SpoilerThe desert heat, or typical outpost lunacy underground. I can't tell which one's driving me crazier faster, or for that matter which I'd prefer. At least the raven folk don't go on and on and Rakust-beseechingly on about ducklings.
No, seriously. We've exchanged a few words - well, caws and screeches, sure, but we were definitely communicating - while I was out hunting some cockatiels recently. They might've just been telling me in Raven to move along so they could get at the entrails, but I'm honestly at the juncture where I'm looking to freaks of nature for sane conversation.
I'm not even going to discuss that incident with the tortoise, as much as Leader Thriggle kept passive-aggressively rubbing in my failure by asking me to chronicle it. "It'll help you come to terms with what happened." Hah! Tripps tried on a few pond-fishing trips to ask me the details, but I threatened to make her drink turtle-water if she kept that nonsense up.
I swear to Shosel, Palamedes is losing it faster than I am. Damn shame, but probably should be more of a concern considering he's our only doctor. First he's thinking he's better at training war dogs than me, though I saw him skulking round the carpenter's workshop muttering about crossbows. The fool damn near lost his hand in a cage door trying to figure out how it worked. Not to mention, he still questions me in the corridors with this
look in his eye, asking how that tortoise is doing. I don't care if he's glad that it's still dodging traps. He's up to something, although how his morning strolls of crushing local flora underfoot is helping are beyond me.
Oh, some new pups as well I suppose. What use Thriggle thinks they'll be cooking in the desert sun is anyone's guess, but the hypothetical half-baked corpses can be left on his desk, not mine. Mainly because I don't even have a desk, nor do I especially want one.
![[Image: 744ff2f24b7235348289b391aa3c2e75.png]](https://gyazo.com/744ff2f24b7235348289b391aa3c2e75.png)
The stolid female is Doris, the glaringly obvious runt Dragon in the futile hopes he'll grow into something halfway respectable. On the bright side, you can really see the models of inheritance coming through these pups! Not that anyone in this cultural cesspit would know about anything like that.
Been plagued with vermin, and I don't mean the damn flies that congregate whither the duck shit graces the floors (which is all over the damn fortress). Immigrants. I don't sign up for a trip to the godsforsaken middle of crapwhere just to make it nice and cosy for some city-slickers to turn up. Worse, one old upstart won't shut up about his "eighty-one kills", which were probably mass drownings from a mispulled floodgate if my experience tells me anything. That his wife's the fortress' broker is only further conceit to go to his already-insufferable ego. I hope the raven-men get the hint and rough him up for me.
Of course, being the tactful dwarf I am I'm not actually
telling anyone any of this to their collectively degenerate faces. I've no interest in running this asylum and am driven by instinct to mistrust anyone with such aspirations (see: Naut). I'm quite content bringing in the fortress' rations of raw monster flesh, or farming. Or arguing with Palamedes. Being put in charge of the fort would give me no time for these pursuits, which I feel are too important a contribution to fortress life to put aside.
Why am I mentioning this, hypothetical history-loving dwarf of the future reading my missives?
No reason.
No reason whatsoever.
