Ooh, I finally have something to talk about.
My previous fort ended... well, it broke a bit before due to a complex accident including an aquifer, channelling and freezing, or so. That was the first time I've ever seen a tantrum-throwing dwarf, to be honest.
So, seeing as the fort was like that, I made it an exploratory fort.
That was the first time I've seen a Nether-cap and the magma sea and an underground lake and a Blood thorn...
And cotton candy.
I mined out three z-levels of it.
Unfortunately, only two were HFS-safe. Goddamnit, the top of the candy bunch was only barely sticking out of the third cavern's floor...
First lost fort, first time seeing clowns, lots of genuine Fun, as the previous forts were so boring I just saved them and never came back to the savefiles.
Then.
The next fort, one of those loaded ones... I think it's my second fort ever, from before the time I figured out I could mine out a room next to a pond then breach the wall dividing them to get a perfect farm plot location... anyway. That was my first time seeing a Giant. I kind of panicked, seeing as I still don't know how to set up a military...
Maybe this first. My embark is a 4x4 location. It has a shorter peak, made mostly of slate, in the northwestern corner. It has a higher plateau, made of probably similar stuff like shale and schist, in the northeastern corner. It has a small amount of a river in the southwestern corner. The southeastern corner is boring, being a bit lower up than the lower peak. The rest is just the hill's slope.
Anyway, the Giant, Musor OspluosMod Zukogok (the last part means "the Dominant Syrup), appeared in the southwestern corner. I pulled the levers raising the drawbridges to shut the fortress off temporarily, but my newest entrance on top of the plateau didn't have one yet. So I scrambled to make a squad of someone claiming to be a macedwarf and all my miners, see. The giant went to that entrance, a 3x3 grid of staircases surrounded by a 11x11 incomplete hollow square of walls, then went downstairs and through a short corridor to a large room filled with 2/7 and 3/7 water. I'm not sure what the room is for. It's too large to be a farm plot. I suppose I'll just let stuff grow in the mud there.
In the waterlogged room, the Giant grabbed a Skilled Mason, which was on his way to finish building the walls up there. He was grabbed by his tooth or something.
After several pages of being strangled, this happened
Some animal dissector took ages to haul 11523 weight units of a corpse to a stockpile somewhere in the lower peak. Now, you guys could help me...
1. How do I get a butcher to obtain something from the corpse? That is, if I can do it at all... There is a butcher's shop on the same z-level, and pretty close too, linked with diagonal corridors to keep miasma in.
2. I've got a group (HoM&M group-sized group, so 10-19) of hostile Batman blowgunners in the first cavern level. I've dug a long corridor leading to close to their spot. Now, if I line it with traps, will it be enough or should I finally lern2military? And if traps will suffice, then what kind should I use? I don't really have a metalworking industry or a glassmaking one at all yet... so, will wooden corkscrews or spikes be enough? I think I could make a simple repeater using the fact I have a river down there, so spikes could work... Or I could use drawbridges somehow. Stone is one thing I have lots of.
Anyway, I really could do with lots of advice - even though I read the Wiki and the forums quite a lot, there's still this I have to ask about...