Granite 263
I am Leperfish Alathkosh, second Overseer of Outpost Kadolan, “Gemclod”. It is the 1st day of Granite of the year 263 of this Age.

Last year, I accompanied my friend, Markus_cz Vabokcuggan, leader of our expedition, to the founding of this fortress. We have struck the earth in the middle of this boggy swamp, which is not traditional. Markus was optimistic. Markus is often optimistic, and I do not resist his enthusiasm, for our people are long in decline, and I have guessed that without enthusiasm we may be doomed.

The Lore dictated that these low flat places would invariably have an aquifer, making any attempt at excavation very difficult. It would seem the Lore was not accurate, or perhaps this place is unique. Regardless, largely due to Markus' enthusiasm, Gemclod is firmly dug in.


It is Traditional that no dwarf shall Oversee an outpost for longer than one year. I suggested that this tradition might also be set aside, but Markus was not optimistic. It has been difficult for him, I think. CommaToes, Star Guarded, and Slaan have all suffered injuries, and Markus has long anticipated CommaToes' death from infection. Markus may hold himself responsible, though he does not say so.

So Markus requested that I lead the fortress. The other dwarves did not object. Though I knew he would ask, I had planned to refuse it, favoring CommaToes, but he will not rise from his sickbed. Vox Nihili would accept, but he speaks untruths, and I will not trust him for it. Star Guarded's hand is infected. K0npeito I favor but he would refuse the honor.

The newcomers I do not yet know well, though some are disreputable and shirk labor, so I will not favor any of them soon.

Enzer told me that I should lead. Her confidence lends me confidence, so I will lead.

To keep a journal is Traditional. Markus was optimistic about this tradition. He said it would be “fun” but there is also the matter of the lore of our people. The fates of the dwarves of Gemclod should not be lost to time. Therefore I will keep this journal.

Also I have determined that through my duty to the journal, I may avoid games of checkers with Markus without giving insult. Markus is my friend but he is not skilled at checkers. Contriving to lose to him often enough that he is not discouraged has been tedious.

After celebrations in the great hall, I have visited Bad Munki Amudthob, who is the Bookkeeper. I requested an accounting of the fortress. Bad Munki was in good cheer. His records show adequate food and drink.

Bad Munki said I should speak also with Pozzo, who is the Sheriff.

I found Pozzo above, in her “office.” Pozzo was in good cheer. She guzzled Longland beer and was soused. Locomotive Breath was there. Pozzo mumbled cheerfully and Locomotive Breath translated. Pozzo (apparently) said that in accordance with Tradition, she ought to have well-furnished quarters and a dining room, and also that her office was insufficient. Locomotive Breath added that he would like a bedroom too, if I was handing them out.


I indicated that bedrooms would be forthcoming and they were satisfied.

I have resolved that every dwarf will have a bedroom before the disreputable Pozzo Ablelbesmar will have her Modest Quarters and Modest Dining Room and Modest Office, but I will not disregard Tradition in this matter. Neither will I appoint any more useful dwarf as Sheriff.

Thereafter I sought Enzer but she was leading a fighting demonstration with Slaan and Minty so I did not interrupt.


Though the inhabitants of this swamp have already proved dangerous, I fear it will not be long before Gemclod is located by the more organized enemies. We must be prepared. While he was Overseer I could not bring myself to argue with Markus over his grand entrance design, for he was very enthusiastic and there was no Tradition for making entrances in swamps. However, I will not doom the fortress to avoid offending Markus. I have resolved that I must attempt to fortify the entrance without greatly compromising his vision.


2 Granite 263
Markus was pleased that I visited him today. I showed him my plan to excavate above the great hall's ceiling and he was not upset but he asked about the room's purpose.

I told him that it would be for the use of crossbows to defend the stairs and ramps. Markus pointed out that no dwarf at Gemclod uses a crossbow. That is correct but I wondered why. Markus suggested I should ask the Militia Commander.

In the mean-time I ordered excavation to begin.

4 Granite 263
In less than two days, Star Guarded and K0npeito completed the mining.

Fortifications cannot be carved from red sand, so it will be necessary to emplace masonry. It has been too long since I was able to cut stone myself for practical use, so I admit to taking joy in this labor, even though the most abundant material is mudstone which is ugly and soft.

6 Granite 263
While gathering more plants outside, ZeeToo has spotted a grimeling to the south.

We have sufficient plants for the moment so I order an end to plant-gathering (and wood cutting), to ensure no dwarf need go beyond the palisade.

There is lignite in the walls, and ore. We need only make a little charcoal and we shall have no further need for wood, save barrels and buckets. Even they may be made of metal. The sinister swamps will claim no more dwarves if I can help it.

7 Granite 263
The grimeling wanders north, soon passing right through the gathering-area, but it finds no dwarves to molest.

The drawbridge is already raised, but I order all doors locked. Vox Nihili and I sleep in the dormitory near the entrance assured that no horrible plant-creatures will rend the innocent.

9 Granite 263
I awaken to commotion. Most of the dwarves are upstairs, shouting with excitement, and it takes some time to sort out their reports, which I find mortifying. Eventually it is K0npeito that manages a coherent report (I have noted in the past that he has a way with words).

It seems that despite my orders, one of the doors was unlockable due to obstruction by the remains of a dead roach.

Bad Munki was on his way to dispose of the obstacle when the wandering grimeling forced its way through the door.



Slaan and Minty were sparring nearby, and heard Bad Munki's cries for help.

As Munki fled, the grimeling chased him directly towards the booze stockpile, where Enzer quaffed Dwarven Wine.

As Bad Munki barreled past the barrels, she intercepted the charging grimeling with her axe, hacking it in the right arm! The two collided on the very precipice of the entrance pit, with a sheer drop of 4 levels onto solid stone below them, tangling together in a desperate struggle.


Far below, Markus emerged from the great hall on hauling duty and stopped dead at the trade depot, staring up in surprise as the dramatic combat took place above him.


The grimeling regained its feet first, but Enzer's axe found its right leg and bit deep into the cords of dripping plant-matter that, according to K0npeito, serve its kind for muscle. The distraction was enough for her to regain a fighting stance.

Every witness gasped as the grimeling lunged and Enzer dodged away from the edge; no doubt thanks more to her very good intuition than her questionable spatial sense.


It lunged again, following her, but she again dodged, and then retaliated, bringing her axe across its lower body with a solid slice!


And suddenly the swamp creature was neatly flanked, as Slaan arrived at a dead run, although his warhammer has proved less than effective against these creatures. His assistance, though timely, was unnecessary, as Enzer's next strike was like that of a woodcutter felling a tree. Her axe cut completely through the grimeling's waist, sending its upper body flying in a spray of fetid gore.

By the time I was awoken, the slain grimeling's remains were already hauled to the garbage stockpile, and Minty had organized a dodging demonstration for Enzer and Slaan.

Bad Munki's left upper leg is bruised, but he has taken no other injury. Once again my beloved has shown her worth to the fortress.

10 Granite 263
Minty came by my office while I was looking over the Great Hall designs. He showed me his iron battle axe and said that I must not re-assign it to any other dwarf. I cannot imagine why I would do so but I assured him that I would not.



12 Granite 263
With the need to keep the dwarves within the fortress as much as possible now well understood, I have decided that securing underground fresh water resources is more important than excavation of bedrooms and offices. I worked up a design to create a cistern fed by the stream on the surface, over which we may build a well to draw fresh water.

Markus did not design any exits from the Great Hall, but it will be necessary to designate their locations before any engraving, lest we later be forced to destroy artwork. I showed him my well design and we decided that exits will be best placed in line with the pillars on the ground floor. I have Designated them for the miners.

There are two pillars missing from the ground floor. The drawings lacked them so the miners are not to be blamed. I have not brought this up with Markus yet. He can be sensitive about errors in the Architecture. Perhaps he has not noticed yet.

While digging out the water tunnel we have struck more bituminous coal. There is lignite already but bituminous coal is superior for the making of coke. Beneath the red sand we have also found abundant hematite and limonite, bauxite, variscite, gem deposits, and of course vast quantities of mudstone. No Lore has indicated such riches might lie beneath the flat wet greenskin swamps!

I will authorize mineral extraction efforts as soon as practicable.


14 Granite 263
While Vox Nihili and I constructed fortifications, he informed me that we are out of empty barrels. It will be necessary to cut wood or else get smelters operational to make metal barrels. Cautiously I authorized woodcutting.

Angry Ed later came to inform me that everything in the fortress that can be cooked, has been cooked. But there are at least 100 prepared meals in storage so this is good.

I never noticed how the Overseer receives a constant stream of visitors. When Markus was Overseer we spent many hours playing checkers virtually undisturbed. I cannot reconcile the discrepancy.

18 Granite 263
Willie Tomg Zontalul surprised me today with an invitation to his wedding reception!

He has married Boing Dalkamzefon. It is an excellent way to celebrate the new year in Gemclod. He made a suggestion that I might order the construction of beds and asked if quarters might be dug out soon. I spoke about the need for water and he was not convinced.

Unsurprisingly, the drunk Pozzo was the first guest to arrive, followed closely by Locomotive Breath. The fortifications are finished so I watched the celebrations from my office high above, hoping that Enzer would not attend. I do not need her thinking about weddings.

Markus chided me for being dour and then went to make drawings of a “honeymoon suite”, whatever that might be. He is right: I am dour. It is Traditional to be dour at weddings.

20 Granite 263
Ever-watchful malingerer CommaToes gives out the cry: migrants have arrived! They are spotted traveling from the West. Within an hour, they are streaming in through the doors, one new face after another, bringing with them all manner of pets and livestock. I ought to be joyous (Markus is joyous) but instead I am alarmed. We must arrange to feed and house all of these new mouths.


23 Granite 263
There are seventeen migrants! They gather in the main hall, crashing the wedding party, making impressed noises and filling the chamber with their clamor and tracking in mud.

They are:

Perfect Potato, accomplished miner (although he did not bring his own pick)
TyrantSabre Kadolbal, adequate animal caretaker. We have quite a menangerie already, so I order him to begin caretaking them.
YeOldeButchere Locuneral, accomplished armorsmith and expert pump operator.
Nombres Idashdumat, high master metalsmith, professional wood crafter, and adequate axedwarf. Though we could use another axedwarf in the militia, I decide to hold Nombres in reserve; we can use a good metalsmith even more.
The_White_Crane Ducimimush, high master bone carver and proficient trapper.
goatface Bomrekstettad, proficient axedwarf and talented miner.
Apocadall Avuztirist, skilled hammerdwarf and high master miller.
I drafted both of these dwarves immediately, appointing Apocadall to Militia Commander so that he can lead his own squad from among the newcomers.
Tarezax Stukossheget, talented weaver, adequate archer(!) and blowgunner(!!), novice siege engineer and armorsmith.
Atomikus Cattendegel, accomplished fisherdwarf, competent soaper, adequate fighter. Lacking a need for fishing or the materials for soap, I recruit him to train under Apocadall.
Mr. Vile Inashcog, adequate appraiser. That's all, just appraising. I resolve to let him appraise a lot of hauled objects while he is carrying them to the garbage dump.
Gomegoth Erithalath, high master herbalist, competent cheese maker and animal caretaker, novice pikedwarf.
nielsm Ezumadag, Herbalist and Mechanic
Mahoshonen Avedducim, novice brewer, gem cutter, and surgeon.
Stimm Ritham, talented brewer, competent diagnostician, novice weaver and fisherdwarf
Mehuyael Vabokodroz, Stonecrafter and Fisherdwarf
Shorter Than Some Endokabir, adequate... comedian. Unless he was joking about his profession? I didn't laugh.
life_source Mishthematir, Tanner and novice craftsdwarf of many kinds

The population of Gemclod has doubled, to thirty-five. There are fewer than two drinks per dwarf remaining in the stockpile.


I had to go lie down.

The Orphan, Samuszoomer, came by my bed to pay me a visit, cheerfully gabbering away with her constant streams of profanity. I realized she is walking – a toddler already! [ed note: the game literally said “Samuszoomer has become an Orphan” but I missed the screenshot somehow.]

25 Granite 263
I was not sleeping so I rose and went to the makeshift barracks, by the drawbridge. I noticed the squad organization carved into the palisade wall.

I studied the long-standing Training Schedule and was shocked to see that it mandated a minimum of 10 dwarfs per squad to be training at all times.


No wonder Enzer spends all her time with her squadmates these days! I immediately updated the schedule so that the minimum is now two, and added the new squad to the list. I also indicated that the militia may sleep in the barracks at will, since there are no bedrooms to sleep in anyway.

Hopefully the recruits will find the training regimen to be sufficiently vigorous but not overly onerous.

27 Granite 263
The cistern system nears completion, requiring only the floodgates to be connected to levers before we can breech the stream. It is a welcome distraction from all the jobless dwarves milling about. I realized today that I will need to find work for everyone, even if they have no suitable talents. Since the miners are idle, I designated a shaft to be dug, into which the idlers may toss stones. Later I will move the masonry workshops down to the bottom, out of the sun. It will make for a nice private area where I can carve statues without being disturbed.


Markus came by while I was Overseeing the excavation. I think he was disappointed that I did not ask him to design it but I said this was after all only a hole in the ground, and therefore not worthy of his talent. He was dour and departed.

Later I realized he might not have realized which hole in the ground I was referring to.

It has been one month of my Overseership and I do not know if matters are better, or worse. Enzer has said that I am doing well but she only trains relentlessly, so I suspect her opinion may be uninformed. Yet her words comfort me even if they are incorrect. On reflection I find that very strange.








Kikka wrote :-

Kind of late, but here's some Customary Dwarven Wedding Crashing:





Have fun figuring out who's who!

 They're all in alphabetical order (see the character screens below), so it should be easy enough to figure out. 



markus_cz wrote :-




There has been a disruption in the Design!!!



The miners dug where they weren't supposed to dig! They destroyed the bases of two pillars! The pillars now hang in the air from the ceiling and look unaesthetic! I checked my plans, and indeed I've forgotten to draw the bases, and miners were true to the plans, but they were stupid and should have realised such an unbalanced Design was an Error!

Fixing the Error is difficult, though not impossible. We can't fill the gap by bricks or loose stone – the Great Hall is all in natural mudstone, and even Bad Munki would notice one row of pillars is made of bricks and mortar! Also, using bricks and mortar would prevent us from smoothing and engraving the pillars, as only natural rock is worthy of bearing Art. No, we need to fill the gap with natural stone, and I've devised a way how to do it:

By means of a cave-in!



As the floor directly above the Great Hall is red sand, this means the top parts of the fixed pillars will be visibly red. It is but a small price to pay for fixing the Design!

Included are excavation plans. Tell miners to dig everything BUT the places in red. Only when they are finished, dig the red places to trigger a cave-in.





YeOldeButchere wrote :-


Journal of Yeol Deabo Tcher


Of all the fortresses I've been to, I don't think I've ever seen any that were worse than this place. It's a hole in the ground. It's a literal hole in the ground, a big one which they call the "Great Hall", but a hole in the ground nonetheless. Oh, wait, excuse me, it's a hole in the muddy, swampy, stinking ground. There's a reason this place is called the Swamps of Malodors. "You'll get used to it", they say. Well, yeah, that's because I'll probably lose my sense of smell if I stay here more than a week.

Defensive measures consist of a palisade made from the rotting tree husks they've taken from the swamps. But somehow no one minds. I'm an armorer, walls are just another form of armor, but if I were to make armor out of those same trees, you can bet people would be asking questions. They could've just dug down, made crude tunnels and bedrooms and storage areas underground which would be well protected, but the leadership of Gemclod wisely decided instead to waste an entire year digging a giant hole in the ground.

Tradition they say! Our empire is dying, we're facing the very real possibility of dying in this swamp, but tradition must be obeyed even if it serves no purpose. Fools, the lot of them. It's the same everywhere I go. But this fortress, such as it is, is young. There may yet still be hope. If I'm careful, maybe someday I'll come to rule this place. The day I'm waiting for will come.

But until then, I'll bide my time.

Now if only there was a Kudust-damned forge in this shithole, I could ply my trade. They better build one soon before I decide to forge dwarves into bloody heaps with a warhammer. I certainly will if they try to assign me to pump operating duty like that one time. That was the worst year of my life, by a wide margin. Even hauling is a preferable assignment. Never again.




CapitanGarlic wrote :-

Just in time for the new wave of poor, unfortunate souls!





And here's to many a more merry mashings.



Slaan wrote :-


Hey, fuck you for making fun of my broken fingers! Take this!




Oh... wait.




Apocadall wrote :-



Journal of Apocadall Avuztirist
26 Granite 263

The fort isn't much to look at. At the moment I'm staying optimistic that this will turn into a grand fort and accomplish great things. It does stink though and no amount of optimism is going to change that. It smells like a pus covered dwarf vomiting on a rotting corpse.

My first day in Gemclod they made me militia commander. I was quite happy to accept the position and vow to protect this fort, even if it is just a smelly hole in the mud at the moment. This is my new home. I was given two squad members, a goatface Bomrekstettad and Atomikus Cattendegel as a soldier in training.

I took some time to get to know my squad members, goatface tells me of his skill with an axe so I feel confident in his abilities. I'll take more time out in the future to get to know him but as of now my main concern is Atomikus. She is a very fat dwarf, and I feel for a soldier this is unacceptable. I mentioned to her about losing weight and she got angry with me, this is a terrible start to training. I asked her about any prior experience she may have with fighting. She knows enough to wear armor and maybe throw someone around. I have a lot of work to do with her if I'm going to turn her into a soldier.



Leperflesh wrote :-


Addendum: The Migrants, in Alphabetical Order:
Apocadall



Atomikus



goatface



Gomegoth



life_source



Mahoshonen



Mehuyael



Mr. Vile



nielsm



Nombres



Perfect Potato



Shorter Than Some

[ed: missed the screenshot of his one skill but rest assured, he only had the one]

Stimm



Tarezax



The_White_Crane



TyrantSabre



YeOldeButchere