These are the only entires still legible left in the tattered remains of the diary of Sarevok, during his brief position as military advisor to the new dwarven mining outpost, Inodning 'Gateburned'.28th Obsidian, 30I guess I pissed off the fat general one too many times - I just received notice that I'm being sent to help organise the defences of a new fucking mining outpost. A MINING OUTPOST. I'm meant to be a military architect, not a bloody cave-digging gobbo. The wagon sets off first thing tomorrow morning. At least their not stealing my pride too; I get to keep my iron armour.
1st Granite, 31Well I've finally arrived on site. I guess I'll rally forth the regiment and ta--Wait. What the FUCK? There's only SIX OF YOU? Where is everyone else? AND WHERE THE HELL IS THE OUTPOST? I didn't expect they'd make me BUILD the ENTIRE outpost, much less with only SIX dwarves. God damn, I didn't sign up for this shit. I don't know what's worse, the fact that there's only six of the buggers to setup an entire mining outpost, or that they decided to name their regiment
THE SACK. WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU NAME YOURSELVES THAT? Hi there, I'm Sarevok Ducimrovod, of
The Sack, nice to meet you. I've already taken a severe disliking to the sheer stupidity of this Sigun Idendork.
I guess the general REALLY doesn't like me, for an alleged 'mining' outpost we've only got 2 bloody miners and a single mason. At least he had the courtesy to supply me with Lorbam Mesirsazir, the camp's cook. Degel Norammomuz is here too, the poor bastard. At least I can get some decent defensives setup with his siege expertise.
It gets worse too. I can't see any renewable water sources nearby, though one of the miners assures me there's a cave river flowing through this hunk of rock. Great, except with only 2 miners they'll probably get crushed to death before we even dig out a decent bedroom here. There's no wildlife either, so we're going to have to live off bloody plants and dirt. Just graet. I'm going to die here.

I did bring up why on earth we're even setting up here, and the same ever so informative miner (note to self: find out the miner's name already) told me there's a lot of 'gabbro' in the area. I have no idea what gabbro is, but apparently Kim Berleet is in it, and she's got lots of diamonds or something. Why this Kim Berleet is living on her own in a mountain and giving out diamonds, I don't know, but there's also large seams of native gold and copper, as well as aluminium, visible in the side of the mountain. I can only hope there's some 'proper' metals like iron, or else we'll be better off fighting off kobold thieves with sticks.
But all of this pales in comparison to the real problem: We've got
no alcohol. NO ALCOHOL! I'M GOING TO DIE HERE. The bastard gave us a bag of about 10 seeds, an anvil and a couple of war dogs for protection. At least we've got enough meat to last us the month. I also noticed a small stockpile of hematite, which I know can be smelted into some decent quality iron. You know what's funny though? This is a mining outpost, the fat bastard didn't even supply us with any picks. A mining outpost with no picks, what an absolute joke. Guess we'll have to setup a forge and get a few made pronto. Did I mention there's no godamn ale?
2nd Granite, 31Fuck. I've only been here a day and I've already lost ALL SIX dwarves. This isn't funny.
(
note: Yes, I actually lost all my dwarves. They started with their wagon on top of a really tiny mountain (like 5x5 at the top), and it took me an age just to find them again)9th Granite, 31Well I'm no architect, but I've managed to get the lazy Sacks to setup some stockpiles and get a forge, smelter and masonry up and running. We've got a couple of picks fashioned too, so those miners are getting to work mining out a little cubbyhole for us. A friend back at the stockade told me about this new design involving two entrances: one for the wagons, with retractable bridges, and one for the goblins with narrow paths, trenches, sniping posts and ballistae. I've got a decent siege engineer with me, so I think I'll try and set this up. If I'm going to die here, the last thing I want is to be spit roasted on the end of a gobbo spike.

I'm getting worried about the drinks problem though. We've still not located any clean water sources, so I've got Idendork out gathering plants. At the very least we can get some decent strawberry wine going. There's only enough water in our 'skins for another couple of days, and panic is really starting to set in.
I spotted a couple of mountain goats a little ways above our position, and it's boosted morale significantly. With a decent supply of meat the miners will actually be somewhat useful, instead of moaning about their near-worthless existances. Interestingly one of the goats was dead, I have no idea what caused this but there's no other animals in site and last time I checked they didn't kill their own.
11th Granite, 31Shit. Shit. Shit. There's no drinks left. We're all gonna fucking die.
12th Granite, 31I think I'm in love with Lorbam Mesirsazir, he's cranking out enough alcohol to feed the mountainhomes themselves. Looks like we might actually live beyond our first 2 weeks here.
14th Slate, 31I've been in this pisshole for 6 weeks now, and I'm still alive. In a tremendous
lack of foresightattempt to get us all killed, the fat bastard sent no lumberjacks or carpenters. I've got the smithy to forge me and axe and I've gone out slicing and dicing the local fauna. I didn't expect to have to do fucking manual labour, I'm only an advisor, but at least I'm keeping my axearm strong.
28th Slate, 31I've had a word with my miners, and we've devised and mapped out what I like to call 'the siege tunnel'. It's wide enough for the wagons still, but it should also hold off any gobbos that think to take Kim's diamonds. The more I hear about this Kim, the more I feel sorry for her. I wish she would come help us out, before she gets her head split in twain by an ettin.
14th Felsite, 31Fucking useless no good fucking miners. I had an inspection of the siege tunnel today, and the bulk of it has been mined out. Except they've mined it short, by about 3 feet. Jesus christ it's not a complex design just follow the fucking blueprints. The mason assures me she can rectifiy the problem and build some walls where they're meant to be. I only hope she's true to our word, or we've just wasted the last 2 and a half months building a giant neon sign pointing the gobbos to our gravestones.
1st Hematite, 31Has it already been 3 months? Well despite the useless fucking miners (note to self: I'm glad I didn't learn their names now) botching the siege tunnel, Zulban Othsinerith has managed to sort the walls out. Work is progressing smoothly now, and we've got a steady supply of drink and food. The local wildlife decided to fuck off again after I slaughtered a few goats, so we're back to eating biscuits made of herbs. Herbal biscuits...yeah, to whoever ends up reading this I wouldn't recommend them. I'd prefer to eat rotten hairy mormot cakes then this rubbish, but at least I'm not dead. Yet. Maybe I'll get the miners to make me a tomb, I doubt I'll make it to the end of the year.
15th Hematite, 31Fucking kobolds. One of the miners stashed his pick away so he could go fuck about with the horses or something, and a fucking kobold stole it. Why, dear Armok, why did you put me with this imbeciles? I'm gonna have to melt my helm to get a new pick for these shits. They could have at least told me he was around, and I would've cleaved his head from his shoulders, but no. Let me chop down some trees whilst we get our worthless fucking equipment stolen.
I take back any comments about liking fucking Lorbam Mesirsazir too. He's HOUNDING me about the fact that he needs empty barrels. Well that's great but we HAVE NO CARPENTERS. Go make some bloody barrels yourself, for all I care. I don't need to be told THREE TIMES A DAY we have no barrels. I KNOW. I might take up carpentry just to shut the fucker up.
29th Hematite, 31The siege tunnel is almost finished, at last. Just got to get the upper walls made and the bridges installed. At least we've got a decent mason, shame about the useless miners. I've set Mr No Pick to carving out fortifications in the sniping nest instead, might as well get him doing something instead of sitting around wasting ale.
16th Malachite, 31I've received word from the mountainhomes that we won't be receiving any immigrants this season. Fan-fucking-tastic. The last thing I want right now is to be told that nobody is coming to fucking help us. Just let us get on with it already, stop rubbing it in our fucking faces. At least they haven't forgotten about us completely.
8th Galena, 31With the siege tunnel complete, I've gotten the useless miners to start carving out my burial chamber, as well as a few rooms for the noble jackass. I don't see why anyone should get any superior lodgings to the rest of us, but I'm quite aware he can probably have me executed if I don't bow down to his whims. At least when I die here I'll have a nice fancy tomb, which I'll make far superior to his, and right next to it. That'll show him.
9th Galena, 31I spotted an alligator outside of the fortress earlier this morning. They're not particularly violent, or dangerous, creatures to an armoured dwarf. But considering I'm with a bunch of peasants that can't even pick up a sword, let along swing it, it'll probably tear through our ranks. I'll have to keep an eye on it.
13th Galena, 31Mr Informative has told me that he's just struck a vein of Chris Talople. I have no idea who this Chris guy is, but if I find out this is true I'm going to have to send word to the mountainhomes for a medic, and the Hammerer to flog this useless bastard.
25th Galena, 31YES I KNOW WE HAVE NO MOTHERFUCKING SPARE FUCKING BARRELS.

13th Limestone, 31It's autumn, and we've hit a vein of aluminium. Great, what can we do with bloody aluminium? Lets make some useless fucking toy forges and boats with it, for all the use it is to us. Find some iron already damnit.
15th Limestone, 31The alligator strayed within feet of one of the horses and everyone's starting to get really nervous, I'm getting a little bored too. I hunted down and executed the stupid beast with ease. Strangely, in it's corpse, there was a puddle of vomit. I have no idea whose vomit this is, as it certainly isn't mine nor my dogs. I wasn't aware a crocodile could vomit? Especially a dead one. Weird fucking place.
17th Limestone, 31We got our depot up and running just in time - Dwarven traders from the mountainhomes arrived today, with an armed escort greater than the defences of this entire outpost. I'll have to get Idendork to get us some iron, we need some more armour and weapons before we get slaughtered by goblin raiders. I've also commissioned some stonefall traps at the entrance to our fort. At the very least it'll pick off a stray kobold, or something. One of the axedwarves complimented the design of the siege tunnel too, which was the first nice thing I've heard in 7 months.
6th Sandstone, 31WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with these fucking dwarves?
The Sack has fucking traded ALL our crafts for one fucking barrel of alcohol, which we didn't even fucking need. God damnit I'm really starting to hate these people.
12th Sandstone, 31Today I inspected the tomb and found that someone had given me an offering of a shoe. Whilst I appreciate the gesture, I have iron boots on and I think some fucker is going to hurt his feet on all this useless rock the miners have left lying around. If I see a shoeless dwarf, I'm having them flogged for idiocy.

16th Sandstone, 31Well the merchants have departed, with 12 stone bracelets or something ridiculous for a single fucking barrel of rum. Great to trade with you guys, hope to see you again next year. Maybe you could give us a block of alunite for a handful of fucking white sand?
20th Sandstone, 31I've finally setup some ballistae in front of the siege tunnel. That'll hold any invading fuckers off quite nicely, however we've got nobody that actually knows how to bloody use them. I'll have to send a request off to the King himself for some fucking siege operators.
26th Sandstone, 31Well I don't fucking believe it. We've finally got some new fucking immigrants to this shitty little outpost. Why they'd come, I don't know, but I'm grateful for any help we can get. Looks like we got a good 8 new dwarves, doubling our population. Things are starting to look up already.
27th Sandstone, 31I noticed that Cilob Ostrith, one of the new dwarves, seems to have pretty strong arms and - with a lack of any real tradeskills - I've decided to take her under my wing and train her in the arts of fighting. It'll be nice to have someone I can rely on to protect these shits when I'm sleeping.
10th Timber, 31I've decided to provide sketches of our defensive layouts here for future leaders, so they can see how it functions and the reason why they're still alive when they get sieged.
In this sketch, you can see the sniper post at the bottom and the siege tunnel north, down a z-level. the idea is 5 or 6 marksdwarves can sit up here and pick off the gobbos with ease as they traverse the narrow passageway, whilst the ballistae below tear them to shreads. In the room to the left is the stockpile I've provided for crossbow bolts.

Here's the upper ceiling of the complex. The edges have been hollowed out so none of our foes can climb the walls and fire down into the sniping nest from above. There's not much else to say here.

And this here's the siege tunnel itself. The entrance has a collection of weak stone-fall traps, designed to pick off early invaders but not particularly reliable. I'd recommend adding in a host of weapon traps behind them. Upon invasion, the north lever raises the top bridge whilst the south level raises the bottom one. It's pretty self explanatory. Raise the top one to force them to come down the siege tunnel, and raise the bottom one when they're in the tunnel so they can't get through. The ballistae and archers rip them to shreds in the meantime. I might add another bridge a little further south to completely wall out the outside world, just in case.
15th Timber, 31Today I injured Cilob Ostrith pretty badly whilst sparring. Some might say they fighting her whilst using platemail and a shield just isn't fair, but I'm not using my axe on her at least. I threw a blow at her and she skidded on a loose rock whilst dodging, causing her to badly bruise her arms and legs. Hopefully she'll be well again soon, and back to training.
9th Moonstone, 31The cold of winter is setting in, but there's little to be upset about this month. Cilob's fully recoved and we've resumed sparring in the barracks. I'm actually getting a bit worried as she's a lot better at wrestling than me - I'm an axe user, I've never really fought with fists before. My tomb is complete as well, just got to move a couple of statues and clear out the rocks. And throw away that bloody shoe.
21st Moonstone, 31I really fucking hate this 'noble' trading sonofabitch. He decided to tell me this week no less than
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE times that he needed an office. I had to build the fucker one because he's burst my fucking eardrums with his idiotic moaning.
5th Opal, 31HAHAHAHA, it's done at last. CRY ABOUT YOUR SUPERIORITY ALL YOU WANT, BITCH. My tomb looks fantastic, it's the talk of the whole outpost. Nobody is saying 'ooh check out noble jackass' tomb', are they? That'll show the fuck who's the real boss around here.
21st Opal, 31It's been a rather boring month now that the tomb is finished. I seriously cannot think of anything to write that is significant, beyond we made 10 tables this week.

14th Obsidian, 31I'm starting to become a real professional at this whole wrestling lark, but boy does the student become the fucking teacher or what? Here I am trying to train this girl how to fight, and she's only gone and become so good her skills are legendary, even back at the mountainhomes. Well, at least I've still got an eye for good fighters, that's for sure. The King is impressed with my training so much he's promoted me to Captain of the Militia in the outpost. A militia of one, not counting me. Still, in a year's time we could have a good 10 or 15 fighters so this is great news to me. I'm trying to sneak in the 'Yeah I trained her' in conversation, but people just call me a bragging fuck.
31st Obsidian, 31Well, I've survived the year. My mission from the fat fucking general was to organise the defences of this outpost, and apparently design and build the entire outpost at the same fucking time. I'm just no good at logistics - I'm a fighter at heart, not a true foreman. Now with the defences fully established and new dwarves on the scene, and the foundations of a militia being formed, I've decided to retire from my post. I'll continue to train the dwarves as Captain of the Militia, and hopefully we'll be able to survive for the next few years as well.
I leave this record for whoever takes on my role, to let them know what a fucking shithole they've joined, but more importantly that they're not totally fucked and the outpost actually has some decent stocks. I'd recommended mining out a complex inside with proper housing, as well as moving the workshops and stockpiles indoors, as the barracks is starting to get a little crowded.

And with that, I close this journal for this last time. Lets just hope I don't get stabbed in the back by a pissed off immigrant after the turmoil I've been through the past year.
The entries of Sarevok end here, and continue with the thoughts of his successor. Frankly, it is our unbiased opinion that in the history of the fortress, he was the true 'Leader' and nobody ever bested him.Well that's that. It was actually a fairly straightforward year for me - once I got over the initial drinks problem. The fortress is currently pretty self-sustaining, with drinks + food supplied by gathered plants, which is then brewed and the alcohol cooked. The defences are setup, but there's no siege operates or marksdwarves, so training them might be a good idea. I'd also move EVERYTHING inside, as it'll just get nicked by kobolds out there and it's pretty defenceless beyond the siege tunnel.
Frankie: Here's your save, buddy. Anyone else wanting to check it out can too, I guess.
http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/23069/gwdf1.raredit: fixed download