Part 41: by Cross Quantum

16th Limestone
Diary, I am becoming dismayed. Work on the projects was already falling behind schedule, when this happened again:

A group of them caught one of our dwarves outside. It seemed to me that they were walking up to discuss options for peaceful coexistence, but then they just stabbed him in the face instead.

I was so shocked. I turned to say something to the captain, but he just shot me a dirty look and walked out the door.

The siege delayed project construction even further.

I feel so depressed now. I've been passing the time by hauling rocks in remote parts of the fortress. I know there are more important stone hauling jobs to do, but sometimes a dwarf needs some time to think alone, you know?

4 Moonstone
The rest of the fall passed without incident. The farmers brought in the last of the pig tail harvest this year. (That was my idea, you can eat, drink or wear organically grown pig tails!)

9 Moonstone
There was a frogman ambush earlier today. The soldiers and traps took care of them pretty quickly. I'm starting to think we may have to invest in better sanitation though:

17 Moonstone
Diary, I'm starting to hate it here. It seems that every other day there's some new invading force of some kind or another. There's blood all over the main hallway now (where does it all COME from?!), butterflies that stink with the stench of a thousand corpes, and the screams of possessed dwarves echo through the halls. I hope my first paycheck gets here soon.

24 Moonstone
I'm feeling myself grow callous here. I didn't even look up when my assistant told me that a kobold raiding force showed up on the outskirts of our settlement:

Sadly, I was even less surprised when they immediately left:

Come on guys, we have a nice settlement, why didn't you stick around? Was it the ashen wasteland? The bloodstained gates? Was it the screams of madmen or the stench of death? We've got awful nice engravings of some fucking cheese here, come the fuck on in!

28th Obsidian
Well diary, I've had enough of it here. I feel like a failure. The project sits almost completed, but not quite; it feels like when I wouldn't quite have my papers done for one of my old professors, only the outright-fail-asshole kind of professor, not the oh-well-you-lose-a-letter-grade sort. This place is dirty and foul, not at all like the loving utopia I hoped to craft.

I shall leave instructions to whomever comes after on the functioning of the project. Here is a crude sketch of it:

I think I shall see if those frogman corpses are still around here. I've heard that licking their skin can be very enlightening; I hope it's strong enough to make me forget all that's happened here.

End of Diary