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Diary of Urdim {unintelligible}, Knight of Besmar Tarmid
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5th Hematite, 58
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I suppose I should consider it fortunate that the previous overseer found the demon pit
before the adamantine. This way we can safely excavate almost ALL of the precious metal without exposing ourselves to the pitspawn.
In the meantime, I've ordered a peasant to begin processing what we've dug up so far so that we can begin forging armor.
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19th Hematite, 58
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A goblin ambush was foiled when one of the beasts stumbled into one of the cage traps I'd put out in front of the weapon traps. He was quickly carted away, his fate to be determined at a later date. Probably by another overseer.
A quick recon run revealed that the rest of them were stuck on the other side of the
outside of the fortress, unable to scale a simple trench.
Dolts.
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25th Hematite
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A few of the goblins decided to try and go around the channel
and killed a few zombie goats on their way, while the remaining few stayed behind. This time I opted to send some of the recruits out to get them some field training.
They decided to give the goblins a lesson in flight.
Another goblin was simply knocked down into the channel. Before my tenure is over I think I'll be establishing some actual walls to defend our borders with, considering how easily these channels can be bypassed completely by accident.
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1st Malachite, 58
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Oh look, more of them.
The dog that spotted them was slain almost instantly. I've ordered everything outside to be forbidden until the situation is resolved, which may take awhile as the goblins seem content to simply hang out near the corpse.
In other news, Fath has starved to death after weeks of babbling insanity. May he finally rest in peace.
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4th Malachite, 58
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Three dwarves without jobs have decided to relieve their boredom by playing "catch the crossbow bolt" with the goblins, despite explicit orders to the contrary.
They won't be missed.
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8th Malachite, 58
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After spending a worryingly long time slacking off, our bright-eyed recruits have finally gotten around to rushing the goblin invaders and driving them off (but only after I was forced to draft our superdwarvenly mighty miners to kill two goblins themselves). A total of four dwarves have been lost, counting the three from earlier.
After proper funeral ceremonies are observed, I'll be erecting some actual walls in place of those unreliable channels.
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3rd Galena, 58
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The last month has been uneventful and without migrants, so I've decided to look through our stocks and see what's what. All the iron equipment formerly in the goblins' employ has been designated for melting so that we can forge some steel.
Additionally, Wigmund has been appointed as company manager in light of his superior organization skills and the fact that Thadius is busy digging our way to glory.
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15th Galena, 58
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Some skeletal monkeys have shown up and spooked a miner. I had to gently but firmly remind him that, skeletal or not, they couldn't fly and therefore couldn't threaten him.
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13th Limestone, 58
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A dwarven caravan has arrived, bearing mostly food, cloth, and leather, though about a dozen bars of various metals and a bit of bauxite were included (
Side note: Without a dwarven liason we likely can no longer request more of it, so any of it we get from here on will be pure luck).
Trading all the goblins' non-metal equipment has gotten us most of the above. The caravan was also offering weapons and some other useful things, but the prices had been jacked up so high that trading was absolutely infeasible (
Seriously what did you do, Wigmund, max-prioritize EVERYTHING?)
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4th Sandstone, 58
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I'm not sure what happened. I had a small area dug out, to be used as an arena to train one of my soldiers (whom had suffered a spinal injury and thus could not spar). To test it, a goblin was ordered tossed into the pit with the soldier on standby. A few minutes later I look back, and none other than
the queen herself was dragging the miscreant along by its ears, equipment and all (and why were the creatures not disarmed as I had asked?).
Fortunately it went without incident, but I fear we may not be so lucky the next time. I for one have a newfound respect for our royal lineage.
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8th Sandstone, 58
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Another unicorn was caught in a cage, bringing our total up to six - his friend, trailing right behind, got through the cage trap before it could be rearmed, only to get skewered on the weapon trap behind it.
I do wish we could tame (and subsequently breed) these beasts. Armok only knows what kind of price we could fetch for their bones. Perhaps someday a migrant will come who knows how to handle them.
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27th Sandstone, 58
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One of our recruits, unsatisfied with the progress of his training, has gone fey. After about a week of collecting and working, he produced Locuniseth, an Oaken Amulet worth a respectable 39,600 dwarfbucks.
While the amulet will likely attract migrants in the coming seasons, it is otherwise useless, especially considering I have better things to do with the logs we fell, such as building beds to sleep on, or making charcoal for steel production, than make
baubles out of them.
At least the process has left him stronger than before. Now if only he'd pick up the pace on his training.