Playing with the Masterwork Mod.
Work progresses on the all-marble-blocks Grand Cathedral to Armok at the site of MossyHammer, an idyllic setting with a small river running between two hills. The Cathedral is being constructed on one hill with the fortress proper beneath it. When finished it will have multiple falls of both water and magma, an altar to Armok made out of clownite, and a pool filled to the brim with the blood of Armok's foes and traitors to the cause.
All is not well beneath the Cathedral dome. The administration spends most of their time shut up in their rooms avoiding the rabble. Which is lucky for them because here I thought finding a magma tube a mere ten z-levels beneath the fortress to be a boon.
Suddenly, a Fire Man appears! Armorsmith incinerated shortly after being kicked in the eyelid repeatedly. This Fire Man doesn't pull any punches, literally. He kicks.
Rouse the spearmilitia (a bunch of dwarves in copper equipment with absolutely no training. That's what my defenses consist of. That, and two wargolems). They arrive FAR too late to do anything useful. The nearby peasant mob going for socks manages to scare the Fire Man back into the magma tube. I've no doubt he'll return in short order to incinerate more dwarves and kick in more eyelids.
Random peasant on fire literally SPRINTS up the ramps back to the main halls. Ignites all the moss on the ground, the inferno ends up killing many dogs (meh), mastiffs (ouch!) and children/babies (woohoo!). I didn't see this happen, mind you, I can only extrapolate from all the ashes and dead bodies in the former dining room.
Some semblance of order is restored, bodies piled up and dumped into the magma tube to provide more fuel for the forges, dog corpses butchered, etc. Combat log pops up, I think "oh no, what now" but, I am flabbergasted. So, I had this forgotten beast who's been here for over a year, doing nothing but wandering around and looking menacing on top of cavern cliffs with no access to dwarves. He randomly shoots globs of deadly spittle and causes minor bruising. I sort of took to thinking of him as my fortress mascot, a pet, if you will. He actually tasted dwarf blood once when his spittle took some peasant trainee in the gut and knocked him off my cavern catwalks. He promptly got shredded, thighs and shins and arms and blood flying all over the cavern floor. I cackled with glee and allowed the forgotten beast to live after that. Armok was pleased that day.
Anyway, wouldn't you know it, some random no-name jeweler with no kills to her name (but still wearing bone jewelry, oddly enough. Sounds like a vampire but I haven't found any dusties yet) spots my poor little FB. She's carrying javelins but she has absolutely no skill or training with them. She throws a single javelin. One. Plants it square in my forgotten beasties' noggin and kills it instantly. WAT. WAT. I had an entire squad of recruits try to bring that thing down and she just nonchalantly drops it in passing. I debated punting her into the magma with the rest of the bodies but instead decided she can head my new squadron of snipers, apparently I have several snipers in this fortress as the last White Tigermen siege to show up lost three of their number to headshots from javelins before they even engaged in melee. Good god, these dwarves terrify me even more than the dwarves usually do. The melee was quick and brutal. Tigermen are apparently not good fighters. Cue combat reports of "The White Tigerwoman Spearman gives in to pain!" followed by.... no, not headshots, those are too quick for these dwarves. They prefer to stab the tigers in the gut when they're down. Intestines spilled all over the place, vomit, blood, retching, stabbed lungs and stuff. I'd be disgusted reading these reports if they weren't so dwarfy.
Out of the original 16 tigermen, 6 died in about 5 seconds and the rest promptly said "right, feck this, let's be off, shall we lads?" and ran. One got a javelin to the leg as he was running and had to crawl the remaining 5 tiles or so off the map. And this was without any armor or training on my dwarves either.
Just another day in the life of MossyHammer. I was worried my "open gate" challenge would be problematic. I am not worried whatsoever anymore.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6126275 times)