Traders and Tribulations

Excerpts from the book of Erith, 22;13

[I did my best to have the dwarves do as little as possible outdoors during the three months of winter, to reflect them slowing down their metabolisms in the face of uncertain food supplies]

1st Granite, Early spring

Spring! And back to righteous labor.  The winter was unexpectedly mild, it was never cold enough, long enough, for ice to even form on our small pond. Some wild foodstuffs remained available all winter long, a fact we took full advantage of. As it turned out we were never in any real danger of running out of our stocks of food and drink. With the warm weather came a great explosion of game, and our small pond was teeming with turtles, we caught many of them and the heathens preserved them in their kitchens, the heaps of shells will prove useful for decorating crafts.  A Giant cougar has been seen time and again slowly stalking around the perimeter of our little kingdom, and we are all wary of straying  too far from the entrance of our warren.

Shell heap, with Cougar, Right

2nd Granite, early spring

Work began today, on the wall I drafted last fall.  It is going well, with me supervising, the hauling and mortaring of stone by the unbelievers, and should be completed within the month.

5th slate, early spring

A caravan!

A tall, muscular and large-eared Dwarf who introduced himself as Urist Vucalrillal, came to our door today. Alas, our efforts have been devoted elsewhere and we have had little time to craft trinkets for trade! There are many things we are sorely in need of, not the least of which are steel weapons and armor, all we have is a silver war axe that Cerol Umstizablel, one of the heathens, brought with him, and a collection of wooden training spears and bucklers.  After all was said and done we only managed to scrape together a few gems and crafts, which upon presentation caused the string of flatteries [a common custom among dwarves, before trading]  about our “legendary exploits” to slip for a moment. He appraised our items at a mere 450 gold pieces, hardly enough for metal tools, but which afforded us an opportunity to add some variety to our monotonous diets, we bought many plump helmets, and exotic meats and cheeses, and oh what a feast we had! We even managed to put aside our arguments with the unbelievers for a time, as we gorged ourselves on the food, which after a winter of prickleberry wine and fish, tasted divine.  He had no seeds though, and we showered him with requests to bring us cave-stock next season. We doubtless overplayed our hand, and the seeds will cost us dearly, no doubt.

3rd slate, Spring

The wall was completed today, encompassing the area around our fields, and the space adjoining our two burrows, Huge stone gates were constructed, and linked with various stone mechanisms to levers in our guard rooms, that might at the flick of the wrist drop the giant gates into place. We are all feeling much safer, even though the Cougar is still prowling around.

The Dwarves erect a low wall.

15th Felsite, late spring

After losing our beloved cat today to the Cougar, Urdim instructed Adil, to organize the heathens into a makeshift militia. I was Against the idea, training these others to fight sets a dangerous precedent, but Adils calm Logic won me over in the end, “There are many nastier things than cougars out there,” he said.  He appointed the dwarf Cerol, owner of the only metal weapon we own, leader of the group, and built them a small guardhouse near our quarters, to be used in times of danger.  Besides Cerol, the rest of the group is poorly armed, some with just crude wooden bucklers and their bare hands!  They parade around in circles, poorly bits of leather and shell armor clacking loudly, but we all know that the best they can hope for at this point is to scare off a few animals.

Without our cat, vermin of all shape and size abounds in our pantries, lizards, rats and roaches the size of a fist scamper behind barrels, and it is not uncommon to bite into one of these hapless creatures when you were expecting a fine backed hide root or some other morsel.  I have instructed Zuglar to build traps.

Next: The Hunt!