1st Felsite, 206, Late Spring

[cabbitzilla]

Things are finally beginning to shape up nicely. I'm still trying to adapt to having a bloody Baron and Consort underfoot, but they've at least not been the painful experience that the histories say happened in Morulrulush in the Orid Rabin mountains. Legend says that the Mayor there was pushed to the extreme of turning his Baron's suite into a surprisingly effective death chamber. But we've not seen the kind of madness here in Kubuklisat , and the Xemxah mountains have been almost placid; aside from a handful of Kobold thieves we've been left alone.

It's quiet. Maybe too quiet, but only time will tell. At least there's been no elephants or carp. *shudder*

Work has commenced on the second level, boring tunnels through the stone at set intervals designed to reveal any and all gems or metal ores. We've a goodly supply of platinum on hand, and the limonite is yielding an ample supply of iron to keep us rolling forward. The Diviners promised a magma vent, but that has yet to materialize much like the underground river, for that matter. Thank Armok for clean water lakes or we'd have nothing to bathe with. Since I pull duty as a miner as well as town manager and Broker, it's rather important that I be able to.... what was the phrase the point-eared swishies used... oh yes, to be able to 'clean up well' and be presentable. The humans also seem to have a loathing for the mines. I'll never understand them. I once commented, jokingly, that hard work never hurt anyone, and was promptly told that some place called Eejipped proved otherwise. Prissypants representatives can't even take a joke. Ah, well.

I -am- ready to throttle our oh-so-presumptuous Tax Collector and his fetish for copper items. WE DON'T HAVE ANY BLOODY COPPER, YOU TWIT! It means another of my metalsmiths will be catching hell for being unable to crap out copper bars to make things with. I've promised to keep him thoroughly sloshed during his prison sentence, so he won't mind overly much sleeping in the cell. He's almost looking forward to a vacation of sorts. In the meantime he's been banging out iron bins for use cleaning up the stock rooms. The caravan from the human settlement would be showing up in another month or two, and we've enough wealth to literally buy everything they bring. Might just do that, in the hopes that they bring something made out of copper our trusty metalsmith can melt it down and make another tankard or something.

I'm hoping the humans will have a cat with them this round. We've got vermin in the food stores and need a good mouser to deal with it all. Maybe two or three, though then we'd have a blitz of kittens to have to pen up. Which reminds me, I need to check in on the trainer and see how our Dobie-o-Matic is coming along. Think of it as a crossbow that fires trained attack dogs. He promised me good results; the lad is half gnome, you see, and he's the one what can pull that kind of miracle from the aether if anyone can. I'm interested in seeing the fruits of his labor.

There's also ongoing discussion about the final ordering of quarters for our stout folk. The current bore-line apartments are fine, certainly, but a full third of them are dirtsiders and a dwarf deserves better than that. At present the plan is to run stairwells down to the third level and begin carving out lodgings there. Eventually most of the second level will be open (and reinforced) caverns appropriate for statue gardens and meeting halls and the like. We'll also be able to put some specialty workshops in there, so that specific types of ornamenting can be done. That's still a while down the road, though. In the meantime I need to end this missive; reports are coming in that we've struck another platinum vein.

'Elaine' Itebsavot, Administrator of Kubuklisat


[PostScript: Collide works surprisingly well as a soundtrack of sorts for DF. Who'd have thought it?]