Welp. First autumn, it appears a small band of elf bandits has stopped by for a visit. They have an assortment of metal equipment. Fistshoots has no military, or traps, not even the drawbridge is finished yet. We got two wardogs and a potential miner militia.
This has lots of Fun potential.
--PLAY-BY-PLAY UPDATE--
Hastily assembled the 3 dwarf stong miner militia near the front gate drawbridge, they fittingly named themselves the Squashed Rocks. The first elf, a swordself, to near the entrance catches sight of the war dogs and immediately turns and flees in terror.
The second elf to enter is an elf bowman, who the squad captain quickly attacks. The archer got a single shot off, which only bruised the captain's upper body. That's great, all she has is an assortment of clothing, which apparently is enough to keep a copper arrow from causing too much damage. The captain quickly cleaves the elf's right foot and right lower arm off with her pick.
An elf hammerman runs up to join the fight as another miner arrives to support the captain. The bowman is rendered harmless from numerous lost limbs while the newly arrived miner Kadol and the elf hammerman begin to fight. Kadol deftly parries the elf's strike and counters with her pick, spilling the elf's guts. Kadol becomes overwhelmed with horror at the sight of what she's done, but she continues fighting. An elf crossbowman shoots a bolt at her point blank, but she deftly knocks it aside with her pick, despite being overwhelmed with horror.
The two miners, Zefon the captain and Kadol the miner fight a bit longer. Each one quickly slays an elf. Zefon turns and begins to fight the elf crossbowman, while Kadol experiences mortal terror and flees for her life into the fortress.
So, Zefon kills the crossbowelf quickly. She's all by herself now. There's the main group of elves approaching, 6 elves total, 4 who are not fleeing for their lives. Zefon has no backup, she's never fought before, has no discipline and no equipment aside from a copper pick, the clothes on her back, and a hastily crafted wood buckler. She's outnumbered 2 to 1.
So what does she do? SHE SPRINTS OUT OF THE GATE AND LITERALLY JUMPS 4 WHOLE TILES AT THE ELVES, THAT'S WHAT. There's no reason for her AI to jump, there's flat ground between her and the approaching elves. She jumps anyway. Badass and dorfy as hell. She sticks the landing and in one movement buries her pick in an elf swordsman's lower body. The swordsman immediately becomes terrified and understandably experiences mortal fear after just witnessing a crazy ass dwarf leaping 4 tiles at him and shanking him with a pick.
The elf spearman standing besides them tries to attack, but Zefon parries with her pick and stabs him in the foot. Both elves are now terrified of this dwarven demigoddess of war and earth who stands before them. 4 out of 6 elves are fleeing now, a maceelf tries to attack but gets countered and stabbed in the chest for his troubles.
The maceelf charges and stuns Zefon. Zefon, who so far has been unstoppable, gets whacked in the arm with a mace, bruising it. She promptly enters a martial trance. Yes, she's only now entering a martial trance.
So fierce is her attack that she cuts off the maceelf's right hand, sending it flying 5 tiles away, and strikes the elf spearman in the lower body wither her copper pick with such force that "it is mostly cut away from the rest of the torso" and kills the elf instantly. She kills the maceelf and only 4 elves remain, all terrified for their lives.
Zefon easily cleans up what's left. She had no skill in fighting, only had a wood buckler and her copper pick. She was a grandmaster miner, no discipline, no dodging or shield using or any skill beyond mining. She was outnumbered with almost no help from her allies.
She slays the last elf, striking him in the upper body as he grovels and cries and begs for his life. She cloves him asunder. She was only a common peasant, but she did not flee, she did not cry. She has no tears for these elves. They threatened her home, and she protected it singlehandedly. With the last swing of her pick, with the last kill, she has only this to say.
Praise the miners, muthafooka.