Mining Is a Dwarf's Best Friend

Welcome back to my wonderful blog about dwarfs and special characters!  Now that we found a site, I am going have my dwarfs start building their fortress.  First, I have to find a good entrance location.  In the far southwest corner of my chosen area, there's a little hill that I can burrow into:

I have no idea if this is strategically good or bad, but let's start digging. At this point I mine out some stairs and rooms, get some basic stockpiles set up, and start to grow some food.  The farm turns out to be the biggest challenge of the process, as there is no soil at my entrance.  I can see that there is soil by the river, so I mine a long tunnel east until I reach softer earth and start growing some plump helmets.

I continue to design my fortress, building some basic workshops, when what's this?

 

Oh, how exciting!  More dwarfs to order around!  I end up with eight more dwarfs, for a total of fifteen, more than doubling my slaves citizens!  While their professions are generally not very useful at the moment (e.g. Beekeeper), all of the migrant dwarfs have some combat skills, which should prove helpful later.  (The best part is that I now have an Axedwarf in my piece of the Cheerful Axe civilization.)

Now that I have even more dwarfs, I'd better make some bedrooms for them all, so I dig a few levels farther down.  In the process of mining the rooms, I discover no less than two sources each of microcline and native gold, and a source of kimberlite, rubicelle, and pyrite——all in the space of a 20x20 square of living quarters.  This is what happens in a world with frequent mineral occurrence, I suppose.

And now that my dwarfs have their bedrooms, I think I hear my own bedroom calling my name.  Until next time!