Workhowl, which about two seasons ago looked oh so promising, has been reduced to piles of flaming rubble and corpses. Three different forgotten beasts assaulted us in tandem and there is little hope of recovery.
The first beast, Anu Tomsungogngo, a giant one-eyed winged crocodile, managed to squeeze in to the fortress's central staircase during a desperate scramble for wood from the caverns. I sent all three of our (poorly equipped) squads, hoping to overwhelm the beast, but it was a massacre. The walls and floors had at least three full coats of crimson by the time Anu bit the dust, and the corpses of those it had managed to strangle with its wings had already begun to rot. Anu wiped out more than half of the military and took several citizens. Naturally, no one was pleased to have their previous carefree lifestyle interrupted by such a thing.
One dwarf in particular, Tholtig Letmosteshkad, a former hunter and member of the first immigrant wave, was so unhappy by being surrounded by the corpses of his friends that he started several "fist fights" with other dwarves, all ending with them getting their skulls crushed by his bare hands in seconds. Oddom Bomrekilon, the expedition leader, quickly appointed himself sheriff and locked Tholtig up, sentencing him to 200 or so days in prison. Curiously, at the time of this writing, Tholtig has been chained up in jail for nearly half of his sentence and has not received food or water once, yet is showing absolutely no signs of discomfort...
During Anu's rampage, another forgotten beast arrived: Ejem Magacac Githuesmma, a gigantic humanoid with a spiral shell, composed entirely of fire. Before beginning its assault, Ejem was content with sitting in a small lake in the cavern (which, as far as I can tell, is the
only source of water on the map) and boiling the entire thing away. Afterwords, it managed to find a small cliff overlooking our smelting operation built atop a magma pipe, where it succeeded in throwing fire at and killing at least four furnace operators. Marksdwarves were deployed in an attempt to shoot the beast, but it sneaked away from the cliff and back in to the darkness before any could arrive.
In an attempt to save the pile-up of dying dwarves in the hospital, more miners were sent out to look for passages through the caverns containing fresh water... which brought Workhowl face-to-face with yet
another beast - Agak, an enormous, eyeless, two-tailed aqua
oxpecker with toxic spittle. Agak managed to maneuver forward in a manner that cut off the metalworking area completely from the rest of the fortress. A smith and an engraver were trapped between the oxpecker and the cliff that Ejem had hurled fire at them from previously.
Agak had retreated slightly behind a corner, so the two dwarves must have thought they were safe and tried to escape up the staircase. After attempting to round the corner several times, the smith ended up bleeding out from wounds inflicted by Agak. The engraver, Atir Akgloslorbam, was left all alone with a broken arm from Agak's frozen spittle. Instead of retreating, however, Atir drew an -iron pick- (which I have no idea about the origins of - he was never on mining duty nor in the military) and mercilessly hacked at the beast with it, perforating its lungs and shattering its spine. With its final breath, Agak breathed one more frozen glob of spittle, which managed to nail Atir right in the skull and tear apart his brain, killing him instantly. The beast died seconds later. Atir's heroism will be sung throughout the ages, I'm sure.
... That is, if anyone even gets out of this hellhole and lives to tell his tale. A horde of goblins has arrived and the remaining few members of the outpost are barricaded in to the remains of the living and manufacturing areas. Ejem is still living and has free reign over the lower sections of the fortress. Oddom, a complete stranger to combat but the best option we have, is practicing with The Pillar Of Risks, an artifact copper spear. Tholtig still sits in his cell, unmoving. Workhowl is slowly crumbling to its end.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6188659 times)