Once there was a mighty fort of 140 kobolds, that had stood against sieges and raids of humans, forces of Armok, orcs and pretty much everything alive.
What brought it down was not an attacking army, but fire. Always with the fire.
It all started when a bunch of Sorcerers sprung from ambush. While they were quickly dealt with(with the cost of a Champion who got a fireball to the face and died instantly), there was an obvious problem, threat even, when one of the fireballs the sorceror's had thrown caused a fire. In a major plain. It was sort of a problem. I order everyone inside, and all is well.
That is, all is well until I see an announcement about a miner bleeding to death. I check what's up, and already knew there was trouble abound when I saw smoke rise from the stairway leading to my underground food storage.
It seems that during the brief time between ordering everyone inside, the guy had tried to grab something which was already on fire, left it there, but ran back in the fort, on fire of course, and decided to have a snack. My food was burning everywhere by the time I noticed.
Now, I had two option's. First, do some major ordering and have the food moved somewhere safe, or wait it out. I decided to wait it out, I mean, I had a Dungeon Master who's only job had been smelting metals and making nickel bin's. The wooden barrels and the food in them might burn, but the food in the metal barrels would be safe, right?
A few months later, I had over 12 dead kobolds who had been moving burning food from barrel A to barrel B(I think. Too much smoke to see what they were storing when they kept on running there), and a magnificent tantrum spiral began. The duke went insane, our legendary sheriff decided to strip naked and jumped down the suicide pit(which soon saw a lot of use) and generally, everyone was unhappy. And the food stockpile was COMPLETELY empty.
I don't know what happened, unless heat can ruin foodstuffs inside metal barrels. That or they kept on moving the food from the metal barrels inside wooden ones, or something as stupid. Or maybe all those metal barrels were full of something else than food(I doubt it, although I didn't check it out too much).
Then a Chosen Warrior siege came. I decided "eh, time to end playing this fort then" and allowed them entry. Twenty or so kobolds died from their attack, but their beak dog riding troops were soon beaten back(but not without casualties) when the military swooped in.
At that point, I had about 65 kobolds left. 90% of them resting, and two military people still able to fight. The rest of my force was either in bed about a broken toe or something as stupid, or insane, or dead from suicide.
And there was a squad of Chosen Warrior's still left.
So I did the only thing possible. I sent the two Champions in a suicide run, back to back, against about fifteen Chosen Warrior's and equal number of beak dogs.
Somehow though they managed to kill enough of them to break the siege, and get through the ordeal unscathed. I immediately abandoned the site, so at least history would have a bunch of very unhappy, very injured kobolds to tell the story of Llorgus.
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/266/mahkubomons.pngLink related, it's the fort during the good days.
The facepalm of this story is that if there is a fire, be sure to check that none of your guys is carrying it inside the fort. Only tragedy can follow.
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Topic: Face Palm moments you had in Dwarf Fortress (Read 2209333 times)