Year 2

2nd Timber, 1878

To: The Royal Archeology Society

From: Elizabeth Anne Wessenfeld, Doctor of Archeology, Wessenfeld-Smith Expedition

I would like to begin by apologizing for the amount of time since our last major update on the Expedition. I know both Dr. Smith and myself have sent several short letters with various details, but we have been so busy trying to make sense of what happened during the 2nd year of the fortress’s operation that we have not had the time to send a full report. I know that you all have been expecting and waiting impatiently for this report for months now, and we here at the Expedition extend our heartfelt apologies.

Overall the 2nd year of the fortress seems to be one of busy industry, as well as a building up of defenses. For example during their second year, they extended their defensive wall on one side to house a growing military, as well as installing a dry moat and drawbridge. The began smelting large quantities of copper and iron, as well as some silver. We also see more references to elves, as well as the mention of several other races or creatures. We are still unsure if they represent truly unique species, or if perhaps they are pejorative terms for humans or other dwarves.

Additionally, Dr. Smith has requested that you send us a Necromancer, as we would greatly like to attempt an interview of some of the residents of the catacombs. He and I both agree that James Edward Forshur, the professor of Necromancy at Wilburshire University would be ideal for the job

Respectfully yours,

Dr Elizabeth A. Wessenfeld

As before, the following are translations of excerpts from various sources within the fortress. Together with the maps we’ve found, they paint a picture of the second year of the Fortress’s operation. Note, many of these journal entries seem to have been written by different Dwarves, as no single journal seems to have survived intact.

1st of Granite, year 2

Minkot and Dumed both keep telling everyone that they’re “legendary miners” now, whatever that means. They’re both certainly legendary in their own minds.

12th of Granite

An elven caravan arrives, I wonder if they actually have anything useful…

16 of Granite

The smelters report that they’ve produced over 100 units of coke so it would appear that we are more than ready to start producing metals.

I’ve decided that we should start raising turkeys for more than just eggs. To that end I have instructed the other miner to dig out a second turkey pen, where we can allow eggs to hatch.

While trading I purchased several hundred arrows, anticipating that we will be starting a military force soon. I also aquired a giant leopard which I think we will train for war and then assign to our Militia Commander. I’m thinking of naming Avuz Shorastison, as they are the only dwarf among us with any military experience. Oh, and I also picked up tons of fruit that we can hopefully turn into wine!

22nd of Granite

Minkot has me digging out a dry moat at the entrance of the fortress. I don’t know why she never wants to do any work anymore. She keeps saying that she’s “a legend, and as such she should work on only the most important projects.” I thought we agreed that we were both legends, but apparently that doesn’t matter when it comes to me.

1st of Slate

I was named Militia Commander today, but when I asked how many recruits I could expect I was told that everyone was needed working elsewhere. So I’m less of a commander, and more like just the militia.

14th of Slate

20 migrants arrived today! 20! There are 37 of us now! One of them was a clerk and we made Commander Avuz go tell her that she wasn’t going to be in charge of the records anymore. I went and grabbed poor Unib Dodoksinsot and handed him a key to the records room and a clipboard and proceeded to shove him into said records room before he even made it to the meeting hall.

Another of the migrants, Iton Fashonul, turned out to be a skilled diagnostician so Minkot promoted her to Chief Medical Dwarf. She’ll have a good team working with her - we got a surgeon in this group of migrants as well.

One of the families brought a child with them, it will be good to hear the laughter of a child playing in ringing through the fortress halls. At least for the first 10 minutes anyway. I suspect Minkot is already drafting up rules to keep children out of anyplace she intends on being.

28th of Slate

Our leopard has been trained for war and assigned to me. Well at least the militia has at least one member who isn’t the commander now.

1st of Felsite

Sakzul Dodokroldeth, the child who came with his parents, has been possessed. And claimed the crafts workshop, I’ll need to have another one built so we can continue to produce crafts for trade. He’s been running around the fortress grabbing things at random. At least he was, until he started muttering about cloth. I told him we have plenty, but apparently it wasn’t the right kind. We might need to try and break into the lower caverns to try and find silk…

20th of Felsite

We’ve dug down 25 levels from the surface, and we still haven’t found any caverns yet. Poor Sakzul is still holed up in his workshop muttering about cloth. Starting to look a bit thin though.

21st of Felsite

I TOLD THEM! I told Minkot to let me put together a militia force, but no, she always said not yet. Well now she’ll be sorry, and so will the rest of us. Our sentries informed us early this morning that the’d seen a werechameleon out among the trees not far from the fortress. And while the dry moat has been finished, the drawbridge is not. I’m going to grab the next 10 dwarves I see and tell them their in the army now, and they are to pick up whatever weapons and armor the can scrounge and meet me at the entrance.

22nd of Felsite

It is with heavy heart that I write this. Several civilians near the entrance of the fortress died today, Kumil Sanreblimul, Limul Eturtishis, and Onul Turnral. Along with Commander Avuz Shorastison, and Ezum Kohanlam of the militia.

After killing 5 of us, the werechameleon, transformed into a smiling friendly human, somewhat confused as to how he arrived at our fortress. I ordered what remained of the militia to kill him. Most of them were so upset that they forgot the silver warhammers in their hands and began to bludgeon him to death with their fists. One of the war dogs grabbed him and held him in place. And poor Avuz’s war leopard  proceeded to start ripping his limbs off. After he passed out and collapsed to the ground, one of the recruits remembered his warhammer and ended him finally.

As we have no one with relevant skills, Deler Sazirkastar has been given a hammer and congratulated on his new position as Militia Commander.

4th of Hematite

Kobolds came today, I’m still not sure what they stole, but they took off running with something.

16th of Hematite

A human caravan arrives, hopefully they’ll have some cloth that Sakzul will like. He hasn’t eaten in months now so I have little hope for his survival if they don’t have something he likes.

19th of Hematite

While I was negotiating over the price of cloth, I was informed that Sakzul Dodokroldeth had gone mad. It has not been a good couple months.

25th of Hematite

New migrants arrived today, and among them are several children. Maybe they’ll keep our resident madchild company.

In better news Minkot managed to trade for some leather, cloth, a couple bags, many barrels of beer and wine, but most excitingly an iron anvil. Should be good for expanding out metalworking area.

10th of Malachite

The tombs were finally finished. We dug them out near our meeting hall so that it would be easy to visit them. We will never forget the sacrifices they made to help keep our fortress safe.

12th of Galena

Our war leopard won’t willingly leave the spot where its master died, and refuses to serve a new master. It’s been decided to put it in a pen near the entrance. Hopefully he’ll still try and defend the fortress if anything attacks.

27th of Galena

Nil Masosavuz, one of our armorers has been possessed. Do we dare hope for an armor artifact? He did claim a forge…

5th of Limestone

Oh great. Nil made us a silver helm “Polishedsingle” Encircled with bands of silver and mule leather. With the image of Fealtycobalt: Common Practice the hematite-bound codex in pink garnet. Apparently he likes books so much that he had to carve a picture of one and slap it on a useless helm.

At least the entire militia is equipped with armor now. Although it’s only copper armor, so we’ll need to try and find more iron soon so we can upgrade that.

10th of Limestone

A caravan from the mountainhomes arrived today. And Sakzul finally died from thirst and hunger. The caravan members finally asked why everyone looked so depressed, and I think we made them depressed too once we told them what had happened.

Minkot remembered that they had asked for warhammers last time they had visited, so we quickly crafted some silver warhammers and sold them for a tidy profit. And by profit, I mean beer and anvils.

13th of Sandstone

The fortress has been plagued by a flock of giant keas, which have been interrupting work constantly on the surface. The militia has been told to grab some crossbows and to go deal with them.

18th of Sandstone

More migrants arrived today. We now number 56.  The militia finally chased the giant keas off, although they didn’t manage to actually kill any.

2nd of Sandstone

No one’s seen Dumed Etasonul in some time. We just found him up in a tree. Apparently he was able to climb up but not climb down. We told him never to climb any trees again and have started building a ramp to get him down.

27th of Timber

We had to cut the tree down to get Dumed to come down. He just kept shaking his head and weeping something about being afraid of heights. He was only on the first branches. He bruised when we cut the tree down.

4th of Moonstone

Uzol Ishlumcilob, our brewer, has been taken by a fey mood, perhaps we’ll see some sort of legendary alcohol? Ah well, wishful thinking. She claimed a crafts workshop.

9th of Moonstone

A goblin snatcher tried to gain entry to the fortress, but our war leopard chased him away!

15th of Moonstone

A wooden. Elfing. Crown. Seriously Uzol, what are we? Elves? Ugh. And he’s so attached to the thing that he won’t let us sell it. There was some discussion about maybe doing it anyway, but in the end we decided that they would probably be insulted by the sale of wood. Although, Uzol’s pretty good at crafting wood now, maybe we can sell him to the elves?

28th of Opal

Nil Masosavuz gave birth to the very first child to be born in our fortress! An ugly little girl she named Kivish Dodokmis. I wonder who knocked her up, I didn’t even realize she was a woman. Dating would be a lot easier if our women would agree to shave their beards like human women.

Note from Dr. James Wessenfeld

The following, are a series of maps that show what we believe the fortress looked like at the end of it's second year.