeballs staring you in the face from the slab. Well, now you have a good way to use them up, other than just throwing them into a trifle or salad with the rest of the offal.

Grate the water buffalo eyes finely – don't try to dice or mince them, they bruise – and scatter over the roast. Delicious! I've been experimenting with monarch butterfly brains recently, and my lovely wife Jitters has recommended I try them in place of eyeballs.

The good thing about insect brains is the little'uns can digest them really easily. And wow, with the way Rockfalls has become a font of fertility, we're going to need to start ordering bug brain in bulk. As a matter of fact, Rance and Bowie had a daughter yesterday, a beautiful girl named Groder. The baby has great intuition, and likes yetis and saffron. Looking into her gold eyes is like staring into the placid natural fishpools of some lost mountain temple.

Meanwhile, my older daughter - a wilful girl named Zebrea, I must have mentioned her - is about to have her first birthday. Not yet walking and already trying to get into the rum barrels! She reminds me of a dwarf who's been without a drink for far, far too long. Hahaha. Zebrea has those amethyst eyes which are surprisingly common in the fortress. And just this last month, Jitters has graced our family with a second little girl! We haven't quite settled on a name for her yet.

[Dante]

Journal of Stool the Dairy Guard, adventurer of the High Tools, 11 Hematite 204

I took a leisurely stroll about the fortress today, showing off my new turkeyskin loafers, and found that we are expanding our wall carvings.

Mrs Oassis has engraved what Goden persists in referring to as “the Foundation of our Glorious Hamlet” in two different images. One of them she has called the 'Dreadful Construct'. Intriguingly subversive! She also drew something one of her dead husband's ghostly acquaintances told her about, the story of a dwarf being struck down by a silver whip on the now-long-forgotten surface above us.

Squadron Leader drew a muck root, called the 'Idle Lace', referring to the time she laced her husband's beer with the disgusting plant. Kisame has never left his mug alone since that incident.



In a similar vein, Mrs Oassis decided to draw an image of diamonds, calling it 'The Pure Comedy', after the way Yarf convinced Billy Bob that green glass was actually a type of diamond. The fortress's first self-styled millionaire had a very happy few hours, rolling around in a pile of glass.

And finally Squadron Leader drew yet another picture of a cloud raining down lethal crossbow quarrels, her unique interpretation of the emblem of our civilisation, calling it 'The Appearance of Bolts'. I could spend all day on the symbolism that dwarf embraces, but I can hear Goden yelling in the distance. Something about mould expanding beyond allocated limits.

I had better make my escape.

[Yoink]

Hooray! Rockfalls is back!
What a great update. And they way you kicked it off... Updates. Classic! Welcome back.

[kotekzot]

Most excellent.

[Karakzon]

welcome back man.

Just a note: try not to import anything in that those on the inside cant access in their bit, or else you may get a mooder or two committing suicide in a box and causing a tantrum spiral.

[NobodyPro]

I missed this fort. Would you kindly give me a dwarf, any gender, any job.

[Vorthon]

Oh god the new posts are funny.