Year 1052, Spring: Operation Survival
With great trepidation, we pull the lever on the farming plot. If it works, we can get a headstart on the planting, and given our dire need of food, this could be critical. We crank away…
…and water fills the farming room! It worked! We pull the lever again, the water drains out, and we are left with a perfect muddy surface to work with for farming. With that, we assign nearly everyone to start preparing the ground and planting seeds.
Unfortunately, our dwarfs must have been stressed by the whole lever situation, because they all promptly go off to sleep for a few days. Half a month goes by before they start moving their butts down to the farming field and start planting. Another unfortunate situation here is that none of our dwarfs has farming expertise. The work goes slowly, and the dwarfs are sloppy planters. It takes a half the spring before even half the plots are planted with helmet. Our first plot however, produces a plant, but it’s only one provision. Argh. Two months in to the spring, and we are down to 8 meat provisions and 1 helmet provision. Grow! Grow! Grow!
And then, the totally unexpected happens…
11 more dwarfts show up to join our fortress. Oh, shit. Eight females, three males, and a dog make their way towards us in the latter part of spring. With only nine provisions left, I hope they don’t get hungry for a while.
Before they even arrive at the fortress, five more immigrants make their way out of the western forest towards us. Oh no. I have a bad feeling about this. Two males and three more females. This makes 16 immigrants and 16 more mouths to feed. We will need to get some food fast.
With the frenzied pace of planting going on in the farming room, there isn’t much time for introductions, but here’s a quick look at our new members and their professions:
Code:
Lynda Carter, Miner
AStott, Miner
Fonzie, Miner
Anna Kournikova, Carpenter
Mrsimperless, Carpenter
Neon Chaos, Carpenter
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mason
Gi, Trapper
Pinky Tuscadero, Trapper
Jessica Alba, Craftsdwarf
Nancy Pelosi, Fisherdwarf
Kaylee, Mechanic
Elisha Cuthbert, Peasant
Kate Beckinsale, Peasant
Selma Hayek, Peasant
Uma Thurman, Peasant
Unfortunately, we do not get any experienced farmers in the bunch, but two experienced trappers and another fisherdwarf are big plusses on the food end of things. Sarah Michelle Gellar is also interesting as she is a novice engraver. With all these bodies around, we might be able to put her to work beautifying the fortress. Jessica Alba is also talented: a novice glassmaker, stone crafter, and leatherworker. Four of our newcomers, Elisha Cuthbert, Kate Beckinsale, Selma Hayek, and Uma Thurman, come to us with no skills whatsoever.
The addition of so many new dwarfs sure changes the situation quickly. In addition to feeding 24 mouths instead of simply eight, we’ll need to make bedding, tables, chairs, and rooms for all our new inhabitants. We’ll also need a lot more space for new workshops, bedrooms, and farms. We should probably get some weapons and armor in production as soon as possible, too. So many things to do. We establish a plan, called Operation Survival, that is designed to concentrate on both getting enough food for our new numbers and rapidly expanding our fortress living quarters. We take quick stock of the situation and designate work as follows:
Sachmo, ntndeacon: Mining the new areas needed to accommodate our new community
Natalie Portman: Stone Crafting for the fall trading caravan
Coffee Warlord: Building the new doors, tables, and thrones
Xena: Figuring out how to make weapons.
Scarlet Johansson, mrsimperless: Cutting wood for the new beds and additional storage
Qwikshot, Neon Chaos: Building the beds, storage bins, and other wooden products we’ll need.
Lynda Carter, AStott: Farming in the short term. Long term either animal training or military service.
Fonzie: Hunting for food for the short term
Sarah Michelle Gellar: Engraving the walls of the dining hall. The help to morale might make a difference?
Gi, Pinky: Trapping for food.
Jessica Alba: Leatherworking
Anxiety: Fishing
Nancy Pelosi: Cleaning the fish Anxiety catches
Kaylee: Mechanic
Elisha Cuthbert, Kate Beckinsale: Farming/Cooking/Brewing
Selma Hayek, Uma Thurman: Farming, for ever
Anna Kournikova: hauling stuff around for now
And with that, the fortress hums with activity. We keep a close eye on our food situation as the spring moves forward. Providing immediate hope are the actions of Gi, Pinky, and Fonzie, who hunt a bonobo pack and a warthog pack and make several quick kills. Shortly they are each hauling back carcasses for butchering. We have Qwikshot set up a butchery and pull Fonzie off of hunting duty to make him our full-time butcher. Likewise, Anxiety starts pulling fish out of the river, and Nancy Pelosi starts processing them into food. And just in case you didn't know what a bonobo was:
Makes a great soup
A few days later, with our new farmers swarming over the helmet plots, we begin a solid harvest of helmet. Things go well enough here that we can shift AStott over to full-time brewing, as we have no alcoholic beverages at the moment.
By late spring, it looks as if we may have pulled through on our food shortage: as our dwarfs start to consume meals, we have 13 provisions of meat, 5 provisions of fish, and 19 provisions of helmet. Excellent work, dwarfs! We aren’t safe yet, but we’re getting there.
Elsewhere, things move on fairly well. Sachmo and ntndeacon dig out another farming plot and begin excavating more future bedrooms to the north. CoffeeWarlord and Qwikshot start pumping out doors and beds and tables for the new members. Scarlet and mrsimperless hack down tree after tree. Natalie keeps cranking out goods to sell.
In the blacksmithing, Xena makes stuttering progress. Apparently we have the materials to smelt silver, which in turn can give us silver weapons. However, Xena makes a number of mistakes in learning her skill, and by the end of summer we have little more than some silver bars to show for her efforts.
Interestingly, Sarah Gellar, who was detailing a storage room to build up her skills before starting in on the main hall, goes into a strange mood one day. She stops detailing the storage room, runs into Natalie’s stone crafting shop, kicks her off the workshop, and starts making something strange. A few days later it is done. She has made something called Atolgast Alud Eges, which is some kind of Moonstone earring. Outside of the fact that it probably goes on someone’s ears, we have no idea what to do with this. Sarah will definitely be one to keep an eye on, however.
Things run smoothly for next few weeks, with the exception that we don’t get any beds made. Our carpenters were running a backlog of orders, and just got around to it as the spring comes to a close. Our newly arrived immigrants, with the exception of Fonzie, Sarah Gellar, and Jessica Alba, have to spend their nights on the floor in the barracks.
Speaking of sleeping, that barracks is pretty crowded, and well, some suspicious sleeping arrangements are noticeable. Mrsimperless is sleeping beside Selma Hayek. Uma Thurman is apparently spending nights on top of Elisha Cuthbert. The big winner, however, may be AStott, who sleeps beside both Lynda Carter and Jessica Alba. These arrangements, outside the the Uma/Elisha one, may just be from a lack of space. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the individual bedrooms get finished.
Late in the spring, there is some strangeness however. A strange purple miasma cloud invades our main hall and our stone crafting/ore storage area. In both cases, the miasma doesn’t seem to do any damage, and evaporates after a few days. Bizarre. It does seem to make our dwarfs unhappy, however.
And with that, summer arrives. Operation Survival ends with 24 meat provisions, 2 fish provisions, 35 helmet provisions, and 11 wine provisions safely tucked in our food warehouse. We may have turned the corner here. Good job, dwarfs!