Previously on Rockssears Wake: Dwarf Fortress - Rockssears - Year 100

State of Economy

The spring of 101 began rather badly for The Geared Urn. Their low production costed them a lack of migrants, and they had nothing to sell to the elf merchants of The Laconic White-Shell that visited.

Sarvesh 'Slack' Lancecrested, a bowyer dwarf who settled in Rockssears in 100, constructs The Glowing Crowd, a masterfully crafted wooden bracelet and offered it to The Geared Urn:

For this, he gets promoted to manager, despite his bad analytical abilities and overall stupidness, to make the production of the dwarves more efficient.

Meanwhile, a tavern is being constructed near the cliff wall:

With the start of summer, a human trade caravan from The Union of Warding arrives, and the dwarves' crafts production line is still in shambles. They know they'd have to fix it by the time the dwarven caravans arrived, as DameDaNe had requested caged animals to be brought in and sold from the mountainhomes. Olvex's intimidation doesn't help much with negotiations with the humans, he manages to collect a few dwarven-made bracelets and sell them for some leather and a single goose.

The miners begin digging and forming more future bedrooms with hopes of finding enough ore for the rest of the dwarves to start smelting into iron.

Summer passes by with no migrants as well, although the population rose to 21 due to the newborn child of Twister and Moldster:

The Church Wins

At this point DameDaNe realizes the core problem with the dwarves' production line, they're too religious and have been praying and worshipping non-stop rather than doing their jobs. This may be due to the fact the fortress' temples got built rather late in the first year and very religious dwarves need to "Catch up" with prayers they haven't been able to do.

Even though it might be too late, the group start construction of a general temple for no specific deity where all dwarves except the very pretentious religious ones would be able to pray:

Just as this was getting constructed and autumn was getting started, a dwarvan caravan from the mountainhomes arrives, and after weeks of praying, the very religious Olvex finally attends the trade depot and negotiates a deal for the previously requested ewes and rams:

This deal seems to have spread news about Rockssears, as in mid-autumn a migrant wave of 13 arrived. Unfortunately it was made entirely out of uninteresting and not very skilled farmers and their children. A notable figure is Kib 'Rogan' Whipgravel, an extremely racist planter.

And what do you know... I guess this is what happens when you have 15 farmers:

They'll request a guild hall soon so it would be good to start constructing that. In the meantime, the tavern "The Deep Fruit of Ages" is now open to visitors:

By early winter most dwarves catch up on their prayers, except Olvex is still very religious. The damage had already been done however, and Rockssears' living conditions are very poor as a result of excessive praying. Nothing a little waterfall mist can't fix

The Military Plan

The Guild of Snarles has started requesting a guild hall, so construction of that begins on the 4th floor's west wing:

, along with a future barracks in front of it for a potential military.

The plan is to draft Olvex as he isn't particularly useful in day-to-day tasks as he keeps praying to Edem the Most Climax, but he has useful previous combat experience. For a military, the dwarves will require weapons and armor, which require strong metals. But first and foremost, they will need fuel to smelt the ores containing these metals. It seems they haven't been very lucky with fossil fuels and have little to none, and burning trees can only get them so far. The miners take the risk and plunge right into the magma depths of the world, where the lava pools could be used for smelting and crafting.

After excessive digging and discovering multiple caverns, the miners finally find a magma lake in a cavern at the bottom of the world:

Now it's a matter of building a safe stairwell down to the magma pool where metalsmiths and furnace operators will be able to utilize the heat of the magma. Unfortunately with no military organized, various creatures living in the caves are always on the lookout for an attack, so any stairwell tunnel to the magma will have to be carefully sealed off with walls before anything gets in to the fort.

Visitors

A single giant rat escapes from the caves to Rockssears, but she doesn't seem hostile and is mostly just frightened by the dwarves.

As the dwarves continue to carve out a staircase downwards into the magma pool, more pressing matters are at hand on the surface, as the dark ghoul human merchant Legu 'Le Ghost' Seardips visits Rockssears.

With a personality of a Twitter user it is understandable why he dreams of chaos and wars, but his goal in Rockssears remains unknown as the year nears its end.

to be continued...?

Next episode: Dwarf Fortress - Rockssears - Year 102