Let's Get Started

“Very Well, let's get started!” you declare and pull on your pants to head out of the wagon into the cool air of this site you have selected for your starting outpost. You half expected some kind of tutorial screen, but get nothing, just a massive mountainside and the alpine meadow on which your vehicles have parked. You start by having Helga Copper-ax, your other warrior dwarf, escort you around the site pointing out the deposits of good stone that you have found so far, and taking notes. This takes most of a day but you are sure it will be worth it in the end. When you break for a very late lunch you give your first orders, telling the two mining dwarves to start digging at a specific point you have selected. It's a large cliff face nearby made of sandstone that will be easily excavated to provide space to store your supplies before you have a full delving dug out.

Meanwhile you begin seeing to the conditions of your animals, and checking on the number of creatures you have brought. You have two pairs of fine horses, all mares with coats black as good coal. There's three dogs, two bitches and a male, who look kind of like what the old you would think of as a mastiff. For rat and mouse control you have two cats, both female but one is pregnant, little swift and sleek black things that will be the terror of any rodent that so much as THINKS of trying to attack your food stores. On the 'farm animals' side there's twelve chickens, a flock of 5 sheep, and 10 head of highland cattle, including a bull. Your farm dwarves are going to be run ragged caring for all the animals but come winter more than a few of them are going to get the axe to see you all through the months of ice and snow. With the spring fresh colonists will arrive to reinforce your position if you give the word that there's a position to reinforce, for which you have a small store of signaling scrolls. If you want the colony to thrive you'll have to purchase or craft more before five years have passed, but that's a problem for another day.

Right now the sun is setting and you've only got a shallow cut of five feet high into the clif face to show for your two diggers several hours work. The good news is you're not tired yet, everyone seems ready to go for several more hours except Bolga and Snorgi, the people who drove the last leg of the journey who are sacked out in the wagons...