Dark Days

7th Obsidian, 255, Late Winter

This year has been both good and bad. Traders have returned and survived to tell the tale of Coalclinched. With the previous demise of other trade caravans, migrants feared the worst and none of them showed up this year. This allowed a bit of relief in pressure on the resources, but our numbers are also dwindling. We are down to 66 dwarves. 91 was the height of our population.

Since the last slaughter of our military, I've recruited whoever I could to train in defense. There's the main squad, now led by a hunter ever since the untimely death of Zon's replacement, Rith. It was a rather embarrassing death and could have been avoided entirely.

You see, we have an arena where we take captives and fire down at them from the safety of a balcony. I had loaded up the arena with four goblins and two trolls and let the marksdwarves have at it. Unfortunately, one of the Trolls managed to break through the floodgate that normally keeps them safely trapped within and bore down on poor Rith. The troll was taken down as well, but not before it inflicted mortal wounds on the new Captain of the Guard.

As such, not everyone is happy to be in the military. The most extreme example of this is Bembul Isulzefon, who just recently threw a tantrum from being so unhappy. In her rage, she threw a rock at a dog and then hit a guy in the head with her shield, killing him almost instantly. She was quickly kicked out of her squad and the Captain of the Guard grabbed her, kicking and screaming, and dragged her all the way to our jail.

There she will remain for 255 days.