After about 6 months of being trapped underground during year 2 I eventually coaxed the Red Dragon into a baited chamber and sealed him within. He'll be a fun surprise for the first Siege I don't fancy dealing with myself.
I've had it unusually easy on the Siege front so far. It's year 5, and the Dark Stranglers and Beak Wolves are still coming. Being animals rather than proper folks, they're butcherable and a great source of meat, leather, and bones. Not to mention excellent training. The White Tigermen had their first go last year but only sent a single squad which didn't stick around after being shot a bit.
The goblins have tried a couple of ambushes. More worryingly, so did the Warlocks. Those guys scare the daylights out of me. Main problem with them being that they tend to explode poisonously when they die, so you simply can't let your melee troops anywhere near them, but equally, their lethal spells go right through fortifications.
The only sensible thing to do with Warlocks is traps, really. Honourable combat will just end up with a lot of dwarves dying in peculiar ways. If they try a full siege I'll set the Dragon on them. We'll see who can AOE spam the other first.
Since the Dragon I had a visit from a rather less terrifying Forest Giant, and then later a Titan decided to swing by. He was made of a proper material, so didn't immediately melt, and managed to devour a foolish fellow who'd decided to go wandering. Happily, that proper material was leather, so it did not last especially long once it came in range of my javelineers.
So, I've had it easy on the proper Sieges, but the Megabeasts seem particularly interested in me.
Kobolds, goblins, orcs, warlocks, automatons, evil humans, evil elves, and evil(er) drow have all had a go at thieving. No sign of the Frogmen, Snakemen, raptormen, frost giants, chaos dwarves, or putrid blendecs yet, but I'm sure they'll eventually turn up to give me some problems.
Internally, my utter lack of natural flux and dearth of fuel means the lads are not as well equipped as I'd like. While my Boneworker is something like level 37 now, and turns out Masterwork Bone Armour and Kite shields like a machine, that'll only get you so far. I've supplemented that with bronze mail and top leather cloaks. Sufficient for Beak Wolves, and actually does a decent job against goblin archers, but really need to get on top of that. Anything bone that isn't Masterwork goes to the mill to be ground to Bonemeal flux.
The other reason I'm so reliant on bone at the moment (apart from the fact I actually have it in abundance) is that my "proper" smiths were lost during the Carp God incident. The darn Cult Leader had only been in my base for 30 seconds, but still managed to convert them before the Armok's Ward revealed his nonsense. Without coal, it also took quite a while to tap into the volcano to get much smelting done. But that's under control now, and I've managed to get some decent welded mithril weapons for the melee boys. I still can't spare any steel for armour yet though.
Another later migrant was a warlock spy, but the Ward of Armok managed to free him of their mental control, and he's alive and well.
Steeloak is coming in very handy. I've managed to get a pretty big plantation going in spite of losing the whole original crop when we were hiding from the dragon, which mostly goes into making pretty effective ammo. I've not figured out how to make wooden kite or tower shields, else I've be using it for that too. I'll be able to use the Herbalist to convert steeloak into steel, once I get around to researching it. It's next on the list, once I get Magicka out of the way.
The Dragon managed to devour a few diplomats and non-cart merchants (the cart ones didn't bother turning up while my doors were all shut) before I got it under control, which rather stunted the trade situation for a couple of years, but folks are mostly talking to me again. Dragonfire is very thorough, and left almost nothing to scavenge from their tragic deaths.
Apart from the Carp God business, which between the folks who turned and the folks they killed, very nearly managed to put the early fort out of business, I've not had too many deaths. One to each of the Megabeasts (There's always some idiot wandering around in the wrong place for no good reason) and one to a nasty case of Warpstone inhalation.
So, things *appear* to be stable for now. But that will probably only last until something more dangerous than beak wolves mounted on giant tree frogs comes in force.
