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[Triaxx2]

So we've all had fortresses which have lasted for ages. And had them which died because it's occasionally not possible to reach the wagon before the zombies reach you. And yes, once in a while the magma gets ya.

I must admit that this is the first time I've had a fortress die of thirst while drinking.

So what happened? I started a fortress, up against the foot hills of a mountain, struck the earth and started in. The embark had said little soil, but I found enough to start a farm, and got it producing booze. Then I went about the business of Embarking. First problem was running out of food. I'm not sure how it happened, because I thought I'd brought enough, but it happened. Then we ran out of booze, which is strange since I'd been producing. Then the water froze. And I started losing dwarves to thirst. Turns out that I'd gotten the farms up, and in place, but never set them to PLANT anything. I also had a hunter out, but no butcher's shop. Because of the 21 dwarves I had, not a single one had butchery as a skill. So I started that. Unfortunately, I ran into the downward spiral where they stop doing things because they're hunting vermin.

Then the Caravan arrives. I'm saved, right? Wrong. I get some goods, trade them for some wine and food, and the Trader starts drinking. And then proceeds to die of thirst. Mid drink. It seems he was my last dwarf. Reclaim time.

So, that's my Most Awkward Fortress Death. What's yours?

[Dwarfotaur]

I'm god damn terrible at remembering which of my leavers do what.

I've had many an awkward death due to pulling the wrong one.

Case in point:

I had a fort with two entry passage ways. A 3 tile wide straight line (easy access) and a single tile wide massive zig zag shape full of traps. I had two levers. One to raise the internal bridge so neither path can get in the fortress and another lever to raise the 3 tile wide bridge to force everything through the trap corridor.

I'm being sieged by some Goblins so I send my awesome military to the inner bridge to hold them off. I then tell a dwarf to pull the lever that raises the 3 tile wide bridge. Eagerly I watch the 3 tile wide bridge to watch it raise and shut the goblins off... Strange, nothing happened. I quickly panic, pause and check the other bridge. I had risen the bridge with all my military on it and smashed them in to the ceiling.

So now I had no military, some goblins had got in through the easy access and the majority of my dwarves were already about to tantrum spiral due to the death of so many friends/family in the military -_- I went out gracefully by raising a different bridge to the caverns, which let out a megabeast that had arrived earlier as a final middle finger to the goblins.

[AyeAgree]

The other day on my current fort I did something similar - drank up all the booze and somehow ran out of seeds (maybe they were baked into cookies? I dont know.) and missed the trader (no depot). Then the water froze over. I ended up digging down into the caves as fast as possible, and setting a water zone down there. All my dwarves flocked to get a drink. I have a feeling this will lead to a more gruesome death of my fortress :/

[lobstercow42]

I'm god damn terrible at remembering which of my leavers do what.

I've had many an awkward death due to pulling the wrong one.

Case in point:

I had a fort with two entry passage ways. A 3 tile wide straight line (easy access) and a single tile wide massive zig zag shape full of traps. I had two levers. One to raise the internal bridge so neither path can get in the fortress and another lever to raise the 3 tile wide bridge to force everything through the trap corridor.

I'm being sieged by some Goblins so I send my awesome military to the inner bridge to hold them off. I then tell a dwarf to pull the lever that raises the 3 tile wide bridge. Eagerly I watch the 3 tile wide bridge to watch it raise and shut the goblins off... Strange, nothing happened. I quickly panic, pause and check the other bridge. I had risen the bridge with all my military on it and smashed them in to the ceiling.

So now I had no military, some goblins had got in through the easy access and the majority of my dwarves were already about to tantrum spiral due to the death of so many friends/family in the military -_- I went out gracefully by raising a different bridge to the caverns, which let out a megabeast that had arrived earlier as a final middle finger to the goblins.

Used to be aproblem, now I leave (n)otes on all of them telling me what they do

[Dwarfotaur]

Used to be aproblem, now I leave (n)otes on all of them telling me what they do

You can leave notes?!

[Nopkar]

Used to be aproblem, now I leave (n)otes on all of them telling me what they do

You can leave notes?!

*mind exploding*

Most embarrassing was my river>fort flood mechanism in case of catastrophic failure my dwarves would retreat to a burrow within a second, much deeper fortress...I pulled the wrong one

[Triaxx2]

It's (N)otes. (n) is nobility.

My second most awkward is probably punching through an aquifer and then later forgetting I had done so and trying to dig back up. The water flooded it until there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I reclaimed twice. Once as an above ground fortress, and again by punching through the aquifer in a different spot, then filling the breach hole with magma.

[Garath]

I had a goblin demon general hang around too long so I made a cave-in trap to kill it. I had forgotten that cave ins go through floors, so bye bye went the meeting area, a large part of the crafters, bedrooms and everything in between. some 15 z-levels lower it stopped, but it had killed or maimed about 40 dwarves and left a big big hole in my defences. Defences that continued to get worse as the tantrum spiral got completely out of hand and the military seemed involved in a sort of free for all. But hey, the goblin demon general was dead too.

[Dwarfotaur]

I had a goblin demon general hang around too long so I made a cave-in trap to kill it. I had forgotten that cave ins go through floors, so bye bye went the meeting area, a large part of the crafters, bedrooms and everything in between. some 15 z-levels lower it stopped, but it had killed or maimed about 40 dwarves and left a big big hole in my defences. Defences that continued to get worse as the tantrum spiral got completely out of hand and the military seemed involved in a sort of free for all. But hey, the goblin demon general was dead too.

I've done something similar D: I was building an 'apartment' complex and had multiple floors exactly the same from bottom to top. I made a mistake on the final floor so I designated some tiles to be removed so I could replace them. Well, I removed them in the wrong order and caused the ceiling to successfully punch through every single layer of the apartment building... The worst part was the bottom floor was the meeting area. So I maimed almost everyone who was in bed and then deposited them and a load of rocks on to everyone in the meeting area >_>

[TheZoomZoll]

The other day on my current fort I did something similar - drank up all the booze and somehow ran out of seeds (maybe they were baked into cookies? I dont know.) and missed the trader (no depot). Then the water froze over. I ended up digging down into the caves as fast as possible, and setting a water zone down there. All my dwarves flocked to get a drink. I have a feeling this will lead to a more gruesome death of my fortress :/

FB carp fish that makes tornados with dust that make dwarves bleed out of their ass?No?Okay.

[itisnotlogical]

I completely forgot to set up farms and stills once. Never even crossed my mind. I had two dining rooms, 15+ apartments, and even got a fey mood. Then all of the original seven died of thirst pretty close to the same time.

[Oaktree]

My first fort died to an ettin.   

Came in and started chasing dwarves around.  Strangled a few, and that drew out more dwarves wanting the ever valuable *death socks*.  My criminally underequipped and undertrained militia fought it and wounded it so that it ran away and sulked on the edge of the embark for a while.  In the meantime I tried to get my wounded dwarves hauled inside and the other civilians back inside the walls.  After a while the ettin came back and started finishing off the wounded dwarves who had been left lying there for 2-3 weeks.

At this point I snapped, drafted my 35 remaining dwarves as recruits (no armor, some weapons) and attempted to get the ettin with a wave assault.  That resulted in more dwarf corpses littering the landscape and the beginnings of a tantrum spiral that finished off everything else.   

When I did a reclaim I left a hatch unlocked by accident - and the ettin charged into the fortress perimeter proper.  And was caught in a cage trap.  (I didn't know at the time that semi-mega beasts were vulnerable to those.)  Said ettin proceeded to be a pain even after being captured due to various failed schemes to get rid of it.  Eventually it was turned loose into a trap corridor along with a bunch of imprisoned goblins where upon a serrated disc decapitated one of the heads and it bled out.

I've been lucky so far in that my cave-ins and aquifer floodings have been local in scope and not fortress destroying.

[Dyret]

Dead kitten wedging open the floodgate... it's just a dead cat, it's not like, OH GOD GOBLIN SIEGE I CAN'T CLOSE THE GATES OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD, your fortress has crumbled, etc, etc... I mean, seriously, I'd known about the damned thing for half a year.

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

Had a vampire come to my fort. Bastard got like 12 of my dwarves before I found out who it was.

I had him sentenced to death by dropping him into a pit. It didn't work. I tried again, higher. Still didn't take. I put spikes in the pit. Nothing. This dude's unbreakable! I sentence him to hammering by convicting him of all 12 murders in the justice screen. Hammerer breaks every bone in the vampire's body. HE STILL LIVES.

How did he die?

He finally died of thirst while immobilized in the hospital because he could not drink any blood. XD

[MasterMorality]

Death by giant undead birds. Transformed by a cloud of evil soot, about four of them massacred sixty or so Dwarves because they just could not be killed. The only one that died was atom smashed accidentally by a drawbridge, after a lever was pulled or destroyed or something by a tantruming farmer.