New fortress, just because the last one was on too large an embark to be sustainable.
I built this time onna 2x2 plot. First prder of business was to build a defensive wall overhanging a ditch around the fort and a drawbridge. That went smooth enough, and with a defensible position i ordered the dwarves to dig deeper down and out. We got plentt of migrants, and by the end of the first year/our 18th month had 47 dwarves. Had some warbeasts too, a critter i was testing for use in the future, and these turned out important.
About that 1.5 year mark a mountain boar attacked. Basically a boar about the size of a giant sperm whale with some innate skills. I figured id just close the drawbridge until my militia was prepared to take it or lure it into a trap like i did last time when a fairy queen attacked. But i missed a spot; in digging the ditch around the fort, it went straight through a pond, most of which was inside the walls, and i hadnt thought to wall that off. The boar got inside through that, and proceeded to fuck shit up. It took my entire population and all the warbeasts at once to get it to pass out from exhaustion and finally bleed to death; being so huge none of the attacks could really do anything but scratch the skin/fat, so theres no such thing as a clean kill. But these crazy warbeasts, they started attacking each other and the dwarves!
In the end, all but three of the warbeasts were dead, along with a dozen or so dwarves, and another dozen or so hospitalized. I just had the last three of the warbeasts butchered, because theyre obviously a liability and need better testing. The dwarves that werent hospitalized or killed were pressganged into either emergency medical staff or digging and and furnishing tombs. It took months to get most of them out of the hospital, and since i was feeling brave i thought id wall off the first cavern. Big mistake. First bunch of modified ant people flooded in and started flying in the air above my dwarves, picking fights and sending more back to the hospital. Then a nosferatu showed up; a hideous humanoid bloodsucker. It managed to kill several dwarves as well. One of the survivors, badly injured, got out of the hospital and promptly died of dehydration while literally holding a goblet over a barrel of ale, because somehow he just hung up and couldnt get to the filling the mug and drinking from it step.
A cook that witnessed this was so badly shaken by it, as well as the rest of the ongoing violence and poor quality of life, that he started tantrumming. He ripped up another farmers neck pretty badly, hospitalizing them and requiring sutures, but i delayed punishment because i wanted to build a proper prison before convicting him. Go figure, hes cool for a few months, only haggard and occasionally stumbling obliviously, then he loses it again and beats up yet another dwarf. This time i have a chain designated and convict him on both counts, but the sheriff decides to beat him up instead. Now he not only cancels tasks from flashbacks to seeing the blacksmith die, but also from being beaten.
Ive made him a really nice engraved 5x5 bedroom with a masterwork bed, shared with his wife and kids, and that as well as a new mayor with good consoler/pacifier skills has led to him stumbling around less often, and the last time he threw a tantrum he didnt actually hit anybody. I also learned he likes cabbages, which i figured id start providing from one of the aboveground farms.
In the meantime there was a goblin attack; one squad of archers and a snatcher. The snatcher met a swift end thanks to a human mercenary who was wandering through the trap tunnel at the right moment, and the archers, after turning the human into a pincushion, stumbled into the cage traps.
Then there was an attack from the local necromancer. Technically a dark wizard, whose "zombies" are actually shadow people called a "Lo". From a really intense dream i had a while back, but anyway. Half of these could fly, so the went right up over my walls and started attacking my farm animals. I recruited a quick militia with an archer squad and a couple melee teams and ordered them to go stand underneath them, and sure enough the fliers dropped like flies, because theyre made of flame, technically. Then i ordered the marksdwarves up onto a wall, and the idiots not only started shooting at the walkers, but jumped off the wall. Several of them died, as the grass caught fire, and one of them brought her newborn baby with her, so the kid died too. The dark wizard escaped, but the rest of the loes were destroyed.
Since then its been pretty quiet. Weve mostly been manufacturing equipment to invade the goblin nation. A lot of dwarves from the old fort are showing up too, which means a lot of good crafts skills and several legendary skills.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6231302 times)