On the first day of spring the whole village held a lottery. I won. Fortunately all it meant was that I was in charge of running NewFlags for a year.
"In charge" maybe the wrong way to put it-- this ain't no army run, mountain stronghold. We're farmers! There's only 9 of us, and we're all pretty much sleeping with each other. Well I'm single, and the lye maker is single (and poor Armorer jumped the axe and married already, gods rest his wife's soul, she lies in a tomb).
Here we are:
Catten Zonorrun-Miner
Zasit Deleravuz-Woodworker
"Goat" Geburdim-Woodcutter
Kogan Okirkikrost-militia commander
Tulon Momuzishrir--Woodcutter
Mosus Ongizecem-Chief Medical Dwarf
"Belik" Kilrudabod-Armorer
Ablel Akrulomrist-Lye Maker
and Fath Bomrekled, the sociopathic expedition leader
Note that the lye maker is single, like me--and what do the ladies love? Pottery!
Ain't a future in woodcutting, I'm going to open up a kiln and hire lovely Ablel as partner. We'll rig this town is clay goods and furniture and walls and ceilings (and maybe even floors, though that's too fancified for us village folk), and use all the wood to store booze!
Kilns, we have loam and I dug down to the clay level. My own house will be the first clay house in the village!
We also have some trouble with the howling ghost of a dear friend. I talked it over with the others and we dug a few human-type graves. Early summer we spent working in the heat to put up an archery course and a ceiling for the barn (i sent the animals out to pasture, they were out of hay anyway), we'll put a leatherworks, a tannery and a butcher's up there.
Early summer we were attacked by angry badger men. This was soon after we killed a racoon trying to steal a cloak
Maybe it was their racoon? A cousin? Because it was certainly not their cloak!
For a few weeks there were officially more badgermen then dwarves in our territory. Not from deaths, they just keep moving in. We have had no migrants whatsoever. Our wealth is still under 20,000 so we should be free of them for a long while
Midsummer:
A particularly fat badger woman is strangling a dog that bit her.
A house reconstruction lead to a roof collapse. But no one was hurt. Except a goat. And he was hurt by another animal. I think we need a tertiary pasture (I had the animals pastured when the barn started getting a little cramped and bloodsplattered)
Fall came with no human caravan.
We spend the fall building and rebuilding, houses are expanded and some even get clay tile floors. A roof goes on the barn and a butchers and tanners built up there. Some dwarves complained that craftsmen were supposed to live with the tools of their trade, but I welcomed any and all to put their bed near either of those miasma spewers and none signed up. The leatherworks got a nice house and will house a leatherworker as soon as we figure out who is any good at it. A kitchen is set up near the brewery and meals start getting cooked from our livestock, which has bred plentifully (especially the cats and dogs)
When the dwarves come to trade we have much to offer them. Mostly turkey and dog bone crafts (such as this little stunner-
-if disgusting turkey bone religious statuary is your sorta thing) nut a few cat tallow roasts too.
Whoo wee next year the mountain homes will pay us good money for
plants, cheese, meat and cloth [crash in early winter]
tanned hides and waterskins and cheese [midwinter crash] cheese and meals (the mountain halls really love cheese). All of which we have in abundance. Worryingly the liason also asked for battle axes, which we neither make nor have. There was a panicked sort of look in his eyes. Didn't like it.