Well, that was the most fun I've ever had playing this game in fortress mode I think. Spoilers, no the fort has not fallen yet, but it was damn close. I have a fortress that I reclaimed, and I managed to completely make it goblin-proof (or human-proof if it comes to that, there are no elves around). I have outer walls taller than the surrounding hills giving me most of the map, I have a "nice" entrance for the goblins when they come, I'm using the cheeky/"cheaty" method of putting triggered bridges at the edge of the map to make it so the merchants can come and go in peace without worrying about sieges, I have the cavern layer locked down, and I have everything I need so that my dwarves could survive forever with the doors all locked. I'm even starting to make a bunch of masterwork steel equipment... but...
My military is still fledgling, and I have no crossbowmen at all. I was just in the middle of building an outer wall trap hall for catching any pesky flying enemies in a 1-wide hall, but it was only half done when...
Well, it wasn't a roc, it was... Obasp Rababugok Smoxog Slux, or "Obasp Junglerains, the Valley of Packing"... and boy was he packing:
"A great three-eyed pterosaur. It has a long curving horn and it moves deliberately. Its sky blue scales are blocky and set far apart. Beware its FIRE!"
So it is gargantuan, flies, AND HAS FIRE. I know there are things in the game with this, but generally in my experience it is extremely rare (never) that something like this is on the surface unless it's my own fault for letting it out of the deeps. I've had fire imps on the surface before at a volcano, but they aren't gigantic. I've had hill titans, dragons, and bronze colossi before, but none had both fire and flew at the same time. I've seen FBs like this, but generally I just leave them the hell alone in the cavern and just don't go out there and they typically eventually die from fighting other FBs or cavern creatures over the years. On the surface at just barely the start of the 3rd year, this was nasty. I'm sure others have experienced something similar, but I thought I'd share anyway.
Half of my citizens were outside but within the outer walls, with "airlocks" with locked doors, war dogs on chains, and easy bridges up with a lever between them and almost any invader. These defenses already thwarted a werecreature ambush and a small vile force of darkness. Basically the dwarves should have been totally safe from anything BUT this titan. I don't know how, but with a quick burrow, every single dwarf and animal made it inside, with the last water buffalo literally one square away from getting smashed flat. Actually I do know how, as the hill titan was busy frying a poor human maceman alive while we burrowed.
The damn thing kept me under siege for 4 months, because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Several travelling warriors fought with it as they came by only to find the place totally sealed up and this thing flying around. One by one it killed about 8 different warriors, some of which were flashing as legendary, and some of them who even had ranged weapons. Some of them even hurt it extremely badly, or at least it would seem from the descriptions of the wounds... but the damn thing kept flying around somehow with fractured wings and a fractured spine, missing toes, dented everything, and having melted almost all of it's own fat off scrambling around in the burning grass with it's victims (there is absolutely no vegetation anywhere outside the inner walls or caverns anymore)... but it just would not die, nor even slow down despite its wounds.
There was just no way I could send just melee dwarves out to fight it, even if they were legendary miners with masterwork steel picks. I had next to no armor, only a couple of crappy shields, and no crossbowmen. As we panicked, soon enough, the human merchants arrived, and though most of them went through the safe entrance, the damn diplomat was out with the beast! Somehow, he managed to run away while his guards were roasted, and spoiler... he lived all the way through to the end of the story hiding on the far side of the map from the monster until it was resolved!
Next, migrants came, and I could do nothing for them. 7 of them perished, and the others are seemingly off the map dehydrating to death... I'll have to take care of that soon. I have multiple entrances just for this purpose so I can save migrants foolish enough to come when there's a problem going on, but this thing flies around so damn fast and roasts things instantly, so the migrants had no chance. They also spawned their starting point at basically the worst possible location, so they were screwed.
So... what to do... I also had a previous resident, a giant, that had destroyed this fortress in worldgen. Well, I "had" him walled in. The reason he was walled in and not dead or in a cage was because he was seemingly unable to see my dwarf that found him, and was way in the corner where I thought he had just vacated the place until I found him hiding there after a year! I had looked in that room but he wasn't there the first time, and then one day, there's a damn giant still in here with us! In any case, now I had an idea what to do with him, so I tempted him out into a cage trap, and then had a new plan.
I secured a way to release the giant without risk into the arena with the hill titan... I wasn't really scared of the giant. I know from experience that big things without fire or deadly dust are actually not that scary for well-armed dwarves, and they could easily have dispatched the giant. I thought though that maybe just because the giant was big, that with the hill titan so gravely injured, the giant might survive long enough before melting to grapple it and at least take away it's ability to fly if not kill it... but I was wrong, the giant didn't even attack a single time in the dozens of lines of combat log, just screaming and flailing in the flames and the hill titan beat him to a pulp and boiled his blood... the hill titan even took a shower in said boiling blood, eliminating the rest of its fat, and still just doesn't give a crap apparently.
BUT... where I'd released the giant from was the former front entrance of the fort, rigged up with walls and ceiling just behind the drawbridge... and the hill titan was VERY interested in staying right there, listening to all the dwarves scurry about just within, even after the fight with the giant was over. Quickly we PULLED THE LEVER! and now I have a hill titan trapped in my front doorway! I'll have to make the door on the other side now, and figure out what to do... I may just wait months and years until I have a military capable of handling this damn thing, or set up a squishing trap... but I think I will wait for the military, because if it can manage not to count as mangled despite all its injuries, I want it as a mount in adventure mode (necromancer-style), and if not, I at least want its skull in a museum!
Anyway, thanks for reading if you did. That was very exciting and fun to play.
Author
Topic: Obasp Junglerains, the Valley of Packing! (or the most fun fortress I've played) (Read 1194 times)