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ANRIZERUSH (SKYHANDLE)

Log of Moldath “Amihan” Èrithkol (Laborwheeled), Weaponsmith

3rd Felsite, year 100

Two months in and you’d think we’d have a decent fort going. But no; we’ve all been sleeping in the dirt and eating nothing but what we’d packed on our way here from the Mountainhome. Mistêm hadn’t even thought to appoint a bookkeeper until now—Goden is now doing four jobs all at once, as our farmer, gem cutter, manager and bookkeeper.  I suggested that Mistêm at least do his managing himself, but he says his work as the carpenter can’t be interrupted, which is true enough. But he’ll run out of excuses once we run out of things for him to do.

The miners have had their work cut out for them designing the dining hall—the volcano limits the amount of space we can dig on any one level, and no good diningroom should be exposed to open sky.  We also need to leave room for the magma forges—we don’t yet know if volcano magma follows the same laws as water, so we may need to put the forges on the surface. It looks like we may have to move the majority of the fort lower down, where there’s more room.

I’m wary of digging out more space for the farms, as the only space left is right above our main stockpile and workshops, so we’ll leave that for another time.  Right now, our priority should be to get the apartments dug out and furnished, and more stockpiles set up. We’ll probably need a bigger staircase…

7th Felsite

Hematite! Once we get the forges up, we’ll be able to get to work on iron, at least. Finally, something with which to ply my trade…

13th Felsite

Struck native copper. Not quite as useful as tetrahedrite, but useful all the same. Now if only we could find any tin ore around here…

23rd Hematite

Migrants—Dodók and Solon, one of them a farmer. Good for Goden.  Work on the great hall is nearing completion, and a rudimentary dormitory has been built in the temporary meeting hall.  We’re working on getting an office set up so Goden can get an accurate count of our food stocks; we have no idea how much booze is left.

Speaking of booze, in lieu of weaponsmithing to be done, it has been decided that I shall be the fortress brewer for now. An honorable task, to be sure, but rather different from weaponsmithing.

18th Malachite

Our new farmer hadn’t been told to actually farm, so the fields have lain fallow. We’re all going to starve, I swear.

24th Malachite

The dining room has been carved out!  Here shall the history of Anrizerush be recorded—once we have a history.  We’ll save smoothing it down for after we’ve properly established ourselves here.

I haven’t had much to do besides hauling stone, as it turns out we have more booze than food. Thanks, migrant farmer.

10th Galena

The bedrooms have finally been carved out, but our food stocks aren’t recovering.  That’s the main obstacle to our survival, but there’s nothing we can do about it right now—Mistêm is hard at work cutting gems to trade for more supplies when the caravan comes, so we’ll just have to hold out until then.  Our fisherman has become the fort mechanic—we’ll need floodgates, and levers to operate them.  Work on the magma forges has begun!

18th Limestone

Finally, the caravan! All of our gems have been traded for food, and we are no longer in danger of starvation. Mistêm asked for a greater number of goods than we could reasonably afford by the next caravan, but it’s best to be prepared, he says.

We have a magma-safe floodgate, so now it’s just a matter of engineering the magma channels to go underneath the forges and smelters.  Some of the others have seen magma crabs; we’ll have to be careful about it.

22nd Limestone

More migrants, the most useful of whom being a Ranger.  Hopefully they’ll be able to bring in some meat, once we get a weapons industry going.

The plan for the magmaducts underneath the forges is complete, but this is the first time this has ever been attempted on a volcano, as opposed to the magma sea.  In an abundance of caution, it has been decided to construct a second floodgate on the forge level as well, in case the pressure from the magma does something… inconvenient.

14th Sandstone

One of the magma crabs got out and attacked the caravan. Here’s to hoping they can get away.

15th Sandstone

Oh dear. The forest is on fire.

17th Sandstone

The caravan did not, in fact, make it out. That’ll definitely affect our standing with the Mountainhome, as well as the state of the caravan for next year…

On the other hand, free goods!  We’ll have to make it past the magma crab guarding them, but everything magma-safe is ours.

28th Sandstone