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[HammerHand]

Obviously, since he's paraplegic, he didn't walk there.

He dragged himself there.

By his beard.

[Matt2358]

Obviously, since he's paraplegic, he didn't walk there.

He dragged himself there.

By his beard.

Nope, he walked there. Pretty fast too.

Today a dragon got inside my fort through a stairway I forgot about, and there was an epic showdown in my ore stockpile room between him, 3 civillians and one (barely experienced) marksdwarf.

And my marksdwarf won! The civilians all burnt to death though......

[Vlynndar]

On the upside, all the ore was refined. Right?

[Tinker Thinker]

I was on a map with gorillas, which is how this story begins.
I started with a hybrid woodcutter/axedwarf. I set him to do all the animal tasks, including hunting. And when an animal trainer showed up, I set her to do the same thing too. Oops. So, next thing I know, Urist 'Noskillz' Stronginthearm is liberally distributed on a hillside. Rather impressive, as far as gorillas are concerned. So I set Urist 'Axedwarf' Stronginthearm on the hunt to avenge her. Despite being no more than a 'competent' axedwarf with one or two stats, he shatters the gorilla in one blow (after a rather long and exciting chase when the gorilla flees on sight). He then continues on the hunt, and takes out a few others with similar (though less impressive) ease. On one hunting return, he runs into a kobold thief. I turn him into a military dwarf so he'll stop what he's doing and engage for certain, and then I'm cleaning kobold guts off my entrance halls. He then resumes business (immediately going back to hunting rather than delivering his kill *shakes fist*), and the very next hunt he runs into a second kobold thief. This one is lighter on his/her feet and gets chased off the map. I have decided he shall have the nickname 'Beardwarden'.

[HammerHand]

Not so much the Dwarves this time as the physics.

I started a new fortress, this one with a chasm.  I like the idea of a fortress built around the chasm itself, with bedrooms and workshops dotting the chasm walls with windows and bridges and the like.  So I set to work making my first bridge, on my workshop level.  This proves to be difficult, because (obviously) the Dwarves have to be able to reach both sides of the chasm to build the bridge spanning it.  So I have to build some floor tiles in order to reach the other side.  I do so, then build my bridge (having the ability to retract it later might come in handy, after all!) out of some handy-dandy Diorite Blocks.

Once the bridge was complete, I decided I no longer needed the floor tiles, and of all foolishness, set them all to be removed at once.  Naturally, all of my seven starting Dwarves (the only ones I had yet) set to work removing the tiles.  One of the tiles was removed slower than two on either side of it, and it caused "A section of the cavern to collapse."

What I didn't know was that a cave-in is not as simple as "This tile falls into the chasm."  Oh, no.  It's a spherical explosion of dust, force, and debris.  Three of my seven Dwarves were immediately thrown off the bridge.  Another apparently gripped the side until his fingers gave out, then fell, too (alternatively, he may have gone melancholy and jumped off).  This left me with three Dwarves.  One of those three went insane with grief until he somehow drowned, perhaps in the local pond.

So I had two dwarves left:  A mason and a planter.  Fortunately, I had just traded with the Dwarf Caravan for a spare axe and pick, so when my migrants arrived (thankfully after the mason and planter calmed down from a possible tantrum spiral) I was able to resume work.

Still... I wasn't expecting to lose five dwarves just by trying to build a bridge.

[Fire Imp]

So I got a goblin baby snatcher. No big deal, a legendary siege operator tore him apart, and when back to hauling stones.  Two years later, I look up on my children, though I forget why.  One of them is on the same tile as a siege operator.  He was carrying around the child IN THE BAG.  Turns out, the siege operator was also the child's father.  A couple months later, the child died. 
"Corpse bag"

[elizar]

This was when I realized that snatcher did indeed come with the ambush parties.

[CobaltKobold]

because (obviously) the Dwarves have to be able to reach both sides of the chasm to build the bridge spanning it.

No, actually.

[SquirrelWizard]

okay my first megabeast attacks, its a dragon and it spawns at the northwest corner of my map which thanks to my fortress building will lead it through a relatively narrow gap filled with two cage traps. (its a two square wide gap, the cages are there more for finding ambush parties, than it is a real defense.)

That is if all of the traps had been refilled with cages.

Just prior to the dragon there had been an ambush on my dwarves (if you call it that) in which a lone animal trainer/mason who had just recovered from a spine injury, ran all the way across the map with ambush in tow. I caught two of the gobs in the cage traps, and sicced my champion wrestlers on them (think 4 gobs vs 12 wrestlers) in the process of chasing down the ambush, my champions flattened two snatchers at the same time. It just wasn't the goblin's day.

Well the excitement died down, and I got the cages exchanged save for one. what had happened at the same time, I moved all of my prisoners to the upper floor as I was having problems keeping up with whom I had already stripped of gear. So I had b>j all of my free cages to the area, and was planning to deconstruct the ones not holding a prisoner. So my mechanic only managed to reload one of the traps, and it was on the outside of the turn (meaning creatures will probably path by it) So the dragon comes down, I'm desperatly trying to get my mechanic to reset the trap, but no... he's got to be dragging whatnot to who knows where, and drinking and other less important task. Well the dragon pauses just one square to the north west of hte active cage trap and deconstructs the waterwheels and the gear assemblies. There was a water pump there, but for some reason he didn't touch it, and he just stood there not moving anywhere else. Well at that time Urist McMechanic decides to refill the cage. I see this and order him to cancel the job and all non military dwarves to head inside. While I want to capture the dragon, i really dont want to burn my legendary mechanic. So what i do is I conscript a soaper, he's practically useless so I could do without him. this soaper is a fresh new recruit and I send him the long way around my fortress. and tell him to stand on the loaded cage trap to get the dragon's attention. His death would serve two purposes. A) potentially trap the dragon, B) Unstick the dragon from whatever has his attention and send him along his merry way to my entrance (which is much more heavily trapped, and has more loaded cage traps.

Basically Green Recruit v Dragon.

So he runs up to the trap, the dragon shoots out a wave of fire and disappears, my recruit is just standing there picking boogers out of his nose totally unscathed. I'm like "whut? did he fall into the river?" I go to my unit list, and sure enough the dragon is not only in the map, but he's still alive. Further examination reveals that he's also in the cage of the cage trap. I think I'm gonna make this guy the sherrif after a stunt like that.

[Lawec]

Well my dwarfs just named a "resident" gremlin sitting on the edge of the map.
They called him Asmel Councelledsling, I just thought it was interesting and I wanted to check if there was something special about him.
And lo and behold!

I think he might've gotten too close to my GCS 

And about 4 minutes after this post was made, I broke into the HFS while digging after the rocks we all love...
All dwarfs dead...

[Hellcar]

Still... I wasn't expecting to lose five dwarves just by trying to build a bridge.

I had a similar thing happen. The entrance to my fort was over a bridge I'd built spanning a chasm.
I'd only just started the fort, and there were lots of batmen in the chasm, so I was building a wall & roof for the bridge to stop my dwarves from getting harassed.
Foolishly I'd set all the walls to be built at once and had enabled all my dwarves with the carpentry skill to speed up building constructions.

To cut a long story short, one of the dwarves decided to build the wall in the middle of the bridge first, which immediately collapsed knocking the entire population into oblivion.

Although this is more a case of me being surprised that I'd forget my dwarves are so stupid. 

[CobaltKobold]

Dwarfs happily build next to bridges and grates though they will not support the constructions.

So I get my dwarfs into their tiny start bunker and ha'e one pull the le'er to lift the bridge and seal them in. He does, promptly runs outside and is crushed by the bridge.

[Starver]

Dwarfs happily build next to bridges and grates though they will not support the constructions.

So I get my dwarfs into their tiny start bunker and ha'e one pull the le'er to lift the bridge and seal them in. He does, promptly runs outside and is crushed by the bridge.

Reminds me of one of my earleir forts.  Set up a drawbridge (sans moat[1], and only 3 tiles deep, though I would these days have made it 1 deep, for the same purpose) with a lever immediately inside[2] to close it.  When the first lot of raiders occured, I mustered the designated military to meet them and had a civilian close the gate behind them.  After a small, but succesfull battle, I demobbed the army and lowered the drawbridge.  Anhialating my victorious troops to a man, they having happened to mill around the 'footprint' area of what I would later learn might be termed an atom-smasher.



[1] Though you can build a bridge over one, and raise it, you can't dig it from under the lowered footprint of a raised bridge (well, except maybe for doing it via ramps, from the underside[3]).  That one got me for a long time.

[2] Another mistake in my early games, putting scaredy civilian-controlled levers right next to the device that might well be overrun by the scary invaders the lever is meant to thwart and/or defeat.  While I don't subscribe to the "central control room" idea, on the whole, I do tend to put levers at a small distance orthoganally or diagonally, where possible) from the item concerned.

[3] You know, I wish that there was a "(d)esignate, downward (R)amp" as well as a "(d)esignate, upward (r)amp".  It's often on the Z+1 level that you have a clearer idea of whether it's safe to dig the ramp (i.e. no trees, and no potentially hanging floors to cave in), and having to zoom up and down the Z-levels is

[CobaltKobold]

You can start the designation rectangle on any Z and freely switch- it'll only designate the rectangle on the Z you close it on.

I think the reason there isn't such a designation is it'd need to check tiles that aren't being designated to see if it's 'alid, unlike the current ones.

edit: Not today, but I had an interesting story to share. I lost most of my dwarfs to fire and foes and tantrumming...and my carpenter was gi'ing water to the other sur'i'or, to whom he had a grudge. Both went berserk, though a bit separated, around the time a migrant wa'e arri'ed, sa'in me from crumble.

[Starver]

You can start the designation rectangle on any Z and freely switch- it'll only designate the rectangle on the Z you close it on.

Your learn something new every day...  I sort of gave up on cross-Z designation when I realsied that one couldn't start-designate an up/down stairwell on one Z, move +10Z (or so) and end-designate, but had to "start-select,end-select,Z-move" multiple times.

So, tonight, instead of "start-select,Z-up,X/Y-move-while-checking,Z-down,end-select" I shall try "Z-up,start-select,X/Y-move-while-checking,Z-down,end-select".  Although it really doesn't save anything.  And when you're designating a diagonal set of ramps on the ever-receding edge of a tree-viable plateau I still need to review the Z+1 along the edge and then (if all is well) Z-down to "start-select,end-select,X+Y-move" multiple times, given the lack of diagonal line selection in the first place.

(Yes, the above is probably trivially unreadable, due to abbreviation.)