After much neglect, I, Yacheritsi, have taken over as leader of reddit’s fortress, Scorchingfurnace. In the interests of publishing something before I go on vacation, I’m not going to spend the time to write things in character, but I hope to have things amply documented otherwise.

Some quick thoughts upon first arrival:

This fort seems to have a lot of microcline.

Some of the inner areas seem oddly cramped into the elbow of the hill. The depths here are deep indeed, it seems to me we shouldn’t be constrained by the lay of the land like human twig-builders.

There’s a gap in our excavations which breaches the surface.

Our fort could use a back door.

I’m not sure this waterfall was ever destined for success.

Why is all of this goblinite marked for dumping? I undesignate the dump command. (Haulers were taking troll fur loincloths deep within the bowels of the fort to the magma works.) With some celerity, the haulers take the loot to the finished goods stockpile near the depot. Our brook has been designated as a refuse dump and there is also offal in a below ground chamber. We need a sanitary garbage disposal solution!

I see that our fortifications are set up so that activated marksdwarves with loiter near the fortifications without actually shooting through them. I’ll need to build some walls to keep the cowards at their posts.

The lever to close the (retracting!) bridge is within line of sight to the door, a civilian ordered to pull the lever will run in terror before he can do his job.

Perhaps the meeting hall and hospital should not be next to the front gate?

Our soldiers are practicing in the dark.

There is limited food storage, and workshop slots are used for storage.

We have starving animals in our meeting hall.

There is no means to recover practice bolts. (More on this later.)

Clearly, the stockpiles have not seen much attention in the past 3 years. Our fortress seems to be inconveniently situated over a partial aquifer. I suppose it’s not too inconvenient, and it may come in handy if we can avoid flooding the fort.

Next, early actions.