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[dwarfhoplite]

That's awesome story!

[Telgin]

Canyontalon's fifth siege came late in the year 143.  About fifty discordant ponies riding tanks and flanked by war leopards and jaguars approached the fortress from all sides, and the soldiers mustered to their stations.  First and third companies held up in the courtyard waiting for the order to rush forward and finish off any stragglers once the archers were done with them, with second company's twenty griffons took up position on the walls.

The first squads of discordant ponies were easy pickings.  Arrows tore them apart as they stumbled across the trap perimeter, and a decimated squad of maceponies and axeponies fell back under the hail of fire.  That left two squads of spearponies and a squad of swordsponies to finish.

Unfortunately for the gallant defenders, one of the spearpony squads held an elite markspony among their ranks, whose unerring shots severely wounded four of second company's first squad, including Sergeant Ivanovna.  After continuous volleys of firing pouring into their ranks, the ponies finally broke and fled, leaving the battered and bleeding griffons hunkering down in the ramparts.

The wounded included privates Saitov, Rykov and Tolstoy and sergeant Ivanovna.  The doctors tended to them for weeks before they were finally returned to duty, with sergeant Ivanovna taking the worst of the wounds.  Her shield leg may be permanently crippled, and with injuries to her tendons in a rear leg she can't run as fast as he peers.  But she's one of the best shots in Canyontalon and returned to the ranks to fight on.

The discordant ponies have suffered gravely at the claws of the griffons of The Ashen Wing, but on they come.  They will return again, and Major Rykov only hopes that the next time won't bring more of those horrible marksponies.

Elite archer enemies are complete jerks.  If you kill order them their mount gets shot out from under them, but then they hide behind their peers and snipe bones through steel armor.  Very frustrating.  At least I haven't lost anyone to them yet.

[Blue_J]

I've got a really bad feeling about this fort. Which is funny because nothing really bad has actually happened yet.

It's the first fort I've started in over a year, so I'm a little rusty. I remember most of the mechanics quite well, but I've lost my feel on the subtler practicalities of the very beginning of a new fort. (How many masons should I be running? Should I start making types of workshops I don't have, or dedicate that newly-mined space to moving my wood stockpile underground? etc.) I've had a few near-misses already: I came a bit closer to starvation/sobriety than I'm comfortable with when I waited too long to set up my agricultural area. (I like my dirt farms to be only accessible from a back stairway near the kitchen, and not though the entrance area. I've got an aquifer, so the second stairwell means another controlled cave-in, and I didn't want to waste time on temporary layouts, yada yada.) I was actually saved, in part, by my second near-miss, a group of 3 giant thrips that wandered in through the roof of an aquifer breach I hadn't quite covered up yet. Despite a labor/equipment conflict that caused my small militia to drop their weapons before attacking, they were all able to punch the thrips to death, resulting in a decent boost to my meat stockpile. (Giant Thrips are apparently not very tough, but it's the principle of the thing.)

So, it's only been a year, and so far I'm doing alright, but I've got this horrible, crawling feeling that I'm way behind the curve defense-wise, especially for a fortress on the intersection of two savage jungle biomes with a necromancer tower in the neighborhood. I've got a dry ditch with a drawbridge around my exposed areas, (though I think I need to move that lever...), I've finally got all my stockpiles underground in a somewhat organized fashion, and the last rather large migrant wave has boosted my military ranks up to a respectable level for a fortress in the second spring...but that's about it. My map has a lot of coal on it, and I haven't had enough spare miner-hours to start the deep exploratory ramps yet, so I'm going to be for forgoing magma for a while and trying to get my squads equipped in coal-fired copper armor before anyone competent shows up at my front door. I'm also trying to get all my aquifer breaches roofed over ASAP so I can defend against flyers, and I really need to start putting some traps with bait animals in the far corners of my map so I get some advance warning about the first ambush. Still don't have a hospital, still don't have my control room complex...

Oh, and thanks to some diligent background checking, I was able seal away a vampire before he killed anyone. Like I said I've got a necromancer in the neighborhood, so I'm keeping him alive.

So, we'll see what inevitable disaster hits my unprepared fort the next time I play....

[tahujdt]

@Blue_J You need to have your refuse stockpiles deep underground and lockdownable, because necros like to raise refuse. Entire forts have fallen to some clumps of horsehair.

[urmane]

The olivine road is now lined with olivine statues.  The olivine tower reaches toward the sky.  The curtain wall is almost complete - need to use gabbro and granite to seal it before all the jet blocks are done.  Keep those gobbos out ...

[Blue_J]

@Blue_J You need to have your refuse stockpiles deep underground and lockdownable, because necros like to raise refuse. Entire forts have fallen to some clumps of horsehair.

Already done. It's 12 z below the surface, and only accessible via a floor hatch near the butcher area, and I do try to atom-smash the useless stuff regularly. I've been keeping the surface very clean. Last I read, necromancers can only raise in their line-of-sight, so I think I should be okay. (Well, at least, I don't think that butchering byproducts will be what kills me.)

Interestingly, with the necromancer problem in mind I did modify my raws so that all organic material has a melting point. This will allow me to deal with undead through direct application of magma - provided I last that long.

[Lich180]

Damn. Stupid kid decided to get a fey mood, and wanted bones.
We haven't had any bones for ages, since our main export is bone crafts for now.
Dwarf caravan showed up, and in the process of obtaining animals to process into bones, the kid went melancholy.

Oh, and apparently I haven't had my farms going like I usually do: got my first "Urist Mchungry cancels job: hunting vermin for food." message in AGES. Thank Armok my axedwarves can chase down sprinting muskoxen.

[Mr Space Cat]

Started a new dorf fort in a new less evil world...Worksavants will be a sprawling creation borne of the glories of communism slavery good, honest, hard labor.

Things were going great, I was designating large scale floors to hold all workshops, one for large farms, large, aesthetically pleasing designed floors for bedrooms, that sorta stuff. Think big, luscious, and dorfy.

Then suddenly a dragon raptor decides he doesn't like the way one of the first migrants was looking at him and decides to tear hm to pieces while out gathering plants. Our founding carpenter/woodcutter comes up at the worst time and runs right into the raptor, and he runs away to try and avoid it. Watching it play out in a couple ticks, I decide he probably won't outrun it and enlist him to try and put a lucky axe through the raptor's brain.

"lolnope" saiz the raptor, as it mutilates the woodworker too, and then goes on to tear up the ironclad pack horse like its wearing some fine lingerie.

still, not too bad of a loss, right?...then our naturally skilled smith from the staring seven comes up to retrieve the bodies. The raptor is still pissed, and decides to tear off his head, as well. FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-----

We're back down to seven fairly unhappy dwarves. We got our first tantrum, one of da miners decided to ditch his assignment, run up 20 levels, and pick up and put down one of the cats a bunch of times. No real harm was done to the cat, except possibly some psychological scarring. Now the miner is down in the massive dining hall glaring hatefully at a door. i don't know what that door did to piss him off, but so long as he doesn't brain another dorf with his pick he can glare all he wants.

In other news, I know now what animals I want to tame for war.

[Eric Blank]

The ghosts are accumulating at a frightening rate; After torching both the human and dorf caravans (at the same time, no less) I am left with a violent marksdwarf ghost, who can't be slabbed, a murderous human ghost, whom I'm hoping will assault only other humans, just as the violent dingo man ghost only assaults other dingo people, and a howling human spirit. Who is hanging out right outside the mayor's room. I didn't like the mayor, anyway.

I can't make slabs for any of the ghosts, still. DFhack; I choose you!

The wolverine man I stuffed back in the cage has gone melancholy. Wonder what the hell his problem is.
Nothing, apparently. According to his thoughts he's perfectly content. Maybe hacking around with the game is weirding them all out.

[edit]
Well, I told myself I would design an efficient minecart system to haul stones to my masons' workshop area. Never happened. Instead, I designed a training area for my militia, based around the use of my necromancer-vampire-shaman. The room is a two-story tall chamber with a 1x3 viewing area for the necromancer (carved by the necromancer using her pick) The space immediately outside the viewing area widens to 9x in a conical shape, such that no part of the room cannot be seen from her position.
It was a complete success in one sense; the necromancer successfully raises the dead from behind the fortifications, and doesn't do so TOO rapidly, probably because she's ridiculously slow. However, there are some serious flaws; the undead are as ridiculously lucky as it is possible to be, and many of their attacks are directed at their opponent's head, so already two soldiers and a war grizzly bear have been killed. When this occurs I of course station the necromancer back upstairs where she can't raise any more corpses and clean out the training area, to keep the population low. I don't want a zombie apocalypse starting with my militia, so I've been careful; other than the 3 squads of melee troops in the room, adn the fact my necromancer is still legally a member of the civ and follows her station orders well enoguh so far, the exit is controlled via drawbridge, behind which is a winding hallway full of cage traps, and later weapon traps. I have also mined a walkway out behind the walls on the second story, with fortifications on the inner walls such that the three marksdwarf squads can also practice on the undead, or mop up in the event shit hits the fan and the 30 melee troops all end up moaning for brains. Hopefully notihng will ever make it out of there.

Currently, a few of the recruits are a bit unhappy after witnessing the deaths of their comrades, but hopefully this form of training will in the end yield consistently highly-trained and hardened murder machines, without putting the entire fortress at risk of dying in a horrible tantrum spiral when the first nasty siege shows up and the soldiers witness death for the first time, lose some of their friends and loved ones, and then go berserk in the dining room wearing their full steel plate armor and battle axes. Casualties are expected, and indeed part of the training process, but hopefully they remain at a minimum anyways because I don't want 90% of the troops that go in there heading to the catacombs immediately afterwards. I need 30 trained warriors, not 30 fewer free coffins.

Also, the wombat woman gave birth recently. This raises my hopes a bit for the wolverine people as well, but unfortunately, just like the dingo people, they will not be breeding any more after their current pregnancies come to term because they are now members of the fortress and thus must be married. And there's only 2 wombat people, male and female, and the only wolverine man has gone insane, leaving the only woman with no possible marriage partners.

The second wolverine woman reverted to a wild state and went nuts on us; after beating up a mechanic, and running around like a headless chicken for a while, she attacked and tore apart one of the wyvern welps, then got eaten alive by a war grizzly bear.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Arctic glacier fort. Got a goblin siege, so I let them into an underground shooting gallery. My marksdwarves soon had them in full retreat. Several died just outside the entrance, so I decided to send out a goblinite cleanup crew.

Guess who's there! A kobold ambush. That's right, kobolds with bows. I sent out the marksdwarves. In the chaos, 2 marksdwarves and 1 hauler (a surgeon) were killed.

This was enough to set off a tantrum spiral. So far, the other doctor has been beaten to death by a fish cleaner, several wounded might die without the medical attention, and the manager (essentially my author avatar in the game) got killed via roundhouse kick to the head during a "fist fight" with a tantruming tanner. Someone else went melancholy.

More coffins will be required.

[MythagoWoods]

So I just got 5 Forgotten beasts in a few months, I guess to make up for lost time, and I found out my main Marksdwarf had the finishing blow on each of them and now has an incredibly long name that it's almost entirely abbreviated, and has even named her crossbow... "The Lavender Fish".  How does one find the full name of their dwarves?  I kinda wanna know what her entire name is 'cause if he named her weapon The Lavender Fish I really wanna know what she named herself too.

Quick edit:  it's a she, not a he.

[Mr Space Cat]

How does one find the full name of their dwarves?  I kinda wanna know what his entire name is 'cause if he named his weapon The Lavender Fish I really wanna know what he named himself too.

You could copy and paste the file, then load it/abandon it and look up the dorf in legends. If I recall correctly, legends mode displays their full names in their language as well as English. There's probably other, less hassling methods but I don't recall them.
-------------------------
Worksavants is coming along well. We're back up to 11 dorfs, we traded with the caravans and requested they bring seeds, wood, soap, and vairous meats and bits. A potential food crisis was averted by quickly buying a bunch of meats and plants and selling the dead's unneeded clothing. The cook is brewing all the above ground plants and grinding up the meats to make into sausage. Once we've got a bunch of unneeded above-ground seeds I've ordered them to stew it all up with the meats to get some more meals out of it. Unfortunately the caravan was carrying next to no underground plants, which we needed at least to get the seeds.

Oddly enough, the large extravagantly designed workshop floor seems more efficient than any other design I've had if only for the sake of keeping the wood/stone/ore and metal/fuel stockpiles all by their respective workshops and can be checked at a glance. It looks nice too, so I'm not complaining.

A sporeman somehow got down into the workshops, and is chillin' by the lumberyard, magically interrupting everyone with his telepathic spore ejaculations on everydorfs' face.
I've sent our lone competent migrant hammerdorf to smash it up with his silver meteor hammer, hopefully the sporeman will just fall apart easily.

In other news, a kobold thief tried to wander in and was run down by all four of our dogs, and event their puppies. The kobold never had a chance and got torn to bits.

EDIT: Spores are deadlier than I thought, I unpaused and a bunch of unfortunate dorfs suffocated. The hammerdorf is currently indisposed as well, but alive at least...hmmm, I'm not sure how to deal with the sporeman now, I guess try and send some marksdorfs to shoot at him. Obviously we need to wall up the entrance and trap it once this is over to stop all these pesky animals from wandering in and causing chaos.

[moki]

Guess who's there! A kobold ambush.

Those little cutebolds are way more dangerous than you'd think. I've lost one of my first forts to a kobold ambush... when they're able to steal a lot, they'll eventually get even more greedy - with mostly fatal results.

Meanwhile in Daggerplayed:
Still no sieges or ambushes after more than a year  I need some dwarves to die or the fortress will fall to boredom and FPS-death. There are 245 dwarves now and I'm seriously thinking about testing the 55 level drop on some of the more useless ones if nothing interesting happens soon.
Also "A kea has stolen a ☼iron high boot☼" and "A kea has stolen a ☼iron breastplate☼". I do need some roofs for the stockpile buildings...

[Urist McMontros]

Meanwhile in Daggerplayed:
Still no sieges or ambushes after more than a year  I need some dwarves to die or the fortress will fall to boredom and FPS-death. There are 245 dwarves now and I'm seriously thinking about testing the 55 level drop on some of the more useless ones if nothing interesting happens soon

I know that feel. Still waiting on the next batch of Fun to arrive.

In Blockpaper, there's been a total of three casualties from a vampire. Each murder was punished with 50 hammerstrikes and a total of about 400 days in prison. The guy had his right hand smashed to bits, had several surgeries, was bedridden for half a year, and is currently sitting in prison without water or food being handed to him.

I might just atom smash the guy. Or recruit him into my military.

[moki]

Ok, about 5 minutes after writing this, the goblins finally came around... with 3 measly squads and 4 trolls. I have the feeling, they don't take me very serious. Nobody even got injured, even though they attacked right at my current project, a new high pressure pump stack. There are 250 dwarves, 98 of which are children. Next I'll make a ton or two of silver mugs to attract some real enemies.

And also there are humans now. After more than five years of prosperous life in Daggerplayed, the finally decided to come around for the first time.
Armok knows why They're also at war with the damn treehuggers, so maybe the previous caravans were held up on their way. I don't know if that behavior is even implemented yet, but I suspect it.