//------------------------------// // 14 The Third Diary - Fox Tail // Story: Forbidden Land // by Mane-Shaker //------------------------------// Journal of Fox Tail, third overseer March I arrived in the first immigration wave of this place. Took my time to admire It and I say It's interesting here. For my first orders, I told them to produce much food as possible. Until I visited the food stocks and we are good on that after all. But still, I'll order the farmers to keep working and growing all the mushrooms they can. Overconfidence would lead to starvation. After studying the layout of the fort and being told of the previous attacks of the mandrills, I decide that I'll focus my attention on the security of this place. The traps system and their planning seems efficient, but everything else can be improved here with some extra traps. First and foremost, I told the crafters to stop making mandrill bone things, and set up a work order of stone short swords. These should work like a steel one, and should be efficient for the military and some of the future traps. Also designed a rock stockpile next to the workshops, so It's not too hard for them to look for the materials. I noticed the confusion of work orders that the previous overseer made. The word specialization seemed weird for the idiot... I erased all the work orders on fishing. We have lots of food from our farms and kitchen. There's no need of losing time around the rivers. Decided to start digging deeper in the mountain. Let's see what can we find there. The idea of my peasants dwarves carrying around boulders annoys me deeply. I removed the giant stockpile of rock from the outside. The masons can carry their own stupid stones! Speaking of the devil. The furniture stockpile was empty... while furniture was laying around the workshops! I asked them what was wrong and seems nothing was allowed in the stockpile. What the hell was the previous overseer thinking?! The miners found a rather large and bottomless chasm. Better order the masons to build a bridge over It. The blacksmith just ran past me babbling something and went to his room. After hearing his grudges by the rock door, which makes me understand we don't have a forge built yet. Told them to built one and start producing charcoal in the wood furnaces. On the other side of the chasm we found iron! Hurrah! April At last, another blacksmith who seemed to be thinking straight finally built the forge. And why do we have so many dwarves smoothing the floors??? Another odd thing was... the farmer workshops were a distance away from the underground river, which would be the right place to put them, since the farms are close of It. Again, what was my predecessor thinking?! The crazy blacksmith took over the forge and ran around the stockpiles, demanding a metal we don't have. Ordered out miners to start digging in hopes of finding It. Oh no... It starts... While I was writing the previous entry, immigrants arrived with 3 nobles! A manager, a sheriff and a House Berite representative! I've heard rumors of these nobles. They don't care about anything else but power and themselves. This will slay my mind... And damn! Lots of migrants! We are now 58 in StoneHammer! The lunatic blacksmith started his work of art. Instead of letting the others smelt them, he used two raw iron ores. Began designing the quarters for the nobles. I plan to use the same space for their bedroom, office and dinning room. The crazy blacksmith finished his work. An iron toy hammer, after all the trouble I went through?! At least I hope It works like a real one! May The cage trap system proved Itself worthy. We captured an entire group of mandrills who were planning on stealing us. Began building a second farm. Our fortress grows bigger. GREAT NEWS! The miners found a lava river! It's weird to see such thing this high from the earth's core, but oh well! June The quarters for the nobles are finished. The House Representative is nagging me It's not high quality enough, but he can go screw himself. Our best miner decided to take a walk in the elephant trap... and a pack who was wandering close by ran away from him! But without some pain. He's severely injured now... July More migrants, and the idiots decided to go through right between the elephants! One dead, one injured.. TWO dead and one injured. And the ones who made It leaded the pack right into the trap tunnel. Six elephants captured! August The elephant traps are reloaded with new strong cages. Things have been too quiet regarding the previous elephant mini attack. I'm worried about the future of this place. Namely if the next overseers are not security-minded like me. So I shall order a deep channel to be built in the chasm and order our miners to dig channels leading the magma to the built magma-proof channels. Finally the construction of the second has started. Another blacksmith got another stupid idea! Since I'm doing a huge magma flooding in our artificial channels, building a magma forge isn't possible. But once this all is complete, we have some steel bars standing by. The chasm's channel has enough magma in it. Construction can go as planned. A note to my successors: DON'T pull the lever next to the chasm! It causes everything past It to die from magma! September Autumn is here. I'm preoccupied about the crazy blacksmith, in case the magma forge doesn't get complete in time... Construction of It has started! Now It's a race against time. Merchants arrived. A griffin thief appeared!!! But luckily was struck down. Two more elephants have been captured. And a farmer got trampled to death... I traded some bone and rock crafts for some more food. Not that we need more but whatever... Alert was sounded! A fire imp ambushed from the magma river! I hurled a fireball at a carpenter who was passing through. The injury was so bad that the guy ran towards It and they fought. Until a peasant showed up and wrestled It to death. October Unluckily, the magma forge wasn't complete in time and the blacksmith went insane. He's right now running around babbling non-sense to himself. Later on, he jump to one of the water channels and kept swimming squirming until he drowned. We couldn't recover the body, so looks like another memorial slab next to the other ones and the coffins. We struck platinum! Yes! Surprise! We caught a leopard! This makes 5 mandrills, 9 elephants and 1 leopard. A mason was killed by an elephant... A dog chased an elephant into the traps. More elephants caught while I wasn't paying attention. I'll have to wait to get an exact number. November Two extra deaths caused by the elephants. The end of autumn is here. I decided to leave this position sooner and take a break after all these episodes with the wild life and the projects our fort have endured. But I won't say anything to them, I'll just let the fort's daily life run by and see what happens.