Had an exceptionally messy siege by my standards. Due to keeping the population low due to the lavish living standards I wanted to indulge in, the military, while reasonably trained, had a few new guys in it - some of whom stupidly and stubbornly refused to wear important armor parts, favoring their fancy leather shoes or gloves instead. This was an oversight on my part, though given what happened to Thorn, it wouldn't have mattered much.
Given the composition and transgressions against the Necromancers of The Large Smokes, the band of intelligent undead were likely sent to punish the impudent dwarves of Fireblade.
Three citizens of Fireblade embodied the phrase "With your shield, or on it," and now rest in the communal catacomb, to be shepherded to the afterlife by a foreign god of death Vucar, the Fatal Crypt (a diety belonging to another dwarven civ not my own.) The reason for this is because aside from a few outliers among primarily the founders, or foreigners inducted into the citizenry, there is only one god in Fireblade: Limul Gravelrocks, the god of minerals.
The dead of the battle are thus
Udib 'Tsavo' Craftedcontains, The Crystalline Prairie the Axe Lord - Slain by a lucky blow to the head that shattered his neck.
Ecafe 'Adder' Boldleaves, Axe Elf - While struck similarly to Tsavo, he refused to go quietly into that long night, and died fiercely trying to bite the enemies of Fireblade before succumbing to blood loss from a severed leg.
Libash 'Topaz' Laborquest, Axe Dwarf - Crippled and subsequently bitten to death by a rotten zombie bowman (rotten zombies being a type of intelligent undead, and the entirety of the enemy assault force.)
Two others were left maimed for life: Squid a goblin spearman left paralyzed from the legs down from a pike to the back, and Thorn, who lost his left foot and the use of his shield hand to a silver morningstar. Thorn in particular was the actual hero of the battle, killing 5 enemies in his first deployment and earning the slightly menacing title of "The Divine Uncertainty."
A few of the goblin minority in Fireblade has succumbed to drink, and the sheriff is in a constant state of unhappiness due to several unfulfilled or unfulfillable needs (namely pertaining to food, but also craft labor and martial arts training, which I am hoping against hope we'll have a fortress guard to alleviate before he goes insane.)
Morale for more than one is rather lacking overall, due to the slow construction of amenities, inability to meet certain food demands, but on the whole Fireblade is content, with a lavish temple "complex" (really just a big room serving as an artifact museum.) a well stocked tavern and library, and a minor temple for the spiritual minorities to visit.
EDIT: Figured I'd also pop in some stuff I've observed in this fort, as well as 44.12.
These were made "in the wild" and are in regard of weapon and material effectiveness. Take all this with a pinch of salt, since fort mode has a ton of uncontrollable variables that likely make a huge difference (well trained troops tending to be henched as hell and well equipped with if not better materials, better workmanship of their gear for instance, vs the always-average and always-standard (without dfhack) arena units and gear.)
Material matters way more than it did in the past, as of v47. Copper picks are no longer death-dealing abominations like they used to be, failing to penetrate iron armor even in the hands of a reasonably strong miner. Source: Miner tried and failed to help the militia, her pick doing nothing against the attacker's armor. She was of average strength though, so a stronger miner may be able to do some damage. This likely also means silver picks are similarly not going to be super effective.
Contact area and attack type matters much more than it used to as well. A good and beefy maceman can and will punch through exceptional steel gauntlets with a garbage quality silver morningstar or pike where I've seen silver hammers and maces bounce right off. Source: Seen it happen on multiple occasions post-v44.
This is spit-balling on a few observations, but hammers seem more effective against living enemies (armored or not,) where the smaller contact area theoretically means they're more likely to kill an enemy outright and instantly with a headshot. This, it should be obviously noted, means the body is less likely to be pulped (and thus can be reanimated in places where that's a concern.)
Maces, meanwhile, seem to be less prone to this, instead pulverizing the enemy with additional strikes. That's not to say they can't, but it at least appears from what I've observed they tend to "just" crack someone's skull rather than crack it and dent the target's brain in the same swing. This however does mean they may tend to cause mangled extremities more frequently, likely making them better suited to killing various types of undead and keeping things dead in reanimation zones.
Torsion damage being a thing also means both weapons are now equally viable, since a unit needn't break an enemy's skull and bust his armor to disarm or kill him anymore, just thump him hard enough to break his wrist, ankle, or neck.
Additionally, while it would need some actual scientific testing, bronze and iron edged weapons seem especially effective in causing edged pulping as opposed to outright severing limbs, which might actually negate the need for dedicated mace/hammer squads even in reanimation biomes.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6188620 times)