I encountered my first dragon a few days ago. I'm running a !!SCIENCE!! based fort, so I've put very little effort into my military, so I thought 'oh shit!' and buttoned up, confining civilians to the inside burrow and went to my dining hall to pull the levers to seal the entrances. Then my ADHD kicked in and I got distracted for a few minutes. When I eventually happened to look at the top level, there was a bunch of blackened terrain and then I saw this WHOOSH! of flame. Oh yeah, the dragon!
BTW, if you're reading this Toady, The dragonfire effect is awesome. I've never seen anyone mention it before, but it looks really good. It's a bully effect!
I saw that the dragon was barbecuing a stray war dog (torch all you want, we'll make more). When the poor pooch was finished, the dragon headed after something else. I looked and realized it was a dwarf, one of my haulers apparently got caught outside. A quick look around revealed another dwarf out there, too. Nuts. I watched as the dragon toasted the hauler (see above comment about making more) and then turned to the other dwarf. This one was an axedwarf who had been off duty and chopping wood outside, but was now activated. I figured the dragon would toast him as well. I looked away for a few moments to check my drawbridges and came back expecting to see a gory end, but instead the plucky little axedwarf was right next to the dragon and they were circling quickly. I checked the combat report and saw the the first hit had been by the axeman. He'd hit the dragon's head with his -iron battle axe- and fractured its upper spine. It showed as just yellow in the wounds view, not the red that would mean the spinal cord was cut, so the dragon was still fighting, but not very well. The dwarf proceeded to hack and hack and hack, and finally finished the dragon off, single handedly. I don't know what his starting axe skill was, but he ended up at 7. I'm guessing he started at 5 or 6. This guy's getting a room upgrade. And a wheelbarrow to carry around those huge balls of his (hmmm, actually, I'm assuming the dwarf was male, coulda been female).
Not the outcome I expected when I first saw the dragon announcement. One doesn't really expect a lone, low skill axedwarf with an iron axe and mostly copper/bronze goblinite armor to take out a dragon single-handedly. The dwarf earned a name, and so did the axe.