I should not have doubted my commander. It went quite smoothly: first, it was a small group of axemen, led by a master lasher - their captain was the only dangerous one, and by the time we went down to meet the enemy on the field, he was already trapped in a cage, along with two of his men. The fight was pretty one-sided, but I had a chance to really see the legends in action for the first time.
Captain Silus went to battle without his armor, and even without his weapon. He only carried his trusty shield. Sir tells me this is something of a custom to him, he did something similar against a whole siege of dark stanglers in Shadytorments. However, he did that one alone, so going into THIS battle without proper equipment was a cakewalk for him.
Freya is a beast. A fucking beast, I tell you. I never saw her actually use that battleaxe of hers outside the training room, and boy, am I glad that she's on our side. She claims that her skills have rusted a bit, but judging from this battle, you wouldn't know. She just went ahead, chopping limbs with every strike, effortlessly deflecting the few blows that came towards her. She seemed invincible.
The commander is every bit the warrior he's supposed to be. He swings that mithril greatsword like there's no tomorrow, and he didn't even seem to get tired from it. He made the whole fight look like a warmup, which it totally was, compared to what was to come.
We did another round of this, not taking a single scratch, but for the third time, the tigermen wised up. They sent forward their sauropods, holding the bridge down with their enormous weight. This was a problem: we could not separate chunks of the army anymore. Almost half of their initial force was immobilized or killed at this point, and they still outnumbered us four to one. Good odds for any dwarf!
I don't remember much from this fight. A couple of guys collapsed, either from wounds or exhaustion, body parts flew everywhere (mostly tigermen heads), but I do remember some turning points.
First off, Silus' spartans are incredible. Since the Metal Lady outfitted them with mithril spears, they seem unstoppable. There were only four of them, but they were the best four we had out there by far. Silus trained the True Phalanx incredibly well. Unfortunately, they overextended themselves a bit, and Silus herself got hurt pretty bad. Soon, his two new recruits passed out from exhaustion, only Greenhorn stood his ground until the very end.
Panopticon was also surprisingly effective through the whole thing, I reckon he broke quite a few bones with his warhammer.
To sum it up, we were kicking some serious ass. I personally killed four of them, and wounded many more, before a sauropod got me. It messed up my arm really bad, and I must have passed out, because when I came to, there were mutilated bodies everywhere, and the battle was over.
As the others told me, the tigermen broke their charge after the losses on their side became astronomical, and wanted to flee. The commander would have none of it: he gave the command to raise the drawbridge, trapping the remaining enemies near the trade depot. It was brutal. All of them were quickly slain, except their leader, a master lasher. They say that one put up a hell of a fight, it took Sir and Freya everything they had to defeat that one together. Wow. That must have been something, it's a shame I was taking a nap when it happened. Finally, Freya tackled the guy into the moat, and the bastard bled out down there.
Either way, the battle is over, the day is won. We have quite a number of injured dwarfs, but no casualties. The gates remain locked however: among the real fighters, only Freya is standing, and Greenhorn will probably be all right after a little rest - he doesn't have any real wounds, he's just completely exhausted.
The other three spartans had it way worse, all of them have multiple broken and fractured bones, it will take a while for them to get back on their feet, even Silus. Sir and myself aren't better off either. Even though the commander insisted that he is 'fine', he couldn't exactly hide his broken right arm. Doc might have let him off with his various bruises (and he has plenty), but he wants to keep Sir inside at least he can use his arm again.
This situation may be bad, since autumn is very near, and we may find ourselves without water again.
(I didn't make this up: different world, different dwarf, different fortress, even a completely different version of the game, and the dwarf called Silus pulls the same shit as she did in the original fort: going into battle completely naked and unarmed, save for her shield.)
Author
Topic: Shadytorments, a Masterwork DF Community Fort (Read 40926 times)