Editing User:Sev

Sev has been quite content lately.   She ate a good meal lately.  She spoke with her daughter recently.  She has been satisfied at work lately.  She was caught in the rain recently.<br />
She is a dubious worshipper of the Burning Man.<br />
She is a citizen of Seattle.  She is a member of the Feminist Third Wave.<br />
Sev likes Rock Salt, Steel, Garnet, Cow leather, the color red and Pitchblende for its deep purple color.  When possible she prefers to consume Organic coffee.<br />
She lives life at a leisurely pace.  She finds helping others very rewarding.  She appreciates art and natural beauty.  She often feels discouraged.  She tends to avoid crowds.  She is put off by authority and tradition.  She is occasionally given to procrastination.

== Fort Journal ==

'''Year Eight'''

I've set up a catapult in each of the large stone-filled rooms I hollowed out in expectation of the King's arrival.  Yet somehow, the siege operators wander off into the labrynth for stones instead of loading the catapult with the stones sitting right next to the device.    Usually for siltstone, the exact kind of stone that predominates nearby.  I've set up stone stockpiles next to the catapults and the whole fortress is now wandering the labrynths, collecting stone to carry up one level and halfway across the fort to the catapult stockpiles.

Rakust Utharsazir, who's been Mayor since the founding of the fortress, just made an artifact Mechanism out of Sylvite.  Whatever shall we do with it?

For the last two years, we've bought every single thing the dwarven caravan brought.  The larder is filled with things we've created like the 33-stack of Masterful horse-meat roast, worth nearly 15,000☼.  564 toys.  337 musical instruments. 

Perhaps we'll declare a festival year, and do nothing for awhile.  Then everyone can whine about there not being enough work, instead of just the soap makers and such.

The latest load of immigrants arrived just before the king's road was finished.  Now between them and all the stinking kids, we're well over the population cap.  I wonder if that'll keep the king from arriving?

I've streamlined the hauling orders; now that we've got so many redundant skills I can turn off more hauling on more dwarves.  

Probably unrelated:  my Places of Drinking have become very hard to get into and out of.  Time to widen the doorways! The meeting hall is also very crowded now that we've got over 200 dwarves and another 250 animals.   Perhaps I should turn the old meeting hall into another Place of Drinking and excavate a bigger meeting room.  Or re-designate it outside.

I've built a stone wall around the entrance to the fort, also enclosing the outdoor kennel, fisheries, and butcher.  There was a bit of fiddling to get the wall to go up the slope without a gap.  Also have caged the excess cows and horses.  We're now eating entirely fish and meat, and all farming goes straight to brewing, except when I forget and plant something that can't be brewed, which does keep the miller busy.

Still no tower-caps in the muddy-chamber-next-to-the-flooded-chamber.  I'm going to futz around some more.  Channel here, channel there...I'm looking for a real live river experience.  Only underground.  With floodgates everywhere, because all that water makes me nervous.  Have succeeded in getting a dark-blue channel (with running water in the level below) in the muddy chamber.  Though I suspect that'll eventually flood the muddy chamber, as its on the same level as the flooded one, and the water comes from the same place. The flooded chamber is connected to the river by a narrow passage on the same level.  There's a floodgate in that passage which has been kept open.  Also a floodgate on the other side of the flooded chamber, closed, keeping the water from coming into the rest of the fortress.  There's a single-tile downward slope in the flooded chamber, leading to a passage one z-level below which, after a currently-open floodgate, leads under the muddy chamber.  The top of that passage is open to the muddy chamber via a channel.  Which, if it's going to flood, is how that'll happen.  This could be a giant disaster, as the lever to close the lower-level floodgate is inside the muddy chamber.  The chamber, however, is 27x11 tiles, and the channel and lever are on opposite sides of the chamber, over twenty tiles apart.  If that room floods, it should be slowly enough to get to the lever, assuming I notice it.  Also, a door closes off the muddy chamber from the rest of the fort, so if nothing else,   I can forbid the door.

'''Year Seven'''

My burgeoning metropolis has been made a Duchy.  The newly promoted Duke and Duchess now have separate mausoleums and their quarters are richly engraved.  She's collecting amulets of marble, horse leather, and turtle shell.

A philosopher arrived, and the nobles screen informs me that the king is incoming, if I can only build a road and send some tribute.

My twenty-dwarf-strong military continues to train.  We've produced a couple of Elite Wrestlers and an Axe Lord.

I've begun culling the stocks of worn-out clothes.

The exploratory mining is turning my peasants into Miners.  I fear we're exhausting this area's riches; both trees and gems are turning up less-often than before.  The mining is mine shafts, broken up by rows and diagonals.

Bembul's widow, also a spectacular miner, has strewn slightly-worn clothes all over her room.  Her next-door neighbor, a stonecrafter, is collecting brass goblets.  He's had to compete with the Hammerer for them; she has collected eighteen so far.  She's got a lot more places to put them.  The tax collector, as advertised, is collecting Microcline items.  His rooms are a sea of teal and white.

My nobles don't yet seem too perturbed that there's no fortress guard and that the craftsdwarves who are not meeting all their mandates are going unpunished.

My evil plan to make the roads out of soap has been foiled by the fact that this map has no sand.  no sand means no clear glass vials, which means no alchemist's lab, which means no soap.  Strangely, I can't seem to turn this lye I made into potash; the response is "needs lye-bearing item" and apparently three buckets full of lye in the stockpile aren't lye-bearing.  Which is weird.  And, now I can't get the lye out of the buckets so they can't be used to bear water to my injured dwarves, so, off to make another bucket...

Have learned: vomit from cave-adapted dwarves does fall down through dug channels to spatter the staircase below, but does not drip through a grate installed in the channel.

'''Year Six'''

Baron both arrived, along with the hammerer and the tax collector.  They've joined the Dungeon Master who showed up at the end of last year.  The Baron was immediately promoted to Count.

All but one of the injured military dwarves have recovered.  The one remaining won't ever get out of bed; he's got a red spinal injury.

Still have a surplus of food and a shortage of barrels.  This problem is self-correcting, as we got twenty-something migrants this year and now have a population of 126.  Concerned about deforestation.

Got a visit from a titan.  Taking him down cost: three war dogs, two wrestlers, and two recruits.  Only real disappointment: one of the recruits was a super-mighty, ultra-tough legendary miner.  Oh, well.

Built four shops, right off the lavishly engraved meeting area.  Exploratory mining is continuing apace.  Somehow managed to stockpile 900 draughts of strawberry wine, yikes!  Am leaving fields mostly-fallow until we get supplies a little more under control.   Now have two cooks (one Legendary, one Skilled) working full-time trying to compress foodstocks down to fit into fewer barrels.  While they're at it, they're keeping the entire fort ecstatic with the legendary meals.  Wow. 

Also, 150 animals, mostly horses and dogs.  Am trying to slaughter them just a little more slowly than they grow.

I widened the little aqueduct that feeds the well and turned it into two large chambers.  The left-hand one has the well and the incoming water from the river.  I walled off the right-hand one and now it's full of nothing but mud.  I'm hoping for spontaneous generation of tower-caps.

'''Year Five'''

My mechanic got stuck in an unused mining shaft.  Nobody noticed until she began to rot.  Now that I've had her dug out, her friends have all looted her corpse but don't seem interested in interring her, despite the availability of a coffin, built and marked for use in burial, and twenty idle dwarves with the 'burial' labor enabled.  Poor Udil.

Four military dwarves were injured sparring.  One of them has a spinal injury.  The other three just have broken limbs.

I have a serious surplus of prepared meals.

Eventually I'm going to convince the remaining military to doff their leather armor and put on some of the steel that's sitting around waiting for them.  Better, they could even put on the two artifact-level pieces of armor in the storeroom...

I seem to have an awful lot of leather armor.  I have to doubt that the migrants brought that much with them.  I wonder if one of those bins full of leather that came from the trader was actually full of leather armor, not plain hides?

'''Year Four'''

Flagdaubs is in its fourth year.

We got a handful of immigrants this fall.  They had few useful skills and I drafted half of them.  We now have a population of 65 and the military is 10 strong.

Cave adaptation has set in, despite the grated channels in the ceiling of the meeting hall.  Perhaps they were too few.  Have moved the meeting hall two floors down to a stone-walled room for engraving, and turned the old silt-loam-walled meeting room into a food storage room.  While the transfer was ocurring, I set up a temporary meeting hall outside, which was shortly covered in vomit.  Installed a sculpture garden outside in hopes that periodic (or constant!) parties will help with the cave adaptation thing.  I'm having trouble making enough tasks to keep everyone busy anyway.  Next, will rebuild the two main staircases to have sunlight going through them.  Have noted that one of the main staircases goes through the kitchen.  This, I suppose, would be because the network of stairways that connected the farm, food storage, and kitchen turned out to be wildly popular.

Wow, we go through charcoal fast.  Have stopped using metal or stone for anything noncritical.  I've bought all the barrels, wood, and charcoal from the caravan every time it comes.  Still not enough.

Rakust, the mayor, has given up her "Village Manager" and "Village Broker" tasks to 'Bom-Lokum' the farmer.  We're confident he'll eventually pick up the skills to excel at this.  I've noted that the children are developing spectacular social skills, a bit of farming skill, and little else.
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 She lives life at a leisurely pace.  She finds helping others very rewarding.  She appreciates art and natural beauty.  She often feels discouraged.  She tends to avoid crowds.  She is put off by authority and tradition.  She is occasionally given to procrastination.
-== World Two ==
+== Fort Journal ==
-This world is much more interesting.
-However, even with regular goblin (and one elven) sieges and the challenge of managing water in the desert, I grow bored with a prosperous fort at the ten-year mark.  This time, I turned the booze spigot way, way down (not off, but a 4x3 farm plot doesn't make enough booze for a 220-dwarf fortress) and now I'm watching them struggle their way on down, very slowly.
-I had my first fell mood.  It created Bunsothshin, "The God-forsaken Brightness", a lizard leather amulet.
-All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with Milk opal, decorated with bat leather and horse bone and encircled with bands of two-legged rhino lizard leather.  This object menaces with spikes of rope reed.
-On the item is an image of Kogan Manorpaper the dwarf and a Rope reed bag in lizard leather.  Kogan Manorpaper is raising the rope reed bag.  The artwork relates to the masterful Rope reed bag created by the dwarf Kogan Manorpaper.
-On the item is an image of Coastbored the Native gold idol in Ash.  On the item is an image of two squares in Rubicelle.
-== I wander the infinite world! (world 1) ==
-'''Year Fourteen'''
-Okay, now I'm just bored.
-Abandon fortress, and attempt to return in Adventurer mode.
-Wander around a bit.  Find that Flagdaubs seems to be inaccessible.  Look for something else to do.
-The towns?  Everybody says no, no quests for me, everything is peaceful around here.
-The goblin towers?  Full of friendly goblins.  And in one case, full of stolen children, guarded by friendly goblins.  I take four of them with me, as well as the theif that stole them in the first place.
-No wonder Flagdaubs prospered peacefully for over a dozen years.
-I wander the countryside, strangling cougars and wolves with my bare hands, periodically knocking them across the map with my hammer when I get bored.
-Finally, the leader of a goblin tower has a quest for me.  A named giant!  I will die heroically, I think.
-The giant smites the children with his spider-silk handbag (?!) while I mash it in the spleen with my hammer.  After near-exhausting exertion, he finally bleeds to death.  I return to the goblin leader with news of my success.  I am somewhat stunned to be alive.
-'''Year Thirteen'''
-Alas, despite my efforts to convince the other dwarves to bring food and drink to the incarcerated Fikod Shakenceilings, his experience of prolonged hunger, thirst, and drowsiness has driven him stark raving mad.
-In other news, I'm attempting to purposely cave in the northwest corner of my map.  It's not like anything's going on there.  The channeling is complete; there's nothing holding it up other than supports (one on each level) which I'm currently having hooked up all to one lever.
-Having one legendary Mechanic and four novices makes this slow going.
-cave-in: Successful.  The one-support-on-each-level was unnecessary; the only level that required a support was the bottommost, which was fully mined out.  The one support was connected to a lever.    The other levels were held together by walls and floors. Then I went and deconstructed all the bridges, not because they would prevent the cave-in -- I think they don't -- but because taking the bridges down meant that I got the bright teal open-air coloring where my channelling was, to help me find the One Darn Tile that didn't get properly channelled out.  (turns out, it had been a floor constructed over a stairway.  The floor didn't get removed when I gave the command to channel the square out.)  The cave-in was dramatic!  The whole game froze for awhile, like it does when the season changes & the game auto-saves.  Three dwarves were crushed, and the whole area's filled with dust and jumbled stone and mist and here and there, a bit of the murky pool that had been on the surface.
-I'll wait for it to settle down and then I'll probably have to think about closing off the tunnels that lead there, or else it'll be an unguarded way in from the surface.
-but oh, my.  That was much fun.
-In other news: Idiot traders.   A tree grew up next to the three-tile-wide paved path that exits the fortress walls, and the wagons wouldn't leave until I cut down the tree.  Then they left -- in the other direction.  Down the other paved path, which had no obstacle.  And they went with one wheel off the path, even, *right* next to another tree...idiot traders.
-'''Year Twelve'''
-It's now summer, and I've spent half the year trying to make this waterfall work.  It appears that a single pump operator is incapable of running two pumps at once, even if they're properly connected together.  I can tell they're properly connected, because they report the same amount of power requirements, and both go up by the same amount when I hang an extra gear off the side of one.  Fortunately, in the non-pressurized version of this setup, I can just send a second pump operator in to work the lower pump.  If I want to try the pressurized version again, I'll have to remove the lower pump or enlarge the chamber it's in.
-Sure, I could set up a waterwheel, but I like finding productive work for idle dwarves!  I'm FDR for Flagdaubs.
-If I turn off the top pump but leave the bottom one running, the front end of the lower pump chamber fills and all the pump operator's pets flee.  Hee hee!  But since the water coming out of the pump isn't pressurized, it can't reach the top chamber without the top pump running.  And eventually, the pump operator quits because the depth of the pumped water makes it too dangerous.
-These dwarves are shockingly good-natured.  Pick a dwarf, any dwarf -- chances are, he or she is ecstatic.  Not just happy.  Finding one that was anything less than ecstatic was difficult.  The fortress has so much high-quality food and drink, two good dining rooms (one legendary, one fantastic) and comforting pets that even the chronic lack of jobs, regular noise-interruptions of sleep, scarcity of people to complain to, and random un-meetable noble demands can't seem to shake their fabulous moods.
-Maybe it's time to un-forbid the Hammerer's hammer so she goes back to maiming and killing, instead of just leaving people slightly bruised.
-...as if he'd been reading this journal, just after I wrote that, the Wrestler Iteb Bomrekimesh went berserk in the barracks.  With no warning.  He was immediately struck down by a fellow Wrestler and duly interred.
-In response to repeated complaints by half the fortress of insufficient work, I've begun a massive excavation project, complete with wide hallways, smoothed walls and floors, engravings, and the works.  It goes all the way down to the bottom and has a giant staircase wending up the center.
-Long-time mayor Rakust Firstbridges, who led the fortress every year since its inception, replaced only briefly during the festival by a popular dwarf who was taking a year off from his military service, has now been deposed by Tholtig Lancesplitter, a dwarf with a liking for clear glass.  There is no sand anywhere in Flagdaubs, a clay-filled notch at the base of a mountain.  There will be trouble eventually, Rakust warns, as Tholtig makes her demands for glass items.  The Hammerer taps her idle hammer against her palm while she drinks her strawberry wine.
-Nobody's idle anymore.
-...
-I've got it!  I know what the massive, exquisitely smoothed, twelve-levels-deep excavation is for.  It's a *museum*.  Finally, a place to put all the *<☼pig tail bag☼>*s and the like.  Dwarves are milling around as I speak, admiring the exhibits and miraculously managing to avoid getting squoooshed by the falling rock as I channel out the ceiling to make this particular exhibit hall double-high.
-With something of a chill (or is that a thrill?), it occurs to me, I may look back upon this moment as the beginning of the end for Flagdaubs.  I can imagine the uprising, some day, of dwarves that are *thoroughly* tired of tromping up and down six flights of stairs between their workshops and the museum-slash-meeting-hall..
-I've read that when one does a large-scale excavation involving channeling, one should do it from the top down.  Is that because otherwise, the dwarves fall into the channels they dig?
-Onul Fikodemath, Dyer cancels Dig Channel: Resting injury.
-[...]
-Zaneg Likotes, Miner has died after colliding with an obstacle.
-Iteb Egastdakost, Planter cancels Dig: Too injured.
-Sakzul Mosusakrul, Miner has died after colliding with an obstacle.
-Nil Udistathel, Miner has bled to death.
-Goden Bomrekmorul, Siege Operator has suffocated.
-Lokum Okoshsigun has been ecstatic lately.  She has witnessed death...
-hmm.  Top down it is, then.
-'''Year Eleven'''
-We survived the festival year!  I think the dwarves are relieved to get back to their regular routine.  We had to bring the farms and stills back online halfway through the festival year, but other than that, we wandered about aimlessly all year long.
-Now, however, we're back in business.  The butchery is running full-time slaughtering down the teeming herds.  The Fortress Guard has been started, led by Kel 'Kelfish' Clashedrings, a crippled macedwarf who'd thought he was going to make a career in fishing before he was drafted and then maimed sparring.  We've dug out a little prison, which Tekkud Openedwhips, Hammerer, used to chain up the mother of a newborn and then beat her to death (the mother, not the newborn). "Edem Nakasdodok, Miller cancels seek infant: Infant inaccessible.  Edem Nakasdodok, Miller has bled to death."  We've enlarged the communal tomb.
-Slight adjustment to our diet:  Eating meat.  All the time.  Cat meat, cow meat, donkey meat, horse meat.  Masterfully prepared cat tallow roasts.  Exceptional prepared donkey meat biscuits. And so on.  The plants are all going to booze, dye, and plants.  The clothier's has been poking along over the years, and not keeping up with demand.
-Now things will change.  The caravan, unguided by any requests since there is no more liason now that the queen's moved in, brought bins and bins and bins of cloth.  For the first time in five years we weren't able to purchase every single thing the caravan bought.  But we do now have three hundred bolts of silk, and our pig tail industry is poised for midsummer, when the pig tails start harvesting.  My dwarves are wearing tatters.  Soon, they'll be wearing finery.  Ushat Foldclasped, Legendary Clothier, and his three apprentices will see to it.
-Decided to build a waterfall in the prison.  Turned out that the pump was unnecessary, as the prison is three floors below the river, and therefore the water is pressurized.  The pump room that was supposed to move the water up above the prison began to flood even with no pump operation.  Good thing I'd put floodgates between the river and the rest of the fortress.
-I was walling in the pump chamber, figuring I'd just open the floodgate when I needed pressure to run the waterfall and close it the rest of the time.  The last section of the wall had to wait for Kadol Tametrumpet to get out of the way; she was suddenly fishing in the water that's flooding the pump room.
-Some day I'm going to install a second pump to de-pressurize that water, and I'll need a pump up above the prison for the waterfall.  So I left the first pump up there.  This required fiddling around with the pump room walls, because otherwise, the pump blocked the water from moving, even as the water flooded the spot the pump operator would sit.
-The space beneath the waterfall wasn't properly connected up with the rest of the system; this is probably a good thing, as it would then have come bubbling up from there, too.  But I filled the cistern underneath, and now there are several muddy floor-engravings in the prison.  One of them is masterful, but the artist, Sodel Castelcrowns, doesn't seem to have noticed.  It's hard to tell if the overflow happened when the cistern filled or simply because pressurized water was spewing down from the sky.
-It's really tempting to enlarge the cistern and then "drain" it back into the pressurized river and see what happens.  We just hit winter and I do seasonal backups ... I could always savescum if I had to ...
-But first, the easy solution.  Like the system that feeds my first well, the prison water supply is a channel with several floodgates and a cistern.  I can use the floodgates to fill the cistern to about half-full, and then close the gate.  Now there's plenty of water in the cistern for the new prison well and to pump into the waterfall, too.  It's not as dramatically exciting as a pressure-driven waterfall, but it's not going to flood my fortress.  And, everything's still in place so if I want to play with the pressurized waterfall, I can just cancel the pump operator job and open the floodgates and forbid the door to the pump room, and see what happens.
-In other news, the fort has its first Child with a strange mood.  Possessed, she is!  I'm thankful that the caravan's brought turtles and cave lobsters these last two visits.
-Er.  And, no way to really tell if that pressurized waterfall thingy would have worked, since the water came up through the well and flooded the prison that way instead.  Good thing there were no prisoners.  Engravers still not noticing that their engravings are now muddy.   Perhaps I'll put someone back on the pump, and once the floor's not under 1/7 worth of water anymore, I'll send someone down to wall off half the cistern, so we can pressurize the half that feeds the waterfall without also pressurizing the well.
-'''Year Ten'''
-Days before the end of the previous year, we deactivated the military.  As the undrafted dwarves threw off their armor where they stood, a kobold was glimpsed in the courtyard.  The newly-civilian dwarves stood by and watched as the kobold was torn limb from limb by the settlement's war dogs.  The corpse of Srakadastreerbis lies where it fell.
-The festival has begun.  All last year, we ran three kitchens, four stills, six farm plots, and one butchery full-time, putting up masterfully-produced food and drink.  Now all the workshops lie idle and the storerooms burst at their seams.  For the year, food, drink, rent, and everything else is free. There are two lavish sculpture gardens and there's already a party begun. Two sumptuous dining rooms, much to the chagrin of the nobles. While a few dwarves are still celebrating peactime by gleefully putting away discarded armor, most are whiling away their time partying, shopping, fishing, eating, drinking, tending wounded, or sleeping. Bom-Lokum Whippedstills, the appointed administrator and Rakust Firstbridges, the elected mayor, are still holding meetings and casting nervous eyes over the booze stocks.  Are 900 drinks of longland beer going to be enough?  And 400 drinks of strawberry wine?  Only 300 dwarven ale and worse, no rum. Rith Razortangles, one of the cooks, has a taste for dwarven syrup, and she talked head cook Athel Headmerchant into making making 200 dwarven syrup roasts.
-We've made it into summer.  We're down to 130 ale, 580 longland beer, just over 200 strawberry wine.  This suggests that we'll run out of booze just as summer ends.
-I suppose we should plant a plot of something.  Even if it's just a little.
-'''Year Nine'''
-Another supposedly "unbelievably agile" and "extremely tough" dwarf with a spinal injury from sparring.  That's two, now.  Plus one death from suffocation.  Apparently manufacturing large quantities of steel chain and plate armor and shields, instructing the military dwarves to wear them, and training them all up to 'wrestler' is insufficient to keep my military, who take down kobolds without even working up a sweat, from permanently maiming each other in training.  This is really dumb.  The dead dwarf died of a crushed throat from wrestling.  Perhaps I shall declare my military trained-enough and keep everybody who's more skilled than 'recruit' permanently on-duty so they don't spar anymore.
-Upped the population cap to 250 so the Queen finally arrived.  The chambers dug out for her, her consort, and her advisor were nearly to their liking, once furnished, with only two seasons more worth of steady engraving by three legendary engravers!
-In preparation for a festival year of bored workers -- tenth anniversary of the founding of Flagdaubs and the arrival of the king both!  -- am running four stills full-time.  Drink stockpiles are up over 1000 for the first time in years, but I'm still not sure we'll manage.  It may have to be a brewfest year -- no work done but for growing brewables, gathering plants, and brewing!  And drinking, of course.
-I just don't get stockpiles.  The stockpile right next to the Mill has eight barrels of Blade Weed.  Yet the dwarves keep running off to the stockpile next to the Still to fetch Longland Grass, Cave Wheat, and the like.  I have been keeping watch on the incoming supplies and i (f)orbid them if they're brewables.  Then the dwarves go get other things.  From other places.  Instead of the stockpile right next to the mill.  wtf?  Do they go for non-barrelled items first?  If so, how do I get the blade weed back out of the barrels?  I've got way too much, and I don't want to grow any more, and I don't want to mill my brewables.
-All Hail Unib Picklighting, member of the Royal Guard, who struck down a fellow guardsdwarf during sparring and was thereby promoted to Champion!  And then promptly raced down the stairs to contemplate the engravings in the common meeting room.  If these dwarves in the royal guard ever went outside, we'd never have anything to fear from marauding kobolds.  Not that kobolds maraud, anyway.
-Oh, heck.  My Legendary Brewer has entered a Fey mood and requires shells, and we haven't seen a turtle 'round these parts for a year and a half.  And since the Queen lives here now, there was no liason this year for me to request imported turtles.  On the upside, I've kept this brewer so busy that she's only got two friends, and one of them's the Tax Collector.  So when she goes, she will be indirectly mourned due to the lower quality of booze, not directly mourned due to her death.  Am walling in the workshop she's acquired, just in case.  There used to be lots of turtles around here.  Other vermin have been restocking; I wonder why the turtles didn't come this year?
-Suddenly, eighteen dwarves dropped everything they were doing and dashed out to fish.  They reported -- but did not stop fishing -- There is nothing to catch in the northeastern swamps.  Or in the northern swamps.  Or in the river.  But they fish on.  Unfortunately, even if they finally find a turtle, it's too late for Mistem Squeezeflag, Legendary Brewer, who has sunk into melancholy due to inability to even begin the craft she was possessed to dream up.  She wanders the halls of Flagdaubs, followed by her herd of pet cows.  Extremely strong, unbelievably agile, very tough, and utterly despairing.  The haunting moos of her favorite pets cannot comfort her now.
-Around her, the rest of the fortress is in frenzied preparation for their year-long festival.  It's early winter, and the food and drink stores are vast.  We will drink the fruit of the brewer's labor -- Mistem's, and her less-skilled coworkers -- all next year.  The nobles are all ecstatic, and so are most of the dwarves. It's good to be a dwarf in Flagdaubs right now.  Unless you're Mistem Squeezeflag, the melancholic brewer.
-I'm increasingly pessimistic about the idea of a festival -- it's cute idea from a storytelling perspective, but in game terms, it'll just make the dwarves complain of no work.  I suppose I could turn the economy off for the year.
 '''Year Eight'''
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 Still no tower-caps in the muddy-chamber-next-to-the-flooded-chamber.  I'm going to futz around some more.  Channel here, channel there...I'm looking for a real live river experience.  Only underground.  With floodgates everywhere, because all that water makes me nervous.  Have succeeded in getting a dark-blue channel (with running water in the level below) in the muddy chamber.  Though I suspect that'll eventually flood the muddy chamber, as its on the same level as the flooded one, and the water comes from the same place. The flooded chamber is connected to the river by a narrow passage on the same level.  There's a floodgate in that passage which has been kept open.  Also a floodgate on the other side of the flooded chamber, closed, keeping the water from coming into the rest of the fortress.  There's a single-tile downward slope in the flooded chamber, leading to a passage one z-level below which, after a currently-open floodgate, leads under the muddy chamber.  The top of that passage is open to the muddy chamber via a channel.  Which, if it's going to flood, is how that'll happen.  This could be a giant disaster, as the lever to close the lower-level floodgate is inside the muddy chamber.  The chamber, however, is 27x11 tiles, and the channel and lever are on opposite sides of the chamber, over twenty tiles apart.  If that room floods, it should be slowly enough to get to the lever, assuming I notice it.  Also, a door closes off the muddy chamber from the rest of the fort, so if nothing else,   I can forbid the door.
-I haven't had puppies born in awhile.  Really quite awhile.  Have fifty war dogs, all assigned to various people in the military. Mostly in pairs, though I did not keep close watch of genders when I assigned them.  Fifty war dogs is nice.  They take down kobold thieves nearly faster than I notice them.  On the downside, I'm not clear why they're not breeding.
-A miner with a strong appreciation for nature and beauty who doesn't like crowds spends his breaks pacing atop the newly-constructed wall.
-Also, haven't been catching turtles lately.  (oh, heck, it's *winter*.  Hope spring comes & some turtles get caught before this moody dwarf goes berserk for lack of shells...good thing she's got only acquaintances, no friends, and has chosen a workshop fully enclosed with walls and doors...)
 '''Year Seven'''