Hopefully
My booze stocks have been shaky of late! Thanks for the information, I feel sincerely more culturally aware now
Silvertrumpets just utterly annihilated a goblin siege. A body count of those dead on the ground reveals around 30, and another 33 are trapped in a drowning chamber awaiting execution. This is out of the 70 goblins who besieged me.
And for the first time in its history, the fortress of Silvertrumpets was penetrated by goblin hands! There were 6 squads: speargoblins, macegoblins, and two bowgoblin squads, as well as 2 tumults of trolls. How I hate bowgoblins, who pierce my masterwork steel armor with their shoddy iron bolts! One of the bowgoblin squads, along with the general of the Little Witch (Which is the goblin civilization) walked straight into my drowning chamber. The general, Zolak, was a
dwarf. Obviously he must have been new on the job, as the goblins were very weary of his leadership. As soon as the goblins realized they had been lead into the trap they slaughtered Zolak, who was a mere fisherdwarf. I wonder what I'll do for his burial... I think I'll toss him to deal with the eternal wrath of Armok in the belly of the world.
The squad itself is still in there, several are mounted on elk birds and a few on giant toads. I'm extremely grateful to have them captured and out of the way, though with their still wandering about the siege ticker remains despite my total victory otherwise.
The pillbox design that served me ludicrously well during the first siege once again proved its extreme worth during this battle. 12 goblin corpses lay all around the pillbox, in varying states of halted retreat. I did, unfortunately, lose yet another marksdwarf... though I have nobody but myself to blame for his death, since he was part of a rapid response squad that was not designed to handle outright combat. Oh well. Down to 10 marksdwarves!
As I chuckled to myself at the stupidity of the goblins who were being stuck through and through with my masterwork Forgotten Beast and Steel bolts, I began receiving messages of various jobs being interrupted. I zoom in to see what the problem is... and notice that part of the drowning chamber (which had been built almost to completion in the year and a half since the last siege) breached the surface. That meant that the goblins had a clear shot at getting straight down into my fortress. They had only to descend the stairs and walk through a few corridors before they would reach the depot, just below which lied my 100 busy-working, defenseless dwarves.
Well, when I say defenseless I mean they individually are not prone to combat. My militia, however, was stationed as it always is during sieges right in the depot. Even as close as it was to the new threat, a few dwarves had ran into the upper drowning chamber that had released on some stupid errand or other. One of them, who was a part of my fortress guard, was chased outside by a maceman and promptly pulped. Another, a legendary woodcutter who'd created an outright elvish artifact, ran outside and was gunned down by the elite crossbowman who'd now shown up leading the second bowgoblin squad.
At this point the squad of trolls had beaten down first the front door to my aforementioned trap corridor, and were proceeding to the second, while simultaneously the other troll squad was tearing down another door that lead to the upper hills, around the same area where the goblins exploited the breach. Once both doors were smashed the bowgoblin squad was able to join up with the trolls, and the goblins proceeded towards the breach. By this point, however, my militia had poured out from it, and from there things were a mess of flying goblin bits and pieces. A few injuries were taken, as in any battle; My militia commander had his arms and legs both shot up and is now unable to walk or grasp, but there's no nerve damage so I think he'll heal. Another younger militia member was not so lucky, and he's now restricted to crutches.
Once the carnage subsided, I was able to slow down a moment and take in all that had happened. In total I lost about 5 dwarves during the battle, the only military casualties of which were the guard member and the militia captain of my rapid response unit. Though this siege was much grander in scale than the previous I certainly had a lot less casualties this time around. I think sending in my highly trained militia, instead of sending the marksdwarves to sit in the pillbox and mow baddies down, is a bit more effective.