The new stress update sure has brought back nostalgic feelings of dwarf fortress of old. I haven't seen a four year tantrum spiral in many real years. I dealt with a few back to back necro sieges with my favorite old method, drop them in a pit, run them through a minecart grinder and collect the resulting bones for use. Turns out this kind of thing now drives your citizens insane when you send them in to scrape up those bits. Makes sense, I'm really liking it, I'm going to weaponize it soon. Though Armok has shown some mercy by arraigning a genuinely accidental Unfortunate Accident I thought amusing enough to share.
One of those sieges came again, a small one this time a little over a dozen. Everything was proceeding normally with one by one the zombies stepping onto a pressure plate and onto a bridge and falling into the collection pit. Then one of the corpses makes it across the bridge since the trap wasn't perfect, I had a few cage traps to protect the bait animal just in case though. Well some dwarf throwing a tantrum smashed some of them so there was a gap. I didn't want it getting in so I sent the military to kill it or herd it into the remaining traps.
All went according to plan the zombie got caught in the last trap but then one dwarf for some reason stepped through the door to the bridge. There he met another corpse standing across the bridge. They charged at each other, the corpse triggering the bridge to retract right as the combatants met at the center. The zombie fell but my dwarf leapt to the wall and managed to cling on. I almost panicked imagining the look of terror on my dwarf's face as he clung there over a dozen mindless but well armed corpses below him, bolts bouncing off the walls around him.
Then I saw it was Rith.
Rith, a weaponsmith of no particular skill had not been doing so well with our corpse grinding. He had over a dozen disorderly conduct charges against him but for some reason he wasn't being locked up like the others. He roamed the fortress throwing tantrum after tantrum. I first noticed him when he beat a hen to death. He just kept beating things until eventually he killed a dog, then another hen. He took his first dwarf not long after, a mason he beat until he drove a broken rib through her heart. I started to wonder what needed to be done with Rith but other things came up.
Eventually he drove his fist through the lower body of a gem setter. I drafted him into the military, no arms or armor. I figured maybe some discipline training might help, or he could beat the right people, or again maybe just get himself killed. He trained for a little while, then he beat down his instructor and broke their neck. Enough was enough, I decided to arranging something. No less than an in game week later before I had the chance to do so did the siege come.
Rith is on the wall, death waiting below and the bridge resets. He's thrown to the center and he doesn't even try to flee, perhaps his anger got the better of him one last time. He charges straight at a human maceman corpse, closes the distance and takes up position on top of the pressure plate that won't trigger for him. For a moment he holds his ground, rather unsurprisingly he gets in several good hits but they don't matter against a corpse. In a moment he's forced to dodge back onto the bridge and the zombie follows. The bridge triggers again.
If poor Rith had grabbed the wall again, he would have been fine. That maceman it turns out was the last zombie, the trap would reset and he could walk out safely, I might have even let him. Alas, he did not. Down he fell and the horde tore him apart.
I haven't enjoyed watching one of my dwarves accidentally die horribly that much in a very long time. I love this update so much! Next up, we collect immortals, drive them insane and make a zoo!
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6214729 times)