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[Eagle of Fire]

I just had a very bad week and a half, and I have to excuse myself to everybody here for falling to complete my story.

Thank you for your patience. I'll get back to work ASAP.

[Eagle of Fire]

Early summer of 301:

Summer has come! And with it the beauty of the season.

There is little more to report right now than what I already archived in my last entry. The trade depot is already built and waiting for trade goods to arrive and I have given the task of creating goods worthy of trade to El_Quia. It did not take long for him to get to the task and I noticed a few toys and crafts getting out of his workshop in no time. It might not be of very high quality for now but I am sure that if he continues to put his hearth to the task as much as he did so far then it will take no time for him to carve masterpieces out of those rocks.

Oh yeah... I almost forgot again to write that I also took the liberty of asking that the ropes we brought along be used so our war dogs could keep guard at the entrance of our stairway. We are never prudent enough when it comes to security and we are short on dwarfpower right now... I simply hope that they have been trained well enough so they don't bite us when we walk by them.

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Early summer of 301, a few days later:

Summer sure does regain its footing fast in those parts of the world, for it is already scorching hot outside. We are still happy (and cool) inside the fortress, but it will probably take only a few days before we begin to feel the heat down here as well. I wish we had time to think about building a well. At this rate the water will all be gone by the time we could even think of a plan to preserve it...

It is a good thing that we brought so much alcool along with us. It keep us hydrated, and helps to keep a good spirit up too.

In other news, our miners took very little time to carve us basic rooms in the first soil layer. It gave them the time to complete several small projects very quickly, including a medium sized dining room and a nice office. After instructing Angry Axe, our resident mason, to get to work, we began outfitting those rooms with some of the best quality of furniture that I have ever seen in my life. I took the liberty of reserving the best pieces for my office room and I really look forward in receiving diplomatic envoys in such a setting. I bet those who will come here will be pretty impressed by all this! The only negative point that I can think of is that we can't smoot and engrave soil walls... But then again, it will probably only be the simple matter of digging up a bigger room in rock and hauling all those wonderful pieces of furniture in the new office.

Having the responsability of organizing everything does have some benefits in the end. Hehehe.

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Middle of summer of 301:

Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. It simply seem like it was sooner rather than later that we had to shed some blood to defend what we now consider our new home. There is however fortunately no dwarven loss to report and even our dogs, who played a major role in this crisis, did not take a single scratch from the Kobold thieves who tried to sneak in to steal from us.

Since we do not have a Sheriff or anything even close to some kind of authority, I took upon the responsability to make a full report on the incident.

Most of what I gathered and understood came from Supra_Mario, who was the nearest dwarf from the gates when the dogs began to bark like if they had been possessed. He rushed to the main stairway only to find out that a Kobold was trying to sneak his way past the dogs and into the fortress. He later explained to me that he is a casual wrestler and that he even participated in some contests back in the mother country in his early days, so he was pretty confident in his abilities would he had to defend himself from danger. And so he did, for when he got to ground level he realized that not only one but two of those annoying pests managed to slip past our defense and get inside the fort.

Surprised by the second one, he related to me, he landed a "jaw breaker" right hook to his face and sent him to the ground immediately for the count of three. Or so he says. I do need to admit that, after examining the corpse of our belated intruder and counting the amount of broken bones, I would be ill placed to doubt the wrestling skills of our resident farmer. It would probably be best that we do not provoke him on purpose, in fear of receiving the now famous "jaw breaker" hook in retaliation.

By the time Supra_Mario took care of the second intruder, the first one already ran a good distance away. He still rushed after him nonetheless, no doubt fuelled by rage and vengeance more than anything else. This is when nothing less than a third intruder was spotted by our faithfull canine guards. To make a long story short, he was so scared to death by being detected by our cerberuses that he ran away immediately like the cowards that all Kobolds truely are.

Our new boxing legend came back empty handed from his hunt by the end of the day. Two Kobolds managed to escape and a third one was killed in the incident while nothing, would it be possession, life or limbs, was lost on our side. Supra_Mario did nothing else for a full day than to brag about the first kill of the whole fortress... And I am afraid we will still hear about it for a long, long while.

I did a small investigation to complete my report, and by all accounts it seems like our fort walls are not enough to prevent the infiltration of sneaking ennemies inside our walls. It took only a few minutes of investigation to realize that the first two intruders managed to pick the lock of the western gate, while the third one seemingly did the same with the northern gate. I cannot think at this moment of something else to do than to lock ourselves into our own walls to prevent this from happening again. This is unfortunately neither an option at the present nor something we would desire to do anyways. It seems that we will need to rely on our guard dogs for another early warning for the time being.

All I can say is that it worked great so far.

(to be continued)

[TheChosen]

Great. I was beginning to wonder where did you go.

Its looking good. Kobolds eh? Sounds like were gonna have to put on some traps.

Oh, and how about some pictures from inside the fortress?

[supa_mario]

Oh yeah.

[Fubb]

eek! Kobolds! It won't be safe for our dwarves to venture outside now though, cause if theirs archers (which their will be soon if the kobolds learn they can keep stealing) they're goona pick our dwarves off!

[Eagle of Fire]

I am not afraid of Kobolds. All they try to do is sneak in and steal a random piece of anything laying on the ground.

If they always get detected before they steal, they simply run away.

Goblins, on the other hand, is something else completely!

[Halindir]

Though im an incompetent DF-player, i would like to try ruling the fortress, if possible - though only if theres none else to take over.

If possible i would like a dwarf named after me; Halindir, and i'd like to be a woodburner, even if we're not going to have any wood burned.

[Eagle of Fire]

Never say never. We actually have a lot of wood on the map.

[Halindir]

At first i thought a wood burner would be useless, since we have magma. But i just realized - with the help from DF-Wiki - that the ash is used to make fertilizers and better-quality-glass-thingies..not that im sure we'll use those things, but assbad anyways as i might actually be useful someday
(Yay i've survived for two years now - i usually die around a year in)

[TheChosen]

For those who havent heard, they just released new version, which has been on work for over a year. If our save is compatible with it, we'll probably switch to that.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF...se_Information

Hightlights:

* Complete overhaul of military system, including weapon training
* Dwarfs can now use anykind of weapon
* Wooden weapons are available
* Dwarfs have now more skill and "soul"
* Creatures and dwarfs now have appearances, like different skin colors, hair styles, facial features etc.
* Dwarfs now have actual beards.
* Tissue layer and bruises
* Dwarfs have more personality, including mannerism and thoughts
* Caravans now trade glass and sand (Finally!)
* Hospitals are in. There are now doctor dwarves and ways of healing up wounds. Dwarfs no longer spend years in beds.
* Soap has now its uses; Dwarfs can take care of their hygiene
* Huge underground revamp: It now can go over 100 floors!
* Underground lairs and randomly created creatures
* "Batmen could ride giant bats and shoot poison darts at you with makeshift blowguns made from giant cave spider legs"
* Dinosaurs, with and without feathers
* Forgotten beasts

I tested it a bit, and first thing I noticed that its lot heavier this time. I couldnt start the game on a slightly bigger area. Other than that, there is a lot more detail in creatures and dwarves. A Lot.