Here's the information on Atrid, since it might be plot-important:
Sphala's journal
A Bronze Colossus! I've heard rumors of these monsters. Indestructible towers of metal, twisted blasphemous perversions of Asёn Gemmined's gifts. They feel no pain, they don't sleep, they never get tired or hungry, they destroy entire mountainhomes without reason, just to smash them!
We can't let it inside, it would kill us all. Our military can't take this thing.
I was fretting over it when our Commander Peregar came to me with an unusual design. He said he'd thought it up while he was resting in the hospital.
He showed me plans for an amazing construct, a machine that would use the bitter, endless cold outside to freeze enemies solid. Most ingenious! According to Peregar, this would kill even the solid-bronze monster outside.
It wasn't going to be easy. His plans called for at least ten pumps, plus an additional stack of pumps to bring water to the surface. We have none of the parts to make these. Looking over our stocks, I see we have one log, and a handful of steel and other useful metal. There's an amazing amount of gold bars in the stockpiles, but Cheveux assures me that gold is far too soft to make pumps from.
Still, looking at the plans, I see ways that can be redesigned. It will take a lot of mining, but we can make the ice trap deeper underground, below the level of the cavern lake. Gravity feed can replace all the pumps. It will require the digging of a massive shaft to the surface to let the water freeze however. I realize I'll have to delay the construction of the great larders, the miners will be too busy building this trap.
Now, as for all this gold, I think it may be able to help solve our booze problem.
Well, a fine surprise this morning.
And what has been made?
Negativesculpt? The Greenness of Iron? A dusk hag? I'm quite insulted.
The Colossus is still up there. Smashed up the other trade depot, it did.
My stonework is still holding strong. Nothing's going to break that gate.
We're still safe down here. As soon as the ice trap is finished, we'll kill that monster. I'm trying to assure everyone of that. It doesn't stop some self-proclaimed 'Mayor' from coming up with his own schemes.
I don't think anyone here even knows how to make those.
At least one couple isn't letting it get to them.
Lacks the grandeur of my marriage to Yerp, of course, but the caverns are a changed place now. Mostly walled off, unsafe due to those monsters, all the trees we can reach cut down, and that lovely outcrop was mined out years ago.
Can't let it get us down. We've got a world to feed.
Meanwhile, in Ahra's office, a covert meeting. Ahra sits on his artifact chair, and stares at the the leaders of the militia."Interesting that the leader of the army is suggesting we build a trap for a statue made of bronze, when we have a 15-dwarf militia armed with adamantine weapons."
Peregar replies, "We need to save the military for the next siege"
, as he tries to avoid Ahra's angry glare.The two military commanders still calling thesmelves Hatebeard and Kalugog stand defiant. Clearly, they don't agree with Peregar. Derm, clad head to toe in shining adamantine armor, grips his axe. "I can take that thing by myself. Just let me at it."
Ahra nods. "Do so. You are dwarves! Get out there and kill that thing."