The Beginning...

A terrible corruption has fallen over the land. Our once mighty dwarven civilisation has been surrounded by a vileness, an insidious force that turns everything against us. Border garrisons have been overrun by legions of mindless undead, and our mighty army has been eroded to a mere fragment of its former glory. Once fertile caverns of the mountains became infested with foul beasts and stopped producing food, causing wide spread famine.The old King fell into a melancholy mood and refused to eat if even one of his subjects would be hungry. Eventually this led to him starving to death. The nation mourned.

The new Queen, Momuz Eteskeskal, hopes to revive the ailing civilisation and has tasked us to take a core of seven experienced dwarves and establish a new dwarven outpost to try and stop the spread of The HUNGRY JUNGLES.

The chosen site

This is the site where BloodPaddles is to be founded. To the east lies The HONEST MIRE, an inhospitable area, but pure of the corruption that lies across the stream. This is where the dwarven kingdom, The METAL of WINDS, will make a stand against evil. Specifically, the evil of The HUNGRY JUNGLES, the sprawling jungle to the southwest of the stream. Here the Queen has sent us, with the instructions to set up a bastion of dwarven might to drive the corruption back and reclaim the mineral wealth of the lands beyond the stream. Regular reports will be sent back to the Queen to be published here.

Tasks:

• Dig out a temporary shelter with accommodation and basic workshops.
• Scout the western bank of the stream.
• Survey the area for mineral wealth and dig exploratory tunnels. 

STRIKE THE EARTH!

My Queen, humble greetings and news from BloodPaddles!

Wagon on thin ice...

We arrived in a snow storm, with very poor visibility. Making camp, we huddled as best we could against the freezing temperatures in the wagon. With dawn, came light and the realisation that we had stopped the wagon on perilous frozen ice! It was impossible to move, the ice having thawed and refrozen around the wagon wheels. Worse, the ice was already melting and we could see the stream was inhabited by vicious carp! We had no choice but to dismantle the wagon and quickly move the supplies indoors, lest they fall through the thin ice. Our miners worked quickly to carve out a rough space in the frozen soil and the rest of us quickly hauled the goods inside. Phew!

We set to building, constructing temporary masonry and carpentry workshops to fashion some crude furniture. Our miners were told to look for building material, but quickly came upon veins of hematite. Praise to Armok! The earth here is rich with flux and iron, with plentiful trees on the surface to fuel the furnaces.

Our lumberjack reported an ominous sight over the frozen banks to the west.

A murder of ravens

A murder of ravens flying in a circle over the unseasonably warm climate of The HUNGRY JUNGLES. Is this a foretelling of something?