We have struck the earth, and it is good.

Foldedlens has started well. The merchants that came and left this past cold season brought plenty of foods and drinks to add to what we currently produce so that barring severe catastrophe, we shall never lack in food or drink again - even if we have to start eating puppy and plump helmet biscuits.

The outdoor wall to protect the water source and pastures & outdoor refuse area is nearly complete except a small break intentionally left open so the hunters and fishers can pass through.

The retractable bridge over the wall is complete. It will make a fine emergency exit should we ever need to employ some sort of massively destructive subterranean trap against enemies. However the microcline lever in the manager's office has not yet been connected to it, so it cannot yet be retracted.

Eventually the entire outdoor enclosure should be sealed tightly shut so that the only entrance is the one we have planned down by the river. If we need to employ the emergency exit, we'll have to tear down walls to do so.

I have learned a little bit of every craft, or at least enough about them to design decent workshops. Any dwarf coming to this place with a useful skill should find appropriate facilities to use their skills. We have not yet excavated down to the clay, but we can see it down by the river, so getting access to it will be simple, then we'll just have to put up some signs and designate an area for the haulers when they are asked to collect it.

The new Depot is nearly finished, right next to the jeweler's shop and the shops for the craftdwarves to use making stonecrafts. Someone had the clever idea of segragating the finished goods in seven piles, with the crafts going from most to least valuable as they get farther away from the Depot, and then the final finished goods pile contains all the useful stuff.

The forges are nearly complete - out of the last 2, one is planned, the other still waiting on an anvil.

Surveys have indicated that there will be coal and lignite and alunite as we dig down along the planned route to the river and excavate the trapsystem. Steel production is nearly ready to begin.

We will need a very large number of magma safe floodgates and mechanisms, and if some non-magma safe floodgates and mechanisms are made as well, that will be fine, as the trap system's drainage for water should never be touched by magma, but it would be best if the next manager try to make everything down below magma safe if possible. Armok knows that nothing ever works exactly as planned when a raging horde of trolls and goblins shows up, and judging by what lives nearby, we'll see them soon enough, that's for certain.

The design of the trap below is actually threefold.

The entrance by the river should be liberally seeded with cage traps and stonefall traps. This entry corridor should be floodable at will with water only. If the enemy dithers around and can't breathe water, we'll loot their corpses soon enough.

The next short stretch should have a couple hatches triggered by enemies, and some weapon traps. We'll have steel soon enough, and three weapon traps with 5 menacing steel spikes and 5 steel spiked balls per trap will demolish most common foes. (goblin grinder)

If the enemy can breathe water, destroy floodgates, and fly over the hatches, the last line of defense is the obsidian mixer. The current plans allow for easy offside-draining after it's used, and the large number of cross channels should ensure a good mix of lava and water so we don't get nasty pockets of magma that wa heva to manually mine out later - if we ever need the trap.

I found that the plans for the lava and water obsidian mixer were eaten by one of the alpacas. Sorry, what I've written above will have to do, or you can do something else. I'm too drunk on this fine dwarven wine to care about much other than these books. Don't take it out on the alpacas. They are good for shearing, milk, and after we have about 10 females and a couple males, they will be great for meat and bones too.

There are several specialized stone stockpiles in the magma workshop area. Be careful if you alter them. They are designed to segregate coal making, flux, clay, metal, and medical-cast-making stones so you can quickly see what we lack. A larger metal-only storage area will probably be a very good idea in the near future.

Right now the Billon Bin manufacturing process has just begun. We should see a general improvement in the fort's organization as more and more bins are completed and the stonecrafter starts to burn through the piles of stone near the new Depot. We have enough billon to make quite a few bins, and pretty much anywhere the miners go from where we are, they will expose more ore we can use for billon.

It's going to fall on your head to handle the next year, I'm afraid. I'm burnt out and need a rest.

Domas Granitepick.
Leader / Manager / broker / bookkeeper.