27th Hematite, 1051
I have to admit, it's starting to get a little discouraging.
The storage level is complete, and Zaneg and I began digging an exploratory tunnel towards the area around the volcano a level down, in hopes of striking an obsidian intrusion. Not far in, though, Zaneg declared that he was just too worn out from all the mining, and needed to take a break. I yelled at him at first, but before too much longer, I found that I needed a break just as badly. In fact, I've been on break ever since. It didn't help that, while we'd found some lovely gems, we hadn't struck obsidian or anything else particularly useful. Just lots and lots of basalt.
And then the migrants came. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have them—every pair of hands is needed right now. But to get a gem setter, a weaver, and a miller...and then two children... I don't know what they were thinking, sending children out here!
I can console myself that I was able to assign Dumed Storlutmedtob, the weaver, to take up the job of engraver. He was able to carefully breach the wall of the volcano by carving fortifications into it, and thus gain us our first filled magma channel. Once he was done with that, I had him start smoothing the walls of our initial dining room. Medtob Adilsherik, the miller, claimed some knowledge of a smelter, so I assigned him to build one over the magma channel. We may not have much interesting ore yet, but what little tetrahedrite we have may as well get smelted; it's not doing us any good as it is.
I also assigned the gem setter to start making mechanisms so we can get working on at least a rudimentary set of defenses for the fort. You can never start preparing too soon for the goblin hordes.
