Stairs, Slabs and the Dirt Question

Dear Diary,

Big news. The Overseers have taught us stairs. You carry a stone to an empty spot, you build, and now there are stairs where there weren't! We can get down off ledges! Korberdle has already slept on the top step twice.

Also, digging the topsoil now gives us dirt. Fenrikin was thrilled, then horrified, because dirt now goes in stockpiles, and the stockpiles were already full of opinions. The Overseers sorted it out: normal stockpiles say “no dirt, thank you,” and you have to ask specially for a dirt pile. Fenrikin wept with relief.

The new digging. When we mine a block now, we leave a thin floor behind so the gnome upstairs doesn't fall through. Very polite. If you want a hole, you channel, which takes everything out. Mining is for rooms, channelling is for holes. I've written that on the wall so I remember.

Trouble with floors. Fenrikin wanted a stockpile on one of the new thin floors and was told it “wasn't ground.” It is ground. You can stand on it. I was standing on it while the Overseers were saying no. Then we dug a cellar under an old stockpile and suddenly nobody would carry anything there either. Fenrikin has started talking to the stockpile, quietly, at night.

Floating floors. I dug out a cellar and then dug a trench around the floor above it. The floor stayed up. No walls, no posts, nothing underneath. The floors were holding each other up, the way gnomes do at a party. I tried to tell Mogdofast about it but he was still not looking at his workshop from Day 1.

Stairs, part two. Tilnazel carried a stone all the way to a stair site. Then the Overseers changed their minds and cancelled it. The stone vanished. Not dropped. Vanished. Tilnazel looked at her empty hands for a long time. We have not discussed it since.

Also. One of the other expeditions dug a tunnel right under someone else's staircase and two gnomes got stuck at the bottom. Not us this time! Different world entirely. I sent them a cheerful note.

Pipblewort