In early summer, we're ambushed by goblins; they immediately take out a woodcutter. I sound the alarm and herd everybody indoors, activate my squad, and station them near the entrance.
Suddenly, the human caravan arrives!
The traders' escorts successfully drive off two goblin raiding parties.
I'm afraid that with my expanded workforce, I became increasingly cavalier with my workers' lives. It's all well and good to say you're willing to sacrifice for the cause of progress, but the real measure of dedication is shown by how many times you'll let your masons wall themselves in during the construction of a vast underground reservoir. Now, I'll admit that I only managed to do that twice, but I tried to make up for it by not forbidding bodies fast enough when one of my porters drowned right next to a pike.
(Actually, I wound up getting the workers out, again.)
Near the end of summer, another goblin ambush coincided with a major caravan arrival. Unfortunately, I've got a bunch of holes punched in our defenses in order to finish the reservoir, which has had unfortunate setbacks since I wasted a bunch of time trying to build higher than necessary. Once again, the merchants saved me the trouble of actually defending myself; they also suffered more casualties than I did. The dwarves had nothing I was interested in, though, so we traded a couple rocks back and forth and they went on their way with 50G profit.
One of the soldiers decided he didn't want to go to work in the mines today, on account of a "fey mood". He winds up making Nebelisul, "The Admired Faith", a Limestone hatch cover encircled with bands of turtle bone. I'm glad to see he has faith in the coming water-works, but there's barely a season and a half left in my term, and we don't even have all the tunnels dug, yet. This project is seriously behind schedule.
It's time for drastic action. Observe the interior of the reservoir:
The reservoir is shaped like an elongated torus. I'd mined out each layer individually, and I've been gradually channelling out the floors on each level, but it's taking too long. Instead of doing this the lengthy, safe way, I'm going to cause a cave-in on the top floor with the intention of wrecking all the layers below it. This has a high potential for death and hilarity.
While I'm getting everything ready there, the merchants finalize their trade agreement for the next year.
Seven migrants arrived as we moved toward winter. They mostly got jobs as haulers, who keep getting killed by carp. Not sure what they're going after; I've been forbidding things left and right, and STILL they get eaten.
Anyway. The moment of truth!
After the dust cloud arises, I find that I have been completely successful! The miners are free to focus on the tunnel to the river, I finally forbade all the items my haulers kept trying to fish out of the carp pond, and my tower of screw pumps was coming together magnificently.
And then there was another goblin invasion. Called everybody in and set my fledgling soldiers up in the entryway, just around the corner so the marksgoblins couldn't pick 'em off. As the goblins poured into the entrance, hitting a couple traps, our soldiers charged, killing most and driving the rest off, but not without losing one of our own.
Probably only have one more update before I pass it off. It's the final push!