I've been playing on a small, mountainous area for a while. I was starting to thrive with trade and metals, and was ready to go deep. In this land, there were NO animals, besides the meager amounts of fish and turtles (turtlessss) in the river. So my military, armed with basic copper, bronze and iron weapons, were ready for anything.
I'll explain my land a bit.
Since there were few dwarves for fishing early on and no animals whatsoever, I had everybody-everybody, I'm serious- gather plants, each season. I had over 400 seeds at one point, and when migrants came, if you can't get seeds you'll fucking starve to death so do it. Then, gradually, I turned every migrant into a fisherdwarf, mason, and furnace operator at the same time, regardless of what they were to come. Food in Hammerdented was, more or less, the economy. (Did I mention that there was hardly a single beer for everyone once per year? Yeah.) And tombs were made, for anybody who was important, a tradition in Hammerdented.
But I dug deep, and a Forgotten Beast arose from a previous cave. I ignored it for a while, and it traveled outside, terrorizing my dwarves. I muttered "psssh" and sent my 8-person armed military to fight.
They all died.
I made sure my expedition leader and miners were inside and locked the doors, watching as 50 dwarves were immediately drafted into a new squad and then murdered. Slowly, the people inside became thirsty. I dug into the side of a storage room into a lake, flooding it and killing two dwarves. We got water, but we couldn't get rid of the bodies. Miasma spread everywhere, and nobody wanted to make coffins. Most people's children died. Slowly, the miasma turned people into maniacs, and chaos in the fort began. I ordered my miner/expedition leader to go into the food storage and locked him in with a farmer. People outside banged on the doors and died.
Goden, my leader, and Litast, my farmer, slept and wept. Goden is throwing a tantrum. I order Goden to mine to the underground lake through the engraved wall-the one with the first rendition of a famous engraving- as soon as he wakes. They're both injured a bit, but I have ~390 biscuits, turtles, and cut liver to be eaten. Someday, they will fight back...
Also oh fuck I'm so boned right now.