Made a new fort with a volcano on the embark. Idea was to drill down and haul everything I had into the caverns to try and survive. 2 miners, 1 woodcutter/carpenter, 1 trained fighter, 1 Mason/Architects, 1 Furnace operator, 1 Blacksmith. A straight forward and simple plan if there ever was one.
First hurdle, My exploratory shaft can't find any caverns. We dig deeper, and DEEPER and DEEPER! At more than 1000Ft below the ground I begin to lose hope, then at 1500Ft below the surface we strike our first cavern. There is much moaning about climbing 1500 feet of stairs to offload the wagon.
All goes well for about a minute, and then...
Second hurdle, Trogs, lots. While I'm trying to sort of prioritize what they need to take down to the caverns with them I get a "Urist McWoodcutter cancels store item in stockpile: interrupted by troglodyte." I quickly mobilize a military force of 4 dwarves and send them hurtling down the stairs. Meanwhile my blacksmith takes an unlucky blow to the back of the head an gets slumped across the wall of the volcano, dead. My first militia engages the trog when three more come charging out of the blackness. The first three trogs go down without much of a fuss, then an unlucky shot takes a recruit in the brain and kills him. The militia is almost done battering the first trog to death when another 3 saunter over to do battle. We lose yet another man and the militia leader is victim to severe bruising and 6 broken fingers, but at long last the trog threat has been defeated.
Reduced to a population of 4 transfer between surface and the caverns is greatly slowed. However in fit of uncharacteristic good luck we get an early migrant wave of 3 good strong dwarves. Back up to 7 dwarves things proceed as planned until... my miner who appears to have lost a friend and a lover to the troglodyte battles tantrums and hacks the arm off the original fighting dwarf and militia commander. He is retired from duty and is replaced by a moderately skill bone worker.
Third Hurdle, the GCS. This time I was watching our lower camp when it came chittering out of the blackness to kill us all. My response, draft every single able bodied dwarf to kill it. The six (Former Militia commander asleep upstairs, dehydrated, starving, and miserable because everyone else is busy.) dwarves come down the stairs screaming war cries, the spider webs the first, rips his chest open and then whips around to rip the head off of my current militia commander. This gives precious time for a couple dwarves to pile up on it break several legs, its abdomen, and its cephalothorax. The result?
The spider looks slightly nauseous as it tears through three more dwarves. (How in blue blazes does a spider "look nauseous"?) It takes a moment to finish off the first dwarf it webbed and goes scrambling up the stairs at top speed. There it meets my last remaining militia member, a veteran of the trog battles. The fight on the stairs, it goes on for far longer than I expected and in the end my valiant dwarf becomes an elite wrestler. Still that is not enough to save him from being ripped apart. The spider continues to frolick up the stairs at a disturbing pace.
The GCS runs right past my one armed militia commander, and out into the sun. It is at this point that I get the horrible feeling of "What have we done?" as I watch the GCS run around outside and dart off the edge of the map. I stay with my former militia commander in his final days, towards the end he threw a tantrum screaming and yelling. He slipped off only a day later...
YOUR FORTRESS HAS CRUMBLED TO ITS END....
I don't remember the name of the fortress, but I do remember the name of the volcano I embarked on... it was called "The Fires Of Failing".
How's that for prognostication... Now I wonder if the GCS will populate the surface with its horrible children.