#10: Shoring up our numbers

“Yes, you do have to listen to another one of my ‘little‘ talks, Bembul. Gather ’round.”

“Somewhere in our little empire, and important thing has happened. And I want this to be an example to all of you.”

I hold up a sign to the little gathering, emblazoned only with this:

+ =

“You all know that there’s roughly five times more work to be done than we have dwarves. I am not going to change how much work I want done, so you all better change how many dwarves there are.”

“There’s a lot of permutations to this math that could be done. I see (although I have to squint carefully) that we are 4 women and 3 men dwarves. I don’t really care how you all make this happen. I designate enough things, you don’t want me to get involved with this. If dogs can do this, you can too.”

“And I don’t want this to be the result!“

I hold up the other sign.

“I want your babies ugly, and I want them workable. Meeting adjourned.”

I stumble off wondering what am I going to do with these dwarves, where my salvation will come from.

A caravan from Tholadil has arrived! Way over on the far left side of the region, we have Erith Tomenkadol, Merchant, driving a wagon made of acacia and pulled by two musk-oxes, and Zulban Onulolon, Merchant, driving a maple wagon and musk-oxes. Between them is Edem Rithunol, Speardwarf.

Oh, how happy I am that I can trade with dwarves. None of those fucking elves. In fact, looking at the barrels from our own wagon, their stamps read Tholadil. That’s our civilization, the “Deep Wall”, if translated. I hope they brought postcards from home! Or, aphrodisiacs.

Well Santa is my designated tradedwarf, as she has shown some dabbling in negotiation, persuasion, and judging intent, in addition to conversation and intimidation. Those seem like skills I should foster.

Up north, there comes a diplomat.

I’m not sure if this “Outpost Liaison” is affiliated with the traders or not. But being “Perfectly” agile “Superdwarvenly” tough is intimidating. She’s also wearing some really nice mittens on her left hand.

Well before anyone thinks about intimidating me, they’ll have to cross a wasteland of dead goats and groundhogs. That’ll make them think my dwarves are tough!

The trade caravan keeps coming, though. As the wagons move towards our fortress, an additional two pairs of merchant and their musk-oxes (no wagons), a macedwarf, and a hammerdwarf also emerge.

The fancy Diplomat lady wanders around, following my dwarves, like a dog chasing Fatty with a steak around her neck. I think she’s a spy. Come to learn the secrets of my making piles of crap and getting drunk.

The wagons come on inside.

I summon Santa to do some brokering.

The merchants unload at the trade depot; they brought all sorts of goodies.

The liaison finally corners Steenky, who she’s been following, because for some reason he’s designated as the leader of the expedition (this cannot be changed apparently).

“I am your liaison from the Mountainhomes, let’s discuss your situation” she says. My situation? What? What has she heard? The prickle berries? The dead goat fiasco? The sleeping in the rain on jagged rocks? The forced mating pep talk? Having two dogs chase a dwarf with self-image issues for a whole season? Not even knowing what hematite is?

“What requests do you have of our merchants?” is her first question. I heard during my all-too-brief training that this is how they know what to swindle you on.

I carefully review the lists she has.

• Leather, leather, all manner of leather. My dwarves have clothes for now, and I think with butchery and tanning coming online, we’re fine here. Maybe someday in the future when we want to make something exotic.
• Cloth. Same deal.
• Crafts. No, no, these are what I’m going to sell to you. I’m never going to buy them from you.
• Metal bars. Hmm, might be nice to have the option to buy some steel bars next time, so I mark those at the low interest level.
• Stone blocks, small gems, large gems. No thanks.
• Seeds. Ah, seeds seem like a wise investment. I say we’re interested in more of the Plump Helmet seeds as well as some Cave Wheat seeds.
• Anvils, weapons, ammo, trap components. Nah, not for a while.
• Digging implements, namely picks. A miner has to have a pick to work, so it might be nice to trade for a pick in the future.
• Armor. We’ll make our own.
• Cheeses, drinks, pets, instruments, powders, extracts, the list goes on and on.

The diplomat and Steenky go back and forth between the dining hall (the designated Meeting Hall), and the Trade Depot, arguing about who knows what.

“Well then, we have finalized the import agreement. Feel free to go over the documents.” Sure enough, everything I marked as something I’d like to see has gone up 30-50% in price. What goes around, comes around, honey.

“Let’s discuss what we are willing to offer for your craftdwarfship.” I’m listening.

Steenky shows her around, running around checking every chest and cabinet (perhaps looking for his balls so he can stand up to her?).

“Well then, we have finalized the export agreement. Feel free to go over the documents.”

I am going to ream them on Prickle Berry seeds.

Otherwise, I have the one stone crown that Santa made and not much else on this list. I can’t wait to get to Santa’s trading.

“Farewell, Shem ‘Steenky’ Lilarerith, I look forward to our meeting next year. Our fortunes rise and fall together.” And with that, the fancy diplomat lady took off. Now get back to your day job, Steenky. You kind of sucked at that.

While our goods are still being hauled to the Trade Depot, let’s glance at what’s being offered.

Further down the list, he has a stray cat in a lead cage. A cat might deal with some of the vermin. And if I just get one of them, there won’t be pile of kittens to deal with, and cuteness-caused work stoppages. Otherwise, nothing else looks worthwhile. He has some blocks that are very cheap that might make good bartering practice, though.

Unfortunately, since my Prickle Berry seeds aren’t in bags yet, I don’t seem to be able to ream with trade them. I assign every dwarf to hauling to get the stuff I want to trade moved to the Trade Depot. I realize that the merchants have all of 334 pounds of carrying capacity, and my stones weigh 801 lbs each, so those will be of no use in the trade.

At last, everything I’m willing to consider trading is at the depot.

The cat has a value of 40, so I should have at least a value of 80 worth of goods (poor Santa isn’t really great at this trading yet) to offer. Not counting the Prickle Berry wine (it’s much cheaper than the Dwarf wine we brought with us), we have 140 value to trade. Yeah, that toy boat is worth 20, you see it. So the first 60 can be used on “practice trades”.

I offer a well-crafted rock salt bracelet for a block of anhydrite and a block of orthoclase. Immediately, I notice it frees up thousands of pounds of loads on their wagons, so I can offer my claystone blocks back. I do a few more trades and make the trader nice and happy before going in for the big deal.

My initial offer for the cat is 2 chunks of claystone, 3 barrels, and a well-crafted barrel with 5 drinks of Dwarven wine. A value of 66 to the value of 40 for his cat. He accepts! We own a cat! … Hooray?

I try to trade a stone amulet and crown and 2 more chunks of claystone for a bronze bar. He rejects this and talks smack about the low quality of my crafts (bullshit), so instead I just buy a cheaper barrel than the ones I traded him (they still function the same!) and walk away with Santa much more experienced in selling her toys.

I have a dwarf set down the cage and let the cat out:

All I want from the cat is catching some rats outside.

Well fuck you too, cat. Don’t make me press s.

Meanwhile, my smelter needs fuel to turn ore into metal, so I queue up some charcoal from the wood furnace. With some charcoal, I can also turn the raw coal into a few pieces of refined coal as fuel instead.

Steenky does the first bit of butchering.

Using a groundhog corpse from Snipey, Steenky produces 2 pieces of meat, 1 piece of fat, 2 bones, 1 skin, 1 skull, and 2 “groundhog chunks”. Previously, all kills produced just a bone or two, so this is a major improvement. Assuming I can figure out what to use this stuff for. You might notice Santa’s in the bottom left Jeweler’s Workshop cutting turquoises. For what? I have no idea. But it’s new!

Conversely, we finally got around to one of our older ideas.

At the farm, the miners built stairs down , and then dug out the space underneath.

It’s black sand cavern floor, and it lets us place farm plots!

Here we can grow Plump Helmets, which should make for good eating and good brewing, and Cave Wheat, which would give us some grain to do something with.

Soon, I have my first “ecstatic” dwarf.

I think that dining room is the key to my success, so I order Sleepy to smooth the floors in there to match the walls that they did earlier.

Santa’s a good little dwarf and has applied her skills in commerce and appraisal to take survey of our wealth.

We’ve generated approximately 6,620 in wealth so far, most of it in architecture and… “other objects” (I swear that’s not our euphemism for dildos, like I could even figure out how to make something that complex). Of course, we brought 21,360 wealth with us, but if you think of it as a return on investment, we’re doing great! And remember, I don’t pay these dwarves shit! I hope the investment bankers back home are taking notice on the great business I’m running here.

I also notice that I can tag animals as being available as pets. I could let the puppy be a pet. The cat is, “uninterested”. Yeah fuck you, cat. But what would seem best is making the musk-ox a pet. Yes, that sounds very appropriate. Oh, what the heck, and the puppy too, since I notice Bembul likes dogs and maybe a puppy would make him less angry.

Along those lines, we have some drama amongst the dwarves. I notice Sleepy’s happiness level is 391 (crazy high), and go talk to him:

He became caught up in a new romance recently. That sounds like trouble. I ask him about his thoughts on the other dwarves.

Feb. It’s Feb. The other fucking miner. I give Sleepy a bad performance review and he goes and sleeps with the all-star who’s showing him up. Sleepy, I don’t know what sort of fucking game you’re playing, but I’ve got my eye on you. That said, I could use an ugly baby miner to work deep in the mountain, so, uh… proceed.

And finally, someone answers my plea with something I actually use.

Some migrants have arrived!

…

There’s TEN of them.

All you other dwarves are officially put on notice!