All right, something happened to me in the game recently that convinced me to join the forums and tell people about it.
I almost never get interesting fortresses. I've tried starting in crazy, way-out-there locations, but nothing ever seems to work. And if I do get something interesting, it's a bit too interesting and my party is immediately killed by skeletal harpies before I get a chance to get underground. So, I decided to make a new world, prepare carefully, and plop a new settlement down right next to a dark fortress. Its boundaries began literally one tile off of the edge of my map. Plus, it was in an evil biome with an aquifer layer. I was hoping to be constantly fighting off goblin sieges and undead abominations while I desperately worked to break through the aquifer.
WRONG!
The biome did not resurrect the dead, for one. No staring eyeballs or wormy tendrils either. Just seemingly normal flora and fauna. There were occasional "clouds of fiendish smoke" that occasionally drifted by, but they seemed to do literally nothing except lower my framerate. The only remotely fun thing that the biome contributed was the occasional harpy or ogre attack, but even those were easily dispatched by my military after some training. Well, I was still right next to a dark fortress. I'd at least get a lot of sieges, right?
WRONG!
I ran the fortress for about two in-game years before giving up on it. Not once did I draw a goblin siege. I checked the dark fortress, and it was indeed active with over a thousand residents and I was at war with their civilization. I'd set my population cap to fifty, so maybe that had something to do with it, but I'd swear that I've had sieges in fortresses with populations in just the twenties or thirties.
But, there was one
really interesting thing that did happen.
Anticipating sieges, I set up a military early on in the fortress's life. Unfortunately, I had no iron or copper, so I was stuck with just leather armor. I had silver in excess, though, so I drafted three dwarves and equipped them with silver war hammers. However, soon after the training began, one of them, Kol Rithkatthir, wandered into an ogre and was beaten to a pulp before the other two could show up to slay it properly. Sadly, though, the damage was done. His spine was broken. Our doctor tried to save him (after, of course, having his lunch and planting a few plump helmets), but as it was Kol lost the ability to use his legs.
According to the same doctor, Kol also
technically still had legs, so there was no need to actually assign him a crutch either.
I wasn't quite sure what to do with Kol. But, since the other two hammerdwarves died to a harpy attack while he was bedridden, he was now technically the most experienced military dwarf in the fortress.
So, when the """"Doctor"""" finally decided that he was bored with poking Kol and released him, I let him stay on the squad to hopefully impart some martial wisdom to whatever other morons I brought in next.
After that, as I've already said, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENED. I'd occasionally send them out to slay some harpies or something, but other than that it was extremely uneventful. I eventually got through the aquifer and breached the caverns and, finally, something semi-interesting started to occur: forgotten beasts.
But even that was dull. By the time I got to that point I had completely filled out the squad with respectable (albeit unarmored) hammer dwarves. Dispatching the beasts was mostly just a matter of issuing a kill order and watching them march down to the caverns. At some point along the line I also drafted my six hunters as started training them into marksdwarves, since I still held out hope that
something would happen to this fortress. And that's about how things went for most of the fortress's monotonous lifespan.
Throughout all of it, Kol remained on the hammer squad. Everywhere they went, there was Kol, slowly crawling along behind. All of them, Kol included, eventually obtained the "Hammer Lord" moniker, but I had little to use them against. I was also afraid to send them out on missions or to try and take on the HFS without good metal armor, which was a frustratingly scarce item from merchants.
Then one day, another Forgotten Beast arrived.
I don't remember its name. I skimmed over the announcement without really reading it. A giant mite. Seemed pretty standard. However, had I read closer, I would have noticed that this particular giant mite had something that the previous Forgotten Beasts did not: Fire.
Since I'm an idiot, I had never bothered to equip my hammer lords with shields. I had plenty of wood, but they seemed to be doing just fine without. But, I knew what fire attacks can do to an unprotected dwarf. Had I read the beast's description more closely, I would probably have just sealed off the cavern until I got them some shields. But, as it was, I sent them down there completely unprotected.
You've probably already guessed what happened next. They were slaughtered to the dwarf. Except for Kol, of course. He was still crawling through the farms while his comrades died on the stairwell below. The only damage they managed to do were a few random scratches and dents to its legs. It barely slowed. In fact, it seemed to be hurting itself more than my dwarves were, since its description now contained dozens of "missing fat" entries, presumably seared off by its own flame.
At this point, I realized exactly how much danger the fortress was in. There was no time to wall off the stairwell, not even enough time to switch my marksdwarves to metal bolts (plus, a fiery death from a giant bug seemed like the perfect way to end this boredom factory), so I positioned the marksdwarves around the stairwell and waited, hoping for the best (or worst, depending on your definition).
A burst of fire appeared in the stairwell. I watched,
excited terrified for what was to come. But, nothing happened. After about a minute I opened up the unit list to see what was taking so long. No Forgotten Beast. I checked the Deceased list. There it was, flashing right at the top. Confused, I opened up the combat log. What had killed it? This is what I saw:
Apparently, Kol had finally made it to the stairwell, where he had been attacked by the beast. It disabled both of his arms and made him drop his weapon. So, stuck in a 1*1 stairwell, with no other options at his disposal, Kol bit the creature.
And it killed it. It was literally the only attack he landed on the thing, but what an attack!
What makes it all even better was that he was only a Competent Biter at the time of the attack:
He used one of his worst skills, and it was still amazingly effective.
I wanted to continue this fortress just to see what Kol would do next, but alas! Our
village idiot """"""Doctor"""""" had locked Kol into a seemingly endless cycle of """"""""""Treatment."""""""""" It looked like he would never even be able to crawl again. So, after about another month, I finally decided to retire the fortress.
I suppose that's also a testament to how dull this fortress was. Even when faced with a seemingly imminent death of epic proportions, it couldn't even do that right, even if it didn't do it right in just about the most awesome way possible.
Wow, that got long.
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Topic: How my fortress was "saved" by a legless, weaponless, armorless Hammer Lord (Read 1639 times)