Abandoned - The Forge (of Dwarves) - Story 65

[Abandoned]

Intro


 This is the 65th story in the Smallville Series and tells the tale of another early underground Dwarf settlement that expanded above ground. We again have gone back in time.  In year 33 SVT Smallville's main river began to dry up.  Expedition #7 went north to investigate.  They founded the town of Lakeland (story 11) after discovering that a rock and mud slide had blocked the river thus altering most of the world's rivers, including the ones underground.  Many underground residents were forced above ground in order to survive.  The location of this story is in the northeast, west of Crystal Canyon of story 36.


The map seed   55987064     Valley,  Small, Cold Mountain, Disasters Off, Med 6 elk,geese,bear


Mods activated for this map and load order are:


Map Changing and Starting Mods:   Banished UI Maps, Labor Window, RK Minimized Status, CC Light Rain, Cold Mountain Climate, Lush & Green, Settlers Deco, Maritime Riffles, New Flora Edit, Wildlife Starts

Tweak Mods:  Better Stock Piles, Better Stock Pile Storage, Bigger Wheelbarrows, Dried Mushrooms, Fishing Dock +25%, Hunting, Increased CC, 1:1 Alternative (Voeille), Override Winter Clothes, Rocks Respawn, Tiny Smoke, Woodcutter +3

Major or Must Have Mods:   An Empty Square, Nomads (Kid), override uneducated, Storage Crates, Jinxie Bitty Village, Kid Fairy Tale, Kid Forge of Dwarves (new, testing), Kid Granny Neighborhood, Kid Tiny v 3, Kid Tiny Downtown, Kid Workplace Village

Supporting Mods: Kid Animal Shed Plus (update, testing), Kid Deco Farm Animals, Kid Deco People, Kid Deco Plants, Kid Deco Wreaths, Kid Market Carts, Kid Market Foods, Kid Work Shop


Mod Note Kid Forge of Dwarves includes the Forge of Dwarves Caves which was released in the previous story, Whispering Pines story 64.  No need to use both.



  So weary traveler, you found us.  It was bound to happen sooner or later.  The river boatmen have done a good job of keeping our underground dwarf settlements a secret just like they did the elven settlement of Crystal Canyon just east of us.  You didn't hear it from me.  We dwarves have been trading all along the underground rivers for many many years.  Our caves provided us with plenty of fish, bear meat, furs, and mushrooms.  We traded furs and tools for grain and fruit until our river backed up and flooded a good portion of our caves before changing course completely.  We were left with the choice of going deeper into the caves towards elven territory or the hobbit's Shire.  We choose to go above ground.  There was a river and a lot of trees and stone, we would build a Forge and trade tools for food like we always did.

Come sit by the fire, weary traveler and I'll tell you all about the Forge.

[Kristahfer]

Yea, another one. I love these stories.

[Abandoned]

 

[Abandoned]

Chapter 1


  The men put a gate on the cave that led out from our underground settlement and they dug 2 tunnels leading out from our dwelling areas.  They put gates on those cave openings also.  We didn't want any  bears in our underground dwelling areas.  Six families volunteered to be the first ones to go above ground, mine was the first and we were put in charge.  We found it very bright and had a hard time adjusting our vision especially on sunny days, but we came to appreciate the beauty and color of our new surroundings.

  A storage cave was built by the entrance to our small valley.  We gathered resources for the stockpile and built a woodcutter there too.  We gathered branches, wild foods, and herbs.  We would continue to bring up bear meat, fish, and mushrooms from below.  A wood house was built for my sister and her family and another house for my husband, Rockett, and our family.  My name is Lillicent.  What?  You heard the phrase rocket scientist before?  Well, yes, that's what they call a dwarf who knows a lot about rocks, and my Rock is the best, that's how the phrase got started.   Dwarves would rather build with stone or metal but wood was quicker to work with and we needed houses.  Winter came early here above ground as it did in most northern and mountain towns.  It snowed here already in autumn.  Our underground settlement was a comfortable 55F degrees year round.  Our cookfires took care of any dampness. We only came above ground for wood.  You may not know, weary traveler, that the Dwarven race was created underground in the Halls of Darkness of Middle Earth by the great smith, Aule.  It is not easy for dwarves to move above ground.

  Two brothers, Kyrone and Conardo, who fished the big underground river now built a bait shop and boat rental above ground by the downed tree they used for fishing.  We were going to have to use some of the fish to feed a pesky bear.  One of our cave hibernators must have gone out before the gate was build and now could not get back in.  We would lure him away with fish before he posed any real danger.  We would continue to teach the children about the 3 bears, "don't feed papa bear", "don't wake mama bear", and "never ever hug baby bear".

[Abandoned]

Chapter 2


  In early spring of year 2 there was still one family in the dwelling cave waiting for a house.  The woodcutter moved his family out shortly before.  We were still bringing tools and clothes up from the underground settlement but it was much colder up above and we needed warmer duds, it snowed in late spring.  We dwarves are a hardy bunch but the temperature change was very noticeable.  We built a place to make warm coats out of the furs we had in stock.  We also built a school.  A forge settlement would required educated workers to calculate trade deals and production totals.

  The snow in late spring proved this climate was not so good for growing crops.  Well, we dwarves were not farmers like the hobbits and we were not hunters and foragers like the elves but we had to increase our food supply until we were able to trade tools for food.  We built an anvil workplace so we would not run out of tools before the forge was up and running.  Inferior surface iron would be good enough for common tools.  We collected what wild foods and herbs we could find, along with branches for firewood.  We also set up a large roasting spit to stretch our supply of bear meat.  The last family now had a home above ground but we knew there were more families dwelling deeper in the caves who would be needing to move above ground soon.  It wasn't long before there were 14 more cave dwellers, 12 adults with 2 children, in the dwellings closest to the cave gates waiting for houses.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 3


  Some of the older boys caught a few mountain goats and one of the families from the cave built a house and an animal pen.  They dug up some wild grasses and planted a patch to grow feed for the goats.  A feed store would store any extra hay that the patch produced.  We would have goat's milk for the children, and perhaps a dairy to make cheese later on.  More houses would be built nearby later in the year.

  A family moved into the lighthouse that was built by the river.  We still have not seen a riverboat.  The last family that needed a house choose to be the official stone cutter for the town cemetery.  Dwarves were masters of stone cutting, tool making, and mining but even so there were bound to be mining accidents and a cemetery was a must.  It was snowing again by the time the fishing pier and fish market were completed down by the harbor.  We hoped the trading post would be completed by spring.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 4

  The trading post was finished by early spring and, like almost everything else the dwarves built, it was big.  Our caves below ground were big and roomy and our houses above ground are big and roomy.  My Rock says one day he'll build me an even bigger house with a rose garden in a castle.  Our men might not be big and tall but they have big hearts and are very appreciate of their wives, especially if she can cook. 

  An overseer was built next to the trading post.  I was teacher at the time and I took my 5 students there to learn how to keep inventory records and evaluate them. We had a few tools we could trade. We needed more bear meat and furs but the nearby group of bears moved away as soon as the hunters got close.

  Mechele, the general goods merchant we knew, arrived in late spring.  As always the river boatman was a good source of information.  It was not only our river that changed but many others, above and below ground.  There were shortages of food and tools almost everywhere.  The boatmen were still trying to find alternate routes to get to their regular customers.  He would try to bring us flour, apples, and potatoes.  He couldn't say when that might be.  We spent more time that year foraging for wild foods, Rock said I was like an elf.  We gathered stone too and began to improve our roads.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 5


  In early spring of year 5, a herd of elk was spotted across the stream to the south.  We needed meat but the herd moved away before anyone could get there to hunt.  Our overall health was down slightly, we needed a better diet.  Hopefully that would improve, Mechele returned with apples and flour.  We traded 40 iron tools for 160 apples and bags of flour.  We would build a bakery to make herb bread.

  It had just stopped snowing in late spring when 8 adults with 3 children came out of the dwelling caves and wanted to live with us above ground.  They said there were still a lot of bears down below and they were getting more aggressive since there was less fish for them to eat.  There would be more bear meat and furs as well as mushrooms and other supplies still to be brought up.  They would stay in the dwelling caves until we had more firewood.

  We were indeed short of firewood again even with 2 woodcutters.  Now we had more laborers to gather branches and there were a lot of them in the small valley east of the caves.  There was plenty of trees, stone, and inferior surface iron to be had also.  We dug a tunnel for easier access to that area.  Laborers reported to Rock that there were elk and bear spotted in that valley.  We would have to watch that our children didn't wander off through the tunnel that was right by our house.  Our son Corne was a student but our 2 girls, Laylan and Jane, were only ages 5 and 3.

  Mechele returned in late winter with potatoes and more flour.  He had trouble getting to us, the river was more turbulent and full of  debris.  The children would need closer watching near the river now too but I'm sure the parents have been doing that since even before Smallville's river became blocked.  The good news was that Mechele would take some of our inferior iron in trade, the extra weight may help to slow down his riverboat in the faster moving water.  The flour he brought would allow us to bake more herb bread.  Our overall health had improved.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 6


  It was another long cold winter and it was still snowing in early spring.  The goats in the animal shed needed more grass, they had multiplied and needed another animal shed.  Another shed was built along with a matching house and meadow forester.  It snowed again in late spring so it was summer before 13 year old Vancesco from the dwelling cave got started planting the thatch to feed the goats.  There were soon small tuffs of thatch coming up between the trees.  Vancesco asked why we didn't have better axes, he would need to cut down some trees.  The laborers would gather the thatch like they did herbs and wild foods.  Weather permitting, they were gathering stone and surface iron.

  A house for another cave family was built behind the new animal shed and a caretaker's house was built by the cemetery. The family would make sure the cemetery didn't get taken over by thatch.

  Mechele, the merchant, was happy to take some of the iron but only had apples, no flour or potatoes.  We traded iron for 300 apples.  He said he hoped the heavy iron would help slow his riverboat.  There had been a lot of snow farther north, the melting snow in late spring was followed by heavy rain in early summer and now the river was running fast and high.  There were flooding problems down south of Smallville, there were more food shortages.

  We increased our gathering of wild foods and herbs and when a group of bears got close, we sent 3 hunters.  One of the 3 succeeded in adding more bear meat and furs to our store of supplies.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 7


  In late winter, 2 herds of elk were sighted across the stream where the bears had been.  We decided it was time we build a permanent hunting stand there.  A house for 16-year-old, Brion, and a shed were built there too.  The last family from the cave dwellings had a house built for them by the bakery.  We were lucky that the river boatman had flour and potatoes when he came in early spring, we needed both.  We were doing a lot of wild food gathering to keep our food supply stable.

  We had a problem with our meadow forester and feed for the goats.  The grass and thatch that was planted last year was coming up nicely but Brion said he will not cut more trees to make room to plant more thatch until we had better tools.  There was now a tree fellow standing guard to protect the forest in Brion's work area.  We should have known a tree fellow would show up and there was nothing we could do about it right now. We dare not hurt a tree fellow unless we wanted a whole army of them descending on us plus the elves.  The elves have a strange attachment to trees and the trees to the elves.  What we needed was better tools that would cause less pain and suffering to the trees we cut.  Finely crafted tools could not be created overnight.  First we would need a mine for high quality iron ore and a mine needed dwarf miners.  We could not spare any of our food gatherers so we sent word to the underground settlement.  There were soon 2 families with 2 adult children and 1 young child living in the upper cave dwellings.  They would need houses.

  The latest arrivals from the underground settlement brought the above ground settlement's population to 72, 38 adults, 8 students, and 26 young children.  Another house was built by the hunting stand and 3 houses were built in the main part of town, 1 by the fishing tree, 1 across from the bakery, and 1 by the trading post.  We gathered more branches for firewood but when we began to cut more trees in the area through the tunnel, we came across 3 more tree fellows protecting the forest.  There was nothing we could do.

[Abandoned]

Kid Animal Shed Plus update has been released.  There is now a thatch patch and a meadow forester. Deco grass and flowers included.  Find info and link to download here:

http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=3854.0

[Abandoned]

Chapter 8

 
   In early spring of year 8, a 2nd tree fellow was spotted in the thatch meadow.  There was another group of bears but our hunters now wanted to know if they should hunt them.  The tree fellows not only protected the forest but the creatures in them as well.  We were concerned for our hunters and for our laborers who had to cut trees but we were less concerned now for the children.  Tree fellows apparently considered them wild creature too, there have been stories in the past of tree fellows protecting and rescuing young children from danger.  We needed better tools.

  Our first step towards that goal was to dig a large mine.  We had only 2 miners,  we could not spare more workers who were needed to gatherer firewood and wild foods.  They were getting good at it.  And of course there is none better at mining and tool making than dwarves.  Our 2 miners were soon bringing up good quality iron ore, coal, stone, and crystals.  We set aside 2 more areas as stockpiles and added more stone roads and started to replaced old dirt roads with stone.

   By summer there were 5 tree fellows in the valley east of the caves.  They seemed to be watching over the elk herd.  The elves must have seen what was happening here by looking through one of their crystal balls because when Mechele returned to our trading post he had a gift for us.  What? oh yes, crystal balls, you didn't hear that from me, weary traveler.  Anyways, the elves sent us a few of their Elven bows with enchanted arrows that cause no pain.  The elves have no direct control over the tree fellows but they wanted no trouble.  There'd been trouble in the past with both tree fellows and with elves but dwarves, elves, hobbits, and humans had all been allies in the fight to save Middle Earth long ago.

  We only traded for some wool that Mechele had, there were others who needed the food more than we did at the moment.  We would collect more from the wild and stretch what we had by roasting meat and making mushroom soup.  The dwarf miners would enjoy the soup while they waited for better tools.  Mechele said there were other dwarf miners and tunnel diggers that needed better tools, they were working in exchange for food to take back to their settlements, both above and below ground.  Life was sure simpler back in the caves.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 9


  Uliseo built the soup kettle and gave it a test run.  Many single young woman wanted the job to show off their cooking skills to the single young men but Veron living next door said she didn't want that kind of thing going on next door to her house.  She said she would take over making the soup if Uliseo didn't want to do it, she had a toddler at home she could take care of at the same time.

  That soup kettle needed firewood and the woodcutters needed logs.  Better tools needed logs and better iron.  We gathered as many downed branches as we could and cut a few trees at a time as far from the tree fellows as we could get.  The first step to better tools was the large mine, the second step was the smelter we now built to make better quality iron from coal and iron ore.  We moved more of the inferior surface iron and iron tools made from it to the trading post.  We trading some of each for apples when the river boatman returned.  Our overall health was again a little low.

  Our dilemma was the logs.  A forge forester required high quality dwarven axes for the workers, especially because of the presence of the tree fellows.  Sharp precision-made dwarven axes would cause little if any pain and suffering to the tree being cut, sharp axes were faster and safer for the foresters to use.  We needed wood to make the axes and axes to get the wood.  There was room in the forge area for both the axe maker and the forge forester but first we would add the fishing tree to the stock pile - another piece broke off and fell into the river and it was no longer safe to fish from.  A second fishing pier for 2 fisherman was built across the small stream.  At the end of year 9 our food supply was as precarious as our wood supply.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 10


  In Spring of year 10, 14 adults with 5 young children moved into the cave dwellings closest to the large gate.  We put up a notice board to let them know what jobs were available.  We needed another hunter, another fisherman, and another miner or 2.  We needed laborers to gather branches, wild foods, and thatch.  One of the newcomers said there were a lot more supplies down below than the remaining people would need.  We added another worker to the large gate to bring more of those supplies above ground.

  We needed at least 1 worker to start making dwarven axes and sharpening then to perfection at the grinder that was built on the river.  The rapidly flowing river would turn the big water wheel that turned the smaller grinder wheel where the axes would be sharpened.  High quality iron from iron ore, coal, and logs were taken to the grinder to produce the first 2 axes needed to complete the forge forester.  Each of the 2 foresters would have a long-lasting dwarven axe to use to cut logs for the grinder.  Trees that suffer little or no pain when cut produce stronger logs for tool handles and other uses.  The axes can be taken back to the grinder for resharpening when needed, the dwarven axes were made to last a lifetime.

  The forge forester was completed and trees were being planted in the small radius.  Addition forge foresters could be built where logs were most needed and foresters would now be safe from the tree fellows.  The new fishing pier was completed and had 2 fisherman.  Two houses were built nearby for cave dwelling families.  More houses were needed.  Kayce was now busy making dwarven axes, we sturdy dwarven women were not just good cooks.  The axes would be traded for food, they had a high value of 20 trade units.  The river boatmen would see to it that they reached the dwarves that needed them.  We badly needed food.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 11


  By early spring of year 11 the newly planted trees were doing well and so was the grass for the goats, more thatch meant more goats milk.  We built a small mine for coal next to the large mine, the large mine produced whatever the miners brought up.  The river boatman said he would take the crystals in trade and see that the elves got them, they always needed more crystals.  The coal from the small mine would ensure that we always had enough for the smelter and the grinder.  If we wanted to make steel or hardened tools, like picks and shovels, we would have coal for the Forge too.  We built the Forge close to the mines, smelter, and stockpile.  Even our iron tools for our own use would now be higher quality, crafted by dwarves from smelted iron and precision cut logs.

  Until those forge planted trees grew, we would still have to watch our log supply carefully and gather branches for firewood.  Our supply of coats and food were also both very low.  We now had more to trade but Mechele had little of what we wanted or needed due to shortages elsewhere.  When he arrived in late spring, we traded for what apples and walnuts he had.  We needed flour and wool.  He had very expensive barley seeds.  We dwarves weren't farmers and the climate wasn't good for farming but even a partial harvest would provide some needed grain.

  We prepared an 11x11 crop field in the clearing on the other side of the small stream.  We assigned 2 farmers but it was already too late in the season to plant. We could only hope for an early spring.