EvilJoe1 said:
Rather, I've just been a bit extremely busy. I'm moving to a new city on saturday, for a three-month summer job between studies.
So don't expect updates between friday night and monday afternoon (~GMT time): I'll be either out of contact, setting up my 12 square-meter apartment, or at work.
But this thread will most certainly not die.
Now, onto your things to do and their effects.
You quickly dig trough more ground at Shaft #5. You find no more veins of lignite or bitumious coal, but do manage to confirm the size of the deposits: they are on the upper end of your dwarves optimistic estimates, and slightly larger than what you previously thought.
Shaft #2 is still slow going: granite you could hammer trough in reasonable time, but preserving the rocks while extracting the strands is slowing your dwarves down. Production is continuous however, and progress is being made.
You begin diggin into the granite at shaft #3, making a few seperate branching tunnels after digging a bit deeper. There is no coal yet, but you do find a few handfuls of extremely small diamonds here and there. Only with great care could they be cut and set into jewelry, but more importantly they hint at coal deposits right nearby. The diamonds, unless cut, will be worth of a fraction of what you should get for their weight, but they are by no means without value.
The council hall is yet to be finished, but it is far ahead as you used a branch at shaft #3 that was deemed least likely to contain coal, as basis for the room.
You go visit the dwarf who lost his leg, when he finally does become lucid enough to talk to; it seems like he will pull trough. When you tell him of his choice to leave or stay according to his wishes, his face goes unreadable.
Then he asks what the hell do you think you are talking about.
For ten minutes he raves that he is a Stone Dog and that his place is right here. The only way you are getting him out of Cold Rocks Hold is by sentencing him to exile. A lost leg? Bah, who needs two. He can still swing a hammer, smooth stone, pump the bellows, drink and belch, whatever. Sure, he won't be at the front of a charge against an enemy, but he most certainly will not be useless, he tells you.
The matter settled, you leave him to recuperate.
You begin preparing for the journey, and storing supplies and items for it. Flasks are repaired, bags mended and barrels created for transportation. Braving the arid plains in the hottest summer does not seem that good an idea and thus your plans are made for late summer and early fall. The nights for the journeying group will be colder, but slightly too cold can be dealt with easier than too warm.
You think the dwarven settlement of Axefell to be the best destination: about fourteen to seventeen days of travel by foot to the southeast. There are only a few hundred dwarves living there, unlike the 1000+ of Mountainhome, but they ought to treat you as the cousin clan you are, and welcome the possibility for steady trade. There are also roads, and some trained messenger eagles there for any messages that need fast delivery.
As the weeks roll by, a few messages are brought to you for delivery. There aren't that many, and mostly directed to friends and some family back at Mountainhome.
With a small relief, you witness the days outside getting shorter and cooler. Underground you've never had any problems, but you do note for the future that strenuous work aboveground during the height of summer weeks should be minimized. As it is, your woodcutter has taken to the habit of keeping a few flasks of water, or something stronger, with him at all times aboveground.
The feline almost charged trough the closed inner gate when your trainer came to it with a slab of meat; it ate so fast it seemed to almost breathe the meat in when your dwarf tossed it over the wall in a bit of panic.
It seems to have calmed down a bit as well: it has realized the futility of trying to escape trough the pen walls and now that it gets meat, even if small amounts and only occasionally, it isn't so aggressive from starvation anymore.
There is no loyalty or wish to obey either however. It pointedly ignored everything, until your trainer again cut off all supply of meat for it. That most certainly got it's attention in the longer run and just the day before your trainer managed something of a breaktrough:
The feline didn't istantly try mangle him when he neared the pen. Your trainer thinks this might be at long last the point where the beast begins to see you as anything but walking meals to be shredded.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to add this the first time round, already had the text written.
The wicked teeth that almost rore off a limb are in good memory when you begin to make plans for a device to kill the, what you have termed, 'super crocs' living in the river. Because they are quite unlike the small mountain alligators about half the lenght of a dwarf you're used to.
Cloth and leather obviously are right out. And metal is only useful if you don't get chewed while placing that metal. The best design you've come up with so far is an above-water trap. The Super Crocs do elave water to catch their prey, as the incident with your dwarf proved. So the idea is to set up a dangling bait, preferably slightly bloody meat, above a suitable spot in the river, near the shorelines and close to the surface. A croc goes for it, a line attached to the bait triggers a mechanism, and a series of spikes held back by a spring launch from the ground from the side, piercing the croc and hopefully pinning it against the ground.
Dwarven innovatinvness and engineering almost at it's finest. Too bad it would need to be made mostly out of metal for guaranteed functionality. Stone and wood could be used to supplement some portions, but use of metal is unavoidable to a degree.
So, summer is slowly coming to an end at Cold Rocks Hold. As far as trading is concerned, you'll either have to go along yourself or get the trades to happen back at your home to directly see what is available and what is not. If you assign a dwarf to act in you stead or trade somewhere where you as the leader are not, you'll have to give your dwarves a prioritized shopping list. You will not know if they get everything on that list until they return.
And yes, you can spend some...let's call them Karma/Luck-Points for now, to one-time boost your changes of getting what you decide you need from the trade, as well as the general reception (and thus, value) of the items you intend to sell.
As long as we stay in single digits (<10 players) I should be able to manage it, ~6 or so would be more optimal. Since we have only two active and one on hiatus, we're golden. If you got friends who want to join, do tell them to post here.