An unassuming young goblin "mercenary" came to the young, 49-strong fortress of Tiredbrass to chill at The Inky Tummy, the most vibin' tavern this side of The Rough Wall. I tabbed away to browse Youtube for a bit, I come back to a flood of announcements saying "interrupted by weretapir mercenary," and I see the aftermath of their little scuffle. The tavern had like 30-40 people in it and they all aggro'd the thing, so the interloper didn't stand much of a chance. Unfortunately, the logs showed that the weretapir had bitten a number of people. With 33 pages of fighting and more than 40 combatants, there was no easy way to tell whether or not those who got bit were dead. So, I move my 10-dwarf militia into the tavern and Order 66'ed all my visitors, and the bloodbath was legendary. The bards and other drifters fought to the bitter end. Somewhere in the fighting, a loyalty cascade was triggered and all hell broke loose over the fortress. Between the tavern guests and the traitors, my militia was cut down. Order was eventually restored, but at great cost: Only two hammerdwarves survived: Led "Bearclaw" Carriedarmors the Dignified Courtesy, and his lieutenant Ingish Zealcloistered, nicknamed "Sternguard" because I saw a thought in his head after the carnage about the importance of loyalty, funnily enough. Lucky, Grouch, and Sunshine are the only three of my starting seven who survived the riot, and my population fell to 26. The "Holy Sculpture" of the local war god cult was cut down in the fighting, but the high priest survived. Now, ten of the survivors were drafted into a new squad with Bearclaw at its helm, Lucky and Grouch have to stop mining in order to make coffins, I have three dwarves making new armor for the militia because it's currently beat the hell up, and everybody else is on corpse detail. Of the 5 children we have left, only 2 of them seem to have lost any parents to the loyalty cascade. None of my dwarves are all that stressed out, despite it all. And at the last, thankfully, no new weretapirs have risen since the purge.
I was so tempted to abandon this fort, but I'm gonna see if I can pick up the pieces. It's a heck of a turning point in the fort's story. Do y'all have any ideas to commemorate this event? I'm giving every survivor a nickname so I can track them down later.