Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 23rd of Galena 168The new memorial halls are coming along nicely. I've sent a couple of dwarves to start smoothing ready for the engravings. One of our new metalsmiths is going to work on making statues of the deceased, the other is creating some higher quality instrument pieces and furniture for the Tall Bar than the stuff our ghoulsmith made.
I missed having a proper tavern. 5 long years the Towering Tankard was in construction. While it seems most of Smallhands' population
still doesn't understand the appeal and function of a monument, they at least understand a tavern. Even the ghouls have come in on occasion for my assistance in feeding them a drink. All the ones that aren't training the new recruits that is.
Our military strength has been buffed to a respectable 11. 3 marksdwarves, 8 melee dwarves of which 4 are ghouls. Everyone is wearing steel and wielding a weapon of choice. Well...they should be, I still see some ghouls in bronze annoyingly.
Training unfortunately hasn't took off as quickly as I hoped due to a lack of quality steel helms and weapons. Armour I can do myself now, I'm...well competent I suppose. My armour does the job and I occasionally make a fine one that would fetch a lot at the market. Still, I'm the best none fevered dwarf in fort at armoursmithing so its me who has to do it
The weaponry on the other hand is easy to solve, the surface still has quite a few good weapons we can use.
I started brewing a new drink. I'm gonna call it the Raider's Respite. Its gonna be in celebration of what we're about to do.
Raze Sinewsabres to the ground, free our troops and end that necromantic scourge on the world!Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 17th of Limestone 168Blasted diplomats, we were just about to set off for Sinewsabres! what do you want?
oh...trade. Right. I guess we can postpone the raid... as soon as Auze strikes a deal. Logs, coal, metalwork, parchment, booze, plump helmets much to my frustration. The usual things. We have loads of crafts and tools to offer them. Perhapd we can even purchase some metal crossbows for the swamp hunters.
Many military folk and some overseers beside will probably be wondering why not just use wood for the crossbows. Something I observed during training was that when our marksdwarves are out of ammunition, instead of getting more they tend to...bludgeon enemies instead of reloading. Using their bows as hammers. Great idea admittedly with the undead about so much, but wooden hammers are not very good. Not compared to the vast quantities of iron we have. That way we won't get as many instances of dwarves taking too long to bludgeon a prone goblin to death after being turned into a pin cushion.
Come to think of it, what's taking Auze so long?
AUZE! YOU JUST HAD AN ENTIRE BARREL!
Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 24th of Limestone 168The diplomat brought us some grave news. A huge army from the goblin capital to the south marched on Staffhoisted to our north. Thats why the caravan was late this year- they had to circumvent the goblins.
That being the case, this caravan is absolutely loaded with goods! An entire page devoted to plump helmets! Several sheets of parchment devoted to military equipment. Plenty of writing materials for our scholars and even a few bars of platinum.
Mestthos the diplomat also mentioned to me in the tavern that the current Queen was concerned that the goblins may have overrun smallhands, hence the Mountainhomes caravan. The goblins would have had to pass by us entirely or invade if they wanted to go to Staffhoisted.
Fortunately so far this year we haven't seen any goblins apart from the one whose corpse I had dug up then burned in lava after it was buried in our old graveyard. We have had a large amount of the Fever rain so its possible the goblins simply chose to skirt around instead of invading.
Still, I don't blame the mountainhomes for taking precautions...wait what?
Armok above, the Mountainhomes found a way to kill these terrors and make food out of them? I'm simultaniously impressed and mildly shaken by that.
Its a good thing I got Auze to stop drinking himself onto the floor, because this was by far the best trading caravan I have ever seen. We sold over 200000 Urists worth of crafts for enough resources to run Smallhands for years!
These are what I got
57 barrels of booze of which 9 were dwarven wine- its back on the menu everyone!
20 Pieces of steel or good quality iron armour
11 bags of quicklime
7 bags of gypsum plaster
360 plump helmets
145 quarry bush leaves
Some giant cave spider silk garments to supplement our pig tail ones, number unknown
12 metal toys for our surviving children to play with while they grow up into dwarves. (I found one elven toy and sold that for 2 urists. Apparently there's a dwarf the trader knew that liked to use elven toys as target practice instead of simply destroying them)
14 parchment sheets
23 instrument pieces
1 cat and a kitten (hopefully this pair survive long enough to catch the rats)
Finally a platinum flask that I will freely admit I bought for over 5000 urists after I broke my granite announcement mug.
As a notice to all hauliers: Artifacts do not belong in the bins with the other crafts, especially if they are military grade. Imic had to drag 3 out of the depot, one of which was Zafful, our artifact steel mace. Our crafters will not b-
An ink stain covers the writingCan't the fey at least pay attention to where they are going?
Well, trading's done and the caravan guards said they will hold up here for a bit. Thank you Auze, you done a fantastic job. I'll leave you to store everything. We'll be back soon.
Its time ladies and gents! Time to free our people. I will lead the charge!