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[pumpedupjellos]

Let's hear about everyone's experiences with the most epic sieges, forgotten ones, megabeasts and titans they've encountered, how they tackled them and how horrendous fun it was!

Remember to use spoiler texts when narrating your adventures so readers are not faced with a wall of text 

Here's an account of my goblin siege as recorded by the late Urik Zozrigoth, esteemed bookkeeper of Nazusharban, the Blood Fortress.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It all began with a small fortress backed in a corner of the map with a great ocean to her left and rich plains and hills sprawled out in front of it. The fortress was home to about 130 dwarves with a small army of only 15 fighters and 15 marksdwarves.

The mayor had thought that a large army wouldn't be necessary given the precedent success of fortress' present defenses which helped it tide the last goblin siege, namely two ballistae, a moat (which drew water from the ocean and returned it in a cycle) and a booby trapped minefield pasture adorned with cage traps, weapon traps and all manners of tools meant to take out most of the enemy forces before they reached the moat, without getting his fat dwarven hands dirty.

Nothing could have prepared him for what was to come. When the goblins returned with a vengeance, they appeared right above the green mountain whose face the dwarves had carved their fortress into and unlike the previous assault... the goblins were determined not to repeat their blunder and had raised an army far larger than anything the dwarves had ever encountered. Trolls, Troll miners and cave crocodiles filled their ranks and their numbers totalled north of 60. The wicked force swiftly made their way down the trap-free mountain baring razor-sharp, semi-corroded teeth as they cackled with delight, their terrifying features accentuated with the anticipation of enslaving the dwarf children bursting through their face in uncontrolled paedophilic convulsions.

Horrified at having overlooked this major flaw in the castle's fortifications, the mayor tore down the hallway screaming and locked himself in his room, carrying half the nobles with him, to cower and sit the invasion out like the weak-gutted fleshballs they were. The Captain of the Guard, Oddom Assentunum, however knew that the goblins wouldn't leave, nor be satisfied until every last dwarven male and bearded lady was captured or dead. He resolved to make a last stand and galvanized the entire population (save the cowering nobles) into forming a civilian army of 120 odd dwarves.

The militia captain, Litast Lunlimul, took on the daunting task of organizing the unruly rabble of quarreling, nervous dwarves and deftly organized them into teams of 10. These teams, as named by their respective captains, were The People of Rohan, The Shirelings, Hammer of Moria, The Riverfolk, Shepards of Fangorn, Wargs of Angmor and Misty Mountaineers. It was like a reenaction of the battle for Helm's Deep fought many eons ago by the civilian forces of Rohan drafted on quick notice against the terrible horde of orcs spawned from Armok's madness and his unsatiated lust for blood.

The trolls came first, smashing through stone doors and walls like they were made of paper. Goblins mounted on cave crocodiles tailed closely behind with goblin archers at the back concentrating their fire through the side door where they had chosen to make their breach. It was ironic that they had chosen a graveyard (refuse and corpse stockpile) for the last stand of Nazusharban, and this irony wasn't lost on the brave dwarves who threw themselves at the trolls in the doorway hoping to smite their foes in their would-be graves. The dwarves however had greatly underestimated the might of the lumbering hulks who tore through their ranks just as easily as they crushed doors with their bare hands.

Eventually, the dwarves managed to gain the upper hand but at a steep cost - only a hundred dwarves remained - and just as they were about to rejoice in their bitter victory... the howl of wardogs on the far end of the valley alerted them to a goblin ambush. The ambush party was small but still posed a significant threat... if not for the fact that they had spawned on a hill opposite the castle with the minefield to traverse between them. The bridge was raised and the goblins were left to tear themselves to pieces in the pastures as doe-eyed grazers and fowl watched them in amusement.

The castle was saved.

To this day, the civilian army stands ever ready (albeit inactive) to remember the brave warriors who refused to surrender and stood their ground in the face of overwhelming odds, to treasure their sacrifice and remind every dwarf, bearded lady and child that freedom isn't given, you must earn it or die trying... because if something's worth having, it's worth fighting for.

- The End -

P.S. The inadequate mayor was subsequently tossed into an arena with goblin prisoners to prove his mettle and to ascertain if Armok felt that he deserved the mandate of authority previously bestowed upon him by the people. He did not.

[Echostatic]

Sounds like a hard fought battle. How did you avoid a fatal tantrum spiral after losing ~30 dwarves at once?

[pumpedupjellos]

Sounds like a hard fought battle. How did you avoid a fatal tantrum spiral after losing ~30 dwarves at once?

I couldn't, but it was partly ameliorated by a huge graveyard of empty coffins I built earlier to preempt mass ghosting and hysteria. Things got better as the new migrant waves brought fresh faces, untouched by the war and the fortress slowly rebuilt itself. I think productive migrants appearing after a harsh winter and excess food and booze to tide their misery were key to surviving the tantrum spiral

[klefenz]

A bronze colossus came and one of my soldiers decapitated it with a spear, whatever. It became a statue of a goblin.

[Nidilap]

I once had a fort with an army of 15 recruits, and they've been training for a month or so. I decided to test them out on a human caravan. 2 minutes later my 32 dwarf fort was turned into a 2 dwarf war zone. Nothing survived. Except the human caravan. They left unsatisfyed.

[klefenz]

I once had a fort with an army of 15 recruits, and they've been training for a month or so. I decided to test them out on a human caravan. 2 minutes later my 32 dwarf fort was turned into a 2 dwarf war zone. Nothing survived. Except the human caravan. They left unsatisfyed.

What equipment did they have?

[PDF urist master]

a forgotten beast made of mud came into my fort, but it had deadly dust. One of my best marksdwarves fought it and killed it, but the dust gave him full body necrosis, causing him to lose his sight. he currently wonders my fort as a doctor.

[WanderingKid]

Forgotten Beast gets 'stuck' in one of my hallways, too close to a door to destroy it.  I chain a dog downstream of it, and proceed to build a bridge behind it, after attaching the chain to a lever somewhere else.  Close up the bridge, release the dog.

Did I mention this was a reanimating biome?

Said dog runs into the FB, and dies a horrible death.  The head and body are separated.

Krypto, the super undead dog head, proceeds to battle the FB for over a year.  If pulping existed, the head was long gone... but it doesn't yet.  It has only one tooth left in its head.  The FB proceeds to repeatedly destroy it, only to have it spring back to life nearly immediately.  I'm not sure it truly ever died.

After gnawing with gum and tooth on the FB for what seemed like eternity, there's bits and pieces of the FB lying around the floor... and now Krypto, the super dog head, having nowhere else to go... is just hanging out where I'd boxed in the FB that wouldn't move.  I think I'm more afraid of my own superweapon now than I was of the FB...

[Larix]

My favourite was my first human siege. I hadn't found out what makes humans actually path towards your fort, so they just camped on the borders of the map. But since they were completely static, that allowed my miners to dig out the floor under them, dig a trench all around the squad from below and eventually cave in the field the humans stood on. The only way out was heavily trapped, and after a while, they were all caged or chopped to bits. This was in my no-military fort, and i found it a very nice piece of dwarven ingenuity. And i turned the sinkhole into a neat "outside" statue garden (roofed over) for growing aboveground plants, beekeeping and of course heavy-duty partying.

[Berossus]

Not so epic, but i recently was reminded of the fact that webber-titans are in fact trapavoid.
Especially funny when your defense against a zombie-infested horde of goblins in a zombifying-cloud tundra consists of cage traps and a weapon trap in the migrant-access tunnels.

Zombie-webber-tundra-titan ended my fort.

[Thief]

Goblin siege and human siege and for fun i forced a dwarven siege fit an army for War my troops dies save 1 but my War axes killed them all

[Nidilap]

I once had a fort with an army of 15 recruits, and they've been training for a month or so. I decided to test them out on a human caravan. 2 minutes later my 32 dwarf fort was turned into a 2 dwarf war zone. Nothing survived. Except the human caravan. They left unsatisfyed.

What equipment did they have?

Silver shortswords. And leather armor. This was my first military...

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Spoiler: The FB and the Woodcutter (click to show/hide)

A woodcutter was working in the caverns when a forgotten beast came. The woodcutter ran away from safety but got trapped on a ledge. The Forgotten beast then attacked him. The two of them fought for a little while, but the beast ripped his arms off. Somehow, before he bled out, he bit the things head off. 

[morderkaine]

The Inferno of Glory - or - Why my Military only carries water

My fort had recently dug down into a large cavern complex deep underground, and my first FB appeared!
It was described as a giant fire spitting ant, effectively.
Since my fort was built around a central stairwell, I sent my two squads of dwarves, marksmen and axe warriors down the stairs to head it off before it got up into the living quarters. About 10-12 in total.
They confronted it in the 2X2 stairwell, and the fight was going rather well. Dwarves were dodging fireballs, hacking at the FB. One severed its trunk, it was covered in axe wounds, and when it looked like the battle was won I stopped paying close attention.
Next thing I know, Im getting messages that dwarves are dying! I start investigating and see all but 1 member of my military just died in explosions.
What happened was the dying FB's last attack was a fireball that hit one of my Dwarves and ignited the barrel of rum he was carrying around on him in preparation for a drink during break. This started a chain reaction causing all but one dwarf's barrels of rum to explode killing every thing in the stairwell except for the one crossbow dwarf who was out of range yet rather traumatized by seeing his entire squad explode before his eyes.
Immediately, and for all forts after that - Military set to carry water, no booze, while on duty.

[Flarp]

This is less Epic and more Amusingly Horrible, but I had an experience with a Brush Titan, Sanad, a great horned serpent with a stinging tail - for those of you keeping track at home, that's three body parts (fangs, horn, stinger) that were capable of delivering a blister-inducing poison.

My fort was still in its early days - Sanad was the first non-goblin enemy the site had faced since embark. Most of the population lived in small, open bedrooms near the manually-irrigated underground farms. Those areas of the fort were not yet building-destroyer-proofed, so once the Brush Titan smashed his way in, all hell broke loose. His first move was to break the floodgates that controlled the irrigation system - the sizable cistern then gushed out, knocking several farmers unconscious and filling the upper levels of the fort with a few feet of stagnant water.

The (inept) Fortress Militia was quickly mobilized, only for Sanad to bite off the commander's arms, spitting the left one out at a high enough velocity to cave in the second-in-command's skull. At this point, poisoned dwarf blood was rapidly contaminating the groundwater, but thankfully only ingestion activated the syndrome, so the surviving farmers were safe. Sanad retreated into the cistern as I sealed off the upper fortress and began re-arming the remaining hammerdwarves.

...until, of course, Sanad smashed the other set of floodgates, letting the nearby river flood the fort. This, in turn, allowed the blood-contaminated water to seep into the well, which was the only drinking source the sealed-in dwarves had. Most died pretty quickly from suffocation(?), but a few survivors already drank before the farms were walled off remained. The next in-game month or so was devoted to watching the incredibly macabre game of hide-and-seek they were playing with Sanad as they waded through the floodwaters soaked with the gore of their fallen comrades.

Then they died, and Sanad killed everyone else. I reclaimed with seven Marksdwarves and shot Sanad in the face. Go team dwarf.