Part 4: Vox Nihili: Update 2

From the Journal of Vox Nihili, Settlement "Leader" Pro tem, Entry #6

I called for a meeting with Bobthethurd and told him it was time for us to leave, but he would have none of it:



I left angrier than I've ever been. I am very unhappy- I have no hope of surviving this endeavor. Bobthethurd seemed equally upset, but was far too stubborn to give up yet.



With no hope of leaving, I ordered a solid door be constructed to keep out the Rift creatures. The door has been locked and forbidden:




From the Journal of Vox Nihili, Settlement "Leader" Pro tem, Entry #7

An elven caravan somehow found its way to this place:



We traded some mechanisms for wooden furnishings, fisher berry wine, and some bloated tubers. The idiot elves were thrilled with the trading, utterly fascinated by the simple mechanisms we gave them. I can't wait for them to freeze to death or leave. In addition, I disabled the front door-mechanism-lever link and had it replaced with two solid doors that didn't require someone pulling a lever in the back of the settlement to close out the troglodytes. Perhaps we will live to see a second summer in this place.


From the Journal of Vox Nihili, Settlement "Leader" Pro tem, Entry #8

Migrants! Twenty fools straight out of the mountainhome made their way here. Perhaps they were led to believe that "Syrupleaf" would be a dwarven utopia, a place of excess and celebration. If only. This place is likely to be our tomb, now more than ever. How can we hope to feed so many with so little? I will have to set up a butcher's shop to make use of our draft animals. A kitchen so we can cook our useless seeds. A still to brew what few plants we have (7 plump helmets and 5 bloated tubers, ha!) before some starving idiot eats them.

Unfortunately, the migrants did not realize the danger that exists in this place and headed straight for the entrance, right past the gaping open half of the Rift:



Fortunately, these dwarves did not prove to be the coddled pleasure-hunters I had expected:



They even slay another batman we named earlier:



They killed several batmen and drove off a giant cave swallow, only to have more batmen follow them directly into the fort! One brave peasant fights a batman inside while a second batman attacks the elven traders:



However, one migrant flees over the glacier and is brought low, another corpse we may never recover:



There are 23 of us now. However, we have only one skilled miner, have lost one pick, and another is still guarded by a giant cave swallow. Fortunately, we brought a fourth just in case, and I hope to train additional miners, masons, and crafters. When the next caravans arrive, we will have more than a few mechanisms to trade! That is, assuming we don't all starve to death first.