Door-To-Door Almanac Salesman

Every year, The Archivists at The Astral Watchtower put together The Archivists Almanac. This annual publication contains valuable agricultural information for the ranchers and farmers in The Great Valley. The Almanac tells the farmers when to plant and when to harvest. Important celestial events are included as well as festival dates. The Almanac Store is the economic heart of The Astral Watchtower with Almanac sales being their main source of income for the entire temple complex and the workers who live there.

Try to sell them on the advice column, recipes, and jokes near the back. I know it's nearly impossible, but do your best to avoid mentioning the weather or the stars.
— A Beleaguered Almanac Salesman

Older Editions

Salesmen often bring copies of older editions to sell at a reduced rate. The gardening advice section contains useful information that varies from year to year. During the Stoneheart Potato Blight, sales of a decades-old edition with a chapter on dealing with potato-eating aphids actually sold more copies than that current year's edition.

Recipe Booklets

City folk in the three capitals don't value The Archivists Almanac's agricultural information but the recipes from the back section are quite popular. The Archivists sell Recipe Booklets, small books with perforated recipe cards meant to be collected and stored in a recipe card box. With new recipes every year, collecting Archivist Recipe Cards has become an obsession for some Dwarves.

Event Calendars

A rolled poster with a large annual calendar highlighting major festivals, important celestial events, and important civic dates is sold separately from The Archivists Almanac. While meant to accompany The Almanac, the Calendars have proven more popular with the city folk than the detailed Almanac books the farmers and ranchers of the valley have come to rely upon.

Abysmal Sales This Year

The overcast skies and never-ending rain caused by The Ashen Eclipse & The Infernal Deluge have practically killed The Archivists Almanac industry in a single year. It was a common sight at the start of the year to see Almanac Salesmen pushing their wooden carts of books down the country roads to visit the farmers and ranchers. Not only is the weather extremely unusual this year invalidating all of the agricultural advice but the fact that the stars are completely hidden from view renders even the astronomical information worthless. In previous boom years, The Astral Watchtower had to fund multiple caravans to deliver the bulk of their books to the three capitals for distribution. This year the caravan has been cancelled and most of the salesmen have quit over a lack of commissions.

Rastus' Quest

With the tensions over limited food in The Boreal Forest, Rastus, The Explorer has taken it upon himself to discover solutions to the gardening disasters caused by the poor weather. As he travels with Marcus, The Wizard, Rastus is at first delighted and then overwhelmed by the information kept at The Astral Watchtower. Rastus is finding great advice in the older editions. The folks working at The Almanac Store are quite happy to have a customer.

I'm absolutely certain the answer is here - the solution to The Prank War. We've just got to find it! I know we can grow enough food in our gardens to share with the Pixies. Maybe finding a way to better drain the soil from the neverending rain will help... I've got to keep looking.
— Rastus, The Explorer