Started a new fort, after not playing for months and months. Highlights include:
-My first trading session with the elves went swimmingly...up until I accidentally offered them a wooden crutch or bin or something (I was throwing them everything in my crafts bins, and I thought I made sure not to select the bin itself), right as I was trading a pantload of junk (would have been the final trade for the season). Thankfully, I still had all their cloth selected, so I just seized it and ran. It's not like I plan to be nice to them for long, anyway.
-My hunter seems to have trouble focusing on a kill, so there's a couple of geese flying around with broken wings. Somehow.
-Finally trying to create a settlement deeper into the ground, starting with breaching the caverns and trying to make a permanent well source. Everyone keeps running off to collect webs or something like that, which led to...
-Blind Cave Ogres wandered close by and chased down several civilians. The military eventually killed them (thankfully, a weaponsmith got a strange mood at the start of the year), but not before two civilians and one soldier were killed by a single ogre. To be fair, the civilians had it coming, some running right at the ogres and others not going back into the fort when they saw their friends being beaten into a pulp. how i does use burrows?
-Somehow, two dwarves with injuries that probably should have killed them survived: one was a wrestler who had a major artery in his upper body severed and was already pale by the time the ogre he was fighting was killed by his buddies. Somehow, the bleeding stopped, and he walked himself all the way to the hospital (something like 15 floors up, with a couple narrow passageways), where he was cleaned up. He didn't even get a chance to have his wounds dressed or anything before it closed up, and now he just walks around, a little faint right now and with a massive scar, but otherwise perfectly fine. Badass.
-The other was a civilian who just saw two others get murdered and didn't think that maybe he should try to ensure his own survival; a hammerdwarf would later die of suffocation (I think from a broken upper spine) trying to save him. The military and ogre pretty much fought right on top of this guy, who had shattered bones everywhere, and yet he didn't bleed out, either. My hospital staff's project for the winter is piecing him back together.
-All this, and I'm probably due for an attack by goblins soon (I picked a civilization that was already at war with them). Should end badly. At least now I know the importance of armor.
-Apparently, I didn't check my civilization a little more, and there doesn't seem to be any leaders anymore (the last one died in 209, killed and mutilated by a goblin. I started in 251). In fact, the whole history of the civilization involves at least two goblin civilizations coming in, pillaging the towns, and killing the royals, generals, etc. in horrific ways, to the point where I'm surprised this isn't a dead civilization in spite of the game giving up and not giving it any more kings and queens (I'm getting caravans, thankfully). The only success it ever seemed to have was an awesome general who fought back and invaded the goblins, just to die of old age in 200.
-So, what I'm trying to say is, this fort is boned.