Succession Journal, Part 3
Ballad of Dinaroozie
Joinglazed
Winter
I am in my last season here at Joinglazed, and must start thinking about the handing over of the reigns to new blood. I’ve heard rumours that the fellow following me is a little new to this whole ‘running things’ business, so I suppose I should attempt to leave things in a somewhat tolerable and safe state.
The fortress has been hit with an acute shortage, although arguably it’s not a bad kind of shortage to have - we have found ourselves chronically short of barrels to store food in. We’re also lacking bins, though to a lesser extent - our carpenters have been working more or less non-stop to solve this problem, but to no avail, and I think it’s time to set up some additional carpentry workshops to parallelise this task for the future. Barrel shortages may seem trivial, but the old hands among us will know that if all your available barrels become immediately filled with food, you have nothing to brew drinks into, and that can turn into a serious problem.
In terms of finishing what I started, it’s probably time to get beds and doors in all the bedrooms I dug out - though building beds will take time away from solving our barrel problem. I also ordered two mighty silver statues to be placed above the entrance to strike fear into our enemies, but the beard-eating twit responsible for placing them seems to have gotten distracted and left the statue lying on the ground nearby. I’ve reissued the placement order, and made a mental note to make that dwarf responsible for moving the troll into the cage in the former leader’s tomb.
Blast! Disaster has struck - in retrospect, predictably - and a troll has been loosed into our fortress. I’d rather not divulge the details of how this came to pass, but the important thing is that the only people who got badly injured deserved it, and that troll bones make highly valuable crafts. I must most humbly apologise to the leader Babale, whose tomb now lacks its centrepiece - hopefully his life is long, and one of my successors can make up for this shortfall.
Speaking of tombs, it is time I began working on my own. And speaking of the grim spectre of death, contrary to my initial observation, one of the soldiers that helped take down the troll is in hospital with a serious leg injury. It looks like he’s going to pull through with full mobility, but our wound-dresser is almost completely inexperienced, so we’ll just have to see how this situation pans out.
Ah! An ambush! This is the first goblin activity we’ve seen beyond mere thieves and snatchers. I suspect that our military will be able to cope, but this points to the next leader having a more interesting time of things than I first thought. Let’s see what they’ve got…
Oh, woe. It seems they’ve got quite a bit more than was initially apparent. The fortress is saved but… at a significant cost. We have lost ten dwarves in the invasion, most of them soldiers. In total, three waves of goblins attacked - some were killed, some captured, but according to our records (which may be spotty), most fled. And this could not have come at a worse time - only two days remain until the new leader takes over. May the gods smile upon him. I will designate a room dug out for the bodies, but there’s little else I can do before this once-safe outpost is passed on to my successor. I have designated new soldiers to replace those fallen, but they are not enormously skilled.
Notes for my successor
Obviously, there is a lot to be said about the state of our security - however, I will come to that shortly.
Despite the recent setbacks, Joinglazed is a prosperous place. If need be, we can survive indoors for quite some time - I have designated four underground farms which are currently unused, and we have vast reserves of food. We also have access to unlimited water within the safety of the fortress, which is a subject I’ll return to shortly. We have access to large quantities of iron, and a significant amount of ingredients for bronze (copper is our limiting factor, here, but there are some unmined tetrahedrite veins available in the caverns below - currently they seem safer than the outdoors anyway). We also have a good supply of metal already smelted, and a reasonable stockpile of bronze and iron weapons and armour. Our commercial situation is also excellent - we have good craftdwarves and can trade for almost anything, provided that the caravans bring something worthwhile. Our dwarves were, until the recent attack, very happy, and most are living in luxury that will hopefully have them forget their losses soon enough.
Now, onto the subject of what we don’t have. A lack that has become acute recently is that of a morgue and a burial chamber - you will find two rooms designated for mining, and my plan was to make the smaller room the graveyard, and the larger room the burial chamber. I’ve also given the order for a mason to construct ten coffins. I hope this production will complete in time to appease the loved ones of the fallen, but I daresay getting this situation under control should be your first task, lest morale fall too low. The military, too, has suffered badly. I have drafted some more civilians to replace some of the fallen, but I think it’s fair to say we could currently not cope with another goblin invasion of similar magnitude. A lot of the equipment of the fallen soldiers can be recovered - I have not yet attempted this task. The ambush came in from the east, and I would recommend trapping the area fairly heavily. There’s a surplus of mechanisms at present, and as ever a surplus of stone - I believe a dense group of stonefall traps would have helped a lot with our last ambush. I also mined out an area for an additional forge, which may become necessary to keep our soldiers and our weapon traps equipped. There are several industries that haven’t really been explored, particularly clothing and dyes, but this has dropped on the list of priorities for obvious reasons. We also have a somewhat ill-equipped hospital, due to lack of plaster and a lack of a soap industry. I’m not sure what can be done about the former - I don’t recall seeing any plaster stones around - but the soap industry could be built up fairly quickly, and given the influx of wounded our hospital is probably about to receive, this might be a good idea.
Finally, it would be remiss of me to not mention the functioning of our indoor water system. The system consists of two chambers connected to each other. One is open, and has wells in it, and the other is connected to the river by a long tunnel. There are two floodgates - one between the river and the cistern, and one between the cistern and the pond. Do not - and I can’t emphasis this enough - open both floodgates at the same time. If this happens, the fortress will flood very badly. The idea is that if the pond runs dry, you can temporarily open the floodgate to the cistern to unleash that water. If the cistern needs more water, the floodgate to it from the river can be opened to refill it from the river. The levers in the room with the pond control these floodgates in the logical way (the northern lever controls the northern floodgate, etc). I would recommend having both closed most of the time, to avoid any unfortunate accidents involving insanity or gremlins. Logic might arguably dictate that the levers should be located somewhere that wouldn’t immediately become inaccessible in the event of a flood, but on further reflection, I knew that Armok would not approve of such cowardice.
In any case, I believe that is all I have. I’m sorry that I have left you with a minor disaster to clean up, and sorrier still that my time here has ended when things were about to get exciting. Take this as an opportunity for glory and the gods will smile on us all. Get us through the year and no doubt the engravers will honour you in their artwork!
Fortress plans/sketches
The following artwork mostly depicts things accurately as they were in mid-winter. A few changes have taken place, but this information should mostly be good.
Entrance and First Floor
Second Floor
Third Floor
Fourth ‘Floor’
Ambush!
And of course, the requisite paperwork authorising leadership of our mighty outpost can be obtained here.
