So, since this is my first post on these forums, I thought I'd give you guys a fun story. This was the first exciting thing to happen to my fortress "Roughbeer", and I'm still rather surprised it made it through. It's written pretty much in-character, and the dwarves whose names I forgot are Urist McThisAndThat. Anyhow, here you go:
Urist McFarmer was possessed by a strange mood one day whilst planting. He stormed off to the workshop, muttering about wood and bones. It was early spring, and the dwarves had not been hunting yet, so there were no bones laying about the fortress. I conscripted a strapping young fellow to go hunt deer. We didn't really need the meat, I just hoped someone would bring back some deer bone for our mad friend to work with. He must have been very sure of himself, though, because our new hunter didn't even bother to arm himself with a crossbow as he left the fortress.
He combed the woods for several hours looking for deer. Eventually he came across a peaceful herd, gnawing on the newly sprouted grass. Urist McManly pounced on the nearest animal, punching it in the leg. It and the rest of the herd ran off. He chased down the deer, pulled one of its legs off, and crushed its skull under his arm. While this would have been quite enough, McManly unfortunately got rather carried away, and rather than carry back the meat and bones, he was apparently interrupted by his thirst for deer blood, which caused him to ignore his fresh kill and instead go about and massacre every other deer within a mile. Then he went back to the fortress for a cold beer, leaving the meat and bones in the forest.
The ever-more-impatient Urist McFarmer finally bolted out of the workshop and headed off into the trees to get the bones himself. The rage building up at the very long delay seemed to be too mcuh for him, however, and McFarmer went berserk when he came within site of the dead deer. He immediately whipped around and faced the curious dog that had followed him out of the fortress. He punched both of its eyes out and tore open its chest with his bare hands, leaving the poor animal to bleed out in the dirt.
Witnessing this horrific act, I immediately conscripted RockyKnuckles and Ironhead, my two mightiest miners, and a few other bystanders. The newly formed Earthen Cruxes squad armed themselves with axes and crossbows and stood sentinel at the front gate, waiting for the inevitable return of the psychotic McFarmer.
McFarmer, however, was bus chasing a terrified kitten into the hills above the fortress. He suddenly stopped short as he was surrounded by a goblin ambush party. At first, I thought this to be an opportunistic event--hopefully the goblins would kill McFarmer, ridding us of our problem. If they came to the front gate, a few crossbow bolts to the face would deal with them handily. However, just then I recieved word that an Elven caravan was within sight of the fortress--and more goblins had appeared over the crags to the east!
I quickly ordered my broker to the depot, in the desperate hope that the elves would have some manner of armament we could buy off them. However, not only did they have nothing of the sort, they also refused to trade with us. Apparentyl they were infuriated that we had allowed McFarmer to kill one of our dogs, and that they would not trade with those with "So little respect for life". One wonders why they bothered braving the goblin-infested wastes to get here, then! Damned stuck-up treehugging bastards!
It seems karma caught up with the elves, however, for as they were passing out of the front gate in a huff, one of the merchants took an arrow to the head! Six goblins had arrived at the gates. The Earthen Cruxes had apparently gotten bored of manning the forward barracks and wandered off, allowing the goblins access. Fortunately for us, they had to wade through a veritable sea of cats and dogs that were milling about in the hallway. While they were distracted slaughtering our plethora of domestic animals, I managed to get the squad back upstairs to the main hall.
They ran into the other elf merchant along the way, who had retreated back inside the fortress when his companion went down. The civilian dwarves in the main hall fled downstairs to their rooms in a panic, clearing the large room save the goblins, RockyKnuckles, Ironhead and their subordinates, and the merchant, who, to his credit, did not run to safety like the elven coward he is. The chamber was also spattered with gallons of blood, and various body parts lying about, leftovers form the unfortunate massacre of our pets and livestock. Luckily, it appeared that some of the dogs did not go down without a fight--I spotted the corpse of one of the goblins lying amidst the dead cats and dogs. It also came to my bemused attention to notice that the hind leg of a donkey was lying on the floor, blood pooling benath it. I found this extremely perplexing as our fortress had never contained a donkey.
With a roar, the Earthen Cruxes charged at the remaining five goblins, who apparently weren't expecting any sort of organized resistance. They didn't put up much of a fight. Two fell quickly to my dwarves' blades, their extremities flying about the room as they were hacked to pieces. The elf, surprisingly, knocked one out with a punch ot the head, and the dwarves fell upon him, inflicting more wounds than I thought was possible on a single body. The other two goblins quickly turned tail and fled out the gate--where they were confronted with a terrifying sight.
Urist McPsychopath stood menacingly before them, smeared in goblin blood, having somehow defeated the entire ambush party. He immediately ripped both the legs off one goblin, tossing them away. I could not help but feel sorry for the creature as it was torn into tiny pieces by this madman. The other one ran off as fast as his spindly green legs could carry him. The demented farmer then advanced into the fortress.
The Cruxes had had enough at this point, and Ironhead stepped forward and punched McPsycho in the head so hard it exploded. I promoted him to Captain of the Guard immediately, and set my dwarves to cleaning up the massive mess. Amazingly, the entire course of events had only cost us one dwarf--an animal trainer who was out in the field when the golbins came through. It took a full week to wipe the blood out of the engravings and move all of the severed limbs and giblets to the refuse pile outside. I noted with some bitterness that it now overflowed with bones--the very thing that started this whole fiasco in the first place. I immediately created a special stockpile for bones so we would never run out. It never hurts to play it safe.
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Topic: First Post--Deer Bones and Violent Insanity (Read 876 times)