I finally got around to continuing Hoistedlens, with its single vampire inhabitant, haunted by ghost babies and trying not to step on any of the multitude of turkey poults running around underfoot. After a few lonely seasons, broken up only by the sound of kobold thieves making off with the possessions of those who had died aboveground, I got migrants. Migrants with crossbows. These guys were tough as nails, and immediately set to wiping out all the native wildlife before I could get the vampire up to the lever to let them in the fort.
As soon as I did? Goblin siege! This turned out fairly hilariously, as the siegers tromped right up to my fortress doors, knocked them down (blasted Trolls!) and stood there befuddled by the retracted bridge while one of the brave dwarves (Inod Somethingorother) repeatedly tried to reload a cage trap on the other side, only to continually get distracted by the milling hordes. He finally snapped and began firing his crossbow at them, occasionally ducking behind a corner to avoid the lone goblin bowman's return fire. That dwarf pretty much ended the siege, as the harried goblins finally got sick of crossbow bolts bruising their limbs through their various garments and fled.
Shortly thereafter, a dwarven merchant caravan showed up, only for a bunch of goblin ambushes to appear. They were slaughtered to the last gob by the caravan guards, only managing to kill one poor dwarf woodcutter, who'd been ambushed from hiding.
Then I lost something like seven dwarves to kobolds. Encouraged by the easy plunder they'd had while my vampire was holed up underground, they came out of hiding and filled poor Inod full of arrows, ending his legend. These guys were crack archers, firing arrows like they were gatling gun rounds. Worse, I forgot that non-thief kobolds were still lockpickers and trapimmune, and one managed to get past the main defenses before I was able to retract the bridge. That little bastard ran around causing havoc and death until he ran out of ammo, at which point he was shot to death himself. Still,
one squad of kobolds caused many times more damage than the previous two goblin ambushes and the previous siege
combined.
But, while I waited, I was not idle. A dwarf made an amethyst bed, which of course went to the Mayor's room, but the real important work was happening up above: A set of magma-proof floodgates and lever mechanisms were set up as I dug channels and fortifications linking the volcano to an arrow-slit just above the entrance to the fort. I lost a good dwarf to the magma (it was a lot faster than I was led to believe. Possibly some pressure was exerted from the magma pipe?) but the next siege is going to have a
!!Fun!! surprise in store for them...