Journal of goatgod_pan, Shaman.
A year has passed and I yet live, the Inn of Drowning blossoms, children are born in dozens, there is plenty of booze and each season our fortress guard is greeted by a shower of viscera as yet another group of goblin snatchers discovers that being dodgy is not always a good thing.
But not all is well.
There is rebellion brewing in the fort. The last overseer has expanded his mission. The surface rings with the hum of machinery and his engineers grow fat and rich.
The masons guild, however, has lost nearly all. Their workshops were striped off, limited to burial duties. Craftsmen too complain, for there is nowhere to carve bone and rock. Even my shop was taken.
The wealthy dwarves grow in power, even as hundreds sleep in the mud.
Rabbits, cavies and other vermin swarm the halls. Levers have sprung up, as if overnight, and only the engineering caste knows which open a door and which floods a tunnel.
The nobles built a dining room, small enough for an elite, with somber walls of dark stone. Peasants rarely linger there.
Many turn to religion.
Many turn to drink.
A few desperate fools turn to sobriety
Somehowever have begun to foment something more sinister.
The masons and miners guild have presented a proposal--a dining room built for the peasantry. To work effectively, they asked for a large stalactite for themselves, a stonecutter's lodge, if you will. In return they began to carve smaller stalactites for tiny peasant rooms. The mayor and his cronies agreed, on the condition that hunting ground be opened to the third cavern, and that a drowning trap be assembled on the surface.
Thus spring began.