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[balath]

There are so many Fun stories; but I haven't seen many about barely pulling through when things get rough.

I guess you could say that anytime you're not losing, this is happening, but you know what I mean.

For example, I was playing earlier and lost five military dwarves at once due to negligence.  They happened to be friends with just about everyone, including my legendary armorer, so half the fortress got red unhappy markers all at once.  At the same time my Mayor made a demand that couldn't be immediately met and I noticed that the fortress was OUT of booze.  While I frantically ordered up some tin and silver barrels (current fortress has no trees), I got a message about the HFS King going melancholy.  Seconds later my Mayor who was the expedition leader started tantrumming and started a fist fight with a wounded soldier asleep in bed, then got the "Attend Meeting" status (while still tantrumming, I double checked; is this normal?) and drug a child into his office for what I can only imagine was the most sever lecture of the young dwarf's life.

Yet, somehow, I didn't lose anyone else to berserkering, melancholy, or insanity.  I engraved the dining hall, constructed a few artifacts that I'd been hording in high traffic places so everyone would get to see them, and made damned sure that booze went into production.  I managed to meet the mayor's demand JUST in time and fulfill a mandate, too.  I'm certain that if anything else had gone wrong, the spiral would have been unstoppable.

Time to lose another way.  Anyone else have survivor stories?

[Biag]

The first time I played around with magma, I found the fortress to be named "Tinarrows." To make sure it lived up to its name, I modded tin to be able to weapon/armorsmith, though it was still very weak. Turns out that saved the fortress.

You see, if the most badass dwarf hadn't had the help of his new tin hammer, he wouldn't have been able to kill the skeletal fire imps that kept jumping out of the magma smelter. He got 'em all (can't remember if he had a title) but they set the grass on fire and he died. So did three more. One of the surviving three was horribly wounded from a previous imp attack, and basically just lay on the ground going berserk at anybody who tried to bring him water. My hunter put him out of his misery with the last of his bolts. So, as I watched the world burn, I realized that the only survivors were the hunter and the mason, and that they were opposite genders. In about thirty seconds, I checked again and they were lovers.

Tinarrows is totally gutted. The seeds are all gone, the last surviving dwarves are subsisting entirely on gathered plants, the booze is running dry, and the imps will regenerate in full force next season. Will I abandon? Not a chance. Bring it on, magma-dwelling motherfuckers. 

[balath]

Tinarrows is totally gutted. The seeds are all gone, the last surviving dwarves are subsisting entirely on gathered plants, the booze is running dry, and the imps will regenerate in full force next season. Will I abandon? Not a chance. Bring it on, magma-dwelling motherfuckers. 

Sigged.

[evanvolker]

Badass

[expwnent]

You show them fire imps who's boss.

[Lawec]

Pour water on em just for the heck of it

[sdu]

There are so many Fun stories; but I haven't seen many about barely pulling through when things get rough.

I guess you could say that anytime you're not losing, this is happening, but you know what I mean.

For example, I was playing earlier and lost five military dwarves at once due to negligence.  They happened to be friends with just about everyone, including my legendary armorer, so half the fortress got red unhappy markers all at once.  At the same time my Mayor made a demand that couldn't be immediately met and I noticed that the fortress was OUT of booze.  While I frantically ordered up some tin and silver barrels (current fortress has no trees), I got a message about the HFS King going melancholy.  Seconds later my Mayor who was the expedition leader started tantrumming and started a fist fight with a wounded soldier asleep in bed, then got the "Attend Meeting" status (while still tantrumming, I double checked; is this normal?) and drug a child into his office for what I can only imagine was the most sever lecture of the young dwarf's life.

Yet, somehow, I didn't lose anyone else to berserkering, melancholy, or insanity.  I engraved the dining hall, constructed a few artifacts that I'd been hording in high traffic places so everyone would get to see them, and made damned sure that booze went into production.  I managed to meet the mayor's demand JUST in time and fulfill a mandate, too.  I'm certain that if anything else had gone wrong, the spiral would have been unstoppable.

Time to lose another way.  Anyone else have survivor stories?

sounds like a regular day at work to me

[Firnagzen]

Fireimps, skeletal or otherwise, don't respawn.

[Sheb]

I once had a fort on a skeletal glacier. I didn't pay enough attention to the Skeletal Mammoths however. One of them jumped into my fortress and started mass-killing people. His [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2] tag saved me. After killing all the dwarves but two (One of them had a broken lower body)  he went into my sculpture garden and started toppling, one by one, the 40-odd statues. I quickly asked the last dwarf to wall the Mammoth in.

By some kind of miracle, I managed to save the crippled dwarf (Find the one log that has been used as a building material by mistake, get it without letting the herd of Mammoth in, craft a bucket, create water by cave-in....). Who then died in a cave-in.

At this point, with one dwarf left in an icy shithole, I was resigning myself to abandon when... migrant! Okay, a couple of lousy shitmakers, but God I was happy to see them!

The fortress crumbled to an end 3 years later, in a remake of the abovementioned story where the rest of the herd broke into my fortress whil I was walling the Mammoth in one of the sleeping complex.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I get this weird feeling that Headshoots has to be mentioned here

[CrossBolt]

I had 50 dwarfs in a fort (Dwarfheaven (chasm volcano HFS underground river)) when an ambush happened and killed my hunter dwarf.
Most of my dwarfs ran outside but ran back when they saw the 3 goblin archers, so did my personal avatar who got shot in the left lung and survived.
Then one of my miners decided to be brave and ran out to be hit by a barrage of arrows and got hit a few times by a wrestler (that died quickly), these are his wounds

Upper body (broken)
Right upper arm (broken)
Left upper arm (mangled)
Right lower leg (mangled)
Right lung (mangled)
Left lung (mangled)
Heart (mangled)
Upper spine (moderatly wounded)

He's been in a bed for a year and hasn't even got any closer to healing, he's a legend

[Aspgren]

I don't have any real back-from-the-brink stories. My largest tantrum spiral to date left enough dwarves to still support a captain of the guard.. but in this fortress there is a dwarf called "Urdim Beardedstaff"

I don't know exactly when Urdim immigrated but he's the only hunter I have. He was out chasing groundhogs when the goblins came - and he was surrounded by wrestlers and lashers. He ran and shot and ran and shot. In the end he was so close to being captured and surrounded countless times, but he shot the attackers and fled back to the fortress.

 5-6 goblins were mortally wounded by him and 2-3 goblins were incapacitated. Those who could fled the scene ... Urdim didn't suffer a scratch.

It's doubtful if Mr.Beardstaff will be able to repeat this stunt as he has been bitten by a cave spider. Something that might very well prove fatal in his line of work...

[Nobody1225]

Struck HFS--ridiculously early: mid-spring of year one.  I hadn't put too much time into the fortress, obviously, and I decided I wanted the funhouse fully cleaned out before there was any risk of an HFS King showing up.  Now, this being very early in the fort's lifespan, there was no awesomely developed military or siege ops squad.  So, clearly not thinking this through too well, I took advantage of the extra labor provided by a year one summer migrant wave and made one clear passage to the edge of the central funhouse, and filled it with oodles of cage traps, along with a series of supports and levers designed to bring stone crashing down and choking the clowns into unconsciousness so they could all be captured.

Breached into the central funhouse.  Forgot all about the many, many, involuntary guests of the clowns, who came strewing out even before the "Horrors!" message--my dorfs assigned to lever-pulling got swamped, and then slaughtered by clowns with corrupt intentions.  Orders made to pull back out of desperation--gathering all wardogs, tame ponies and muskoxen, as well as the last five dwarves in the dining hall for a last stand.  One CwCI had made it through the hordes of the damned and to that last desperate cluster, and I prepared to be told my settlement had crumbled to its end.

Instead, the head clown apparently took offense at one of the supports and smashed it.  I didn't quite see everything that happened after that, but a minute later, I had five surviving dwarves clutching each other in fear as their pets and domestic animals were splattered in pieces across the room...with one dead clown at their feet...and every last other clown and clown-guest who had escaped the funhouse trapped in cages.

The mason of the survivors went mad immediately, and begin wandering around babbling.  I never found his body back, he may have thrown himself into the eerie glowing part of the funhouse or just drowned himself, I'm not certain.  My carpenter began building caskets.  The soapmaker, potash maker, and fish dissector were all handed picks from the deceased and set to work removing one z-level of a small nearby hill--the soapmaker was then declared mechanic and architect, and built one support and one lever to operate it while the other two began moving cages.

When the HFS king arrived next year, we let him pull the lever himself, and started our lives anew under his watchful guidance as every last thing from hell had been annihilated under the falling rock.  Our fish dissector got a new job as engraver, and had many...interesting...things to decorate the king's bedroom with.  He seemed less bothered by the slaughter of his fellow dwarves than about how one particular pony was violated and killed by the clowns....

[Protactinium]

I apologize in advance for the very long post.

Arnab: Awwwwwwww, shiiiiiiit.
Connor: shiiit?

Arnab: So, still playing DF with the dwarves modded to explode on death. [They have an ITEMCORPSE tag that drops a custom stone with a boiling temperature of 150. The boiling lowers the squares around it to 150 degrees, and so the boiling explosion flash-freezes enemies to death.]
Connor: ahaha.

Arnab: You know what's worse than a tantrum spiral?
Connor: An exploding chain reaction of deaths?

Arnab: When a tantrum-er kills ONLY ONE [explosive] dwarf... in the meeting area.
I lost 20 dwarves (out of 170 though) and half my livestock.
It was like a cluster grenade. It was awesome, and terrible.
One of my ex-mayors died.
Connor: [He must have been] very popular.

Arnab: [Yep, and] about 75% of my fort is miserable, someone went stark raving mad, someone just went berserk. I have no way to effectively deal with a berserk dwarf that doesn't cause collateral damage...
Oooooooh.
Maybe I do.
It was the animal trainer who went berserk.
And he had about 15~ war animals following him.
He's gonna have to get in a fight with war dogs, war horses, and war eagles.
Aaaaaaand he's down, and the animals are now all freezing to death.
NONONONONONO
STOP RUNNING INTO THE BLAST ZONE
Connor: oh lordy

Arnab: Sigh.
Also, my Dragonslayer axedwarf was killed in the initial chain reaction. [He killed a brass dragon!]
All my roads are being destroyed by tantrumers... dude, it's the LA riots again
Connor: Wait, tantrummers can destroy roads?!

Arnab: They do it all the time. My paved roads are being destroyed as we speak.
Miller went stark raving mad...

Sent at 1:02 PM on Thursday

Arnab: You know, at least the dwarf who did all this died when the animal trainer chain exploded. I had her profession turned to Traitor before she died.
Connor: Hee.

Arnab: Maybe the superstats-from-talking exploit is balanced from this... one death is thirty deaths... [Making a very small meeting area makes all the idlers talk to each other a lot, raising stats from the talking skill raises, but makes them all friends.]
Connor: True.

Arnab: Damn, legendary mechanic when stark raving mad.
Connor: Aww. How'd you get him?

Arnab: It's alright; I have two other legendary mechanics.
All of them got legendary by building and reloading stonefall traps.
I've finally removed most of the stonefall traps and am replacing them with level-activated spear traps.
The orcs would have killed me way early on without stonefalls.
Lorbam Lobashsokan, Mason cancels Starting Fist Fight: Target inaccessible.
Bone carver went stark raving mad...
Elite wrestler melancholy...
Fish cleaner, mason melancholy...
Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Arnab: If I remove the meeting area, will they hang out in their own rooms, away from each other?
And awesome. Another dwarf just punched out a donkey foal.

Sent at 1:16 PM on Thursday

Arnab: Duke Consort and Hammerer both went down during this spiral.
Connor: That's gotta be a plus.

Arnab: Not really anything. Without a jail or a guard, the Hammerer nor failed mandates resulted in anything.
Glassmaker went insane...
You know why the Traitor started this all in the first place? She was accosted by terrible vermin.
She also liked "Dwarve" Skulls.
Connor: lolol

Arnab: Which don't really exist here, unless death is done by beheading.
Because itemcorpse replaces the dwarf corpse.
I don't get it; they should have been happy with the amazing dining room and legendary meals I gave them.
So what's a couple dozen deaths?
Farmer just went berserk. You know what else? I just realized, the elves are still here at the depot. My depot is on an elevated platform, though, so they weren't caught in the crossfire.
Connor: Damn.

Arnab: Hmm... that berserk farmer is ultra-mighty, perfectly agile, and very tough...
Yay war eagles!
A planter died from the exploding berserk farmer. A fishery worker in my booze pile has resultantly gone berserk.
Connor: Chances anyone will survive?

Arnab: I can lock the doors of my booze room. However, there are... 6 dwarf adults and 4 dwarf children in the room besides the berserk.
I am so glad I assigned 2 war animals to follow every legendary dwarf.
NO
While this is going on, SOMEONE ELSE OUTSIDE DIED
AND EXPLODED
For the record, I believe I was at 169 or 170 dwarves before any of this.
Currently at 131

Sent at 1:35 PM on Thursday

Connor: Nice.

Arnab: That fishery berserker killed the two war eagles but sustained major injuries including losing the right eye, and he then went on to oneshot a pig. Being quick with the door locks, there are 4 adult dwarves and 2 children left in the booze room, along with the berserk.
Oh shit. He just took out a warhorse and is now killing a goose.
Connor: Are the adult dwarves doing alright?

Arnab: Yes, they keep escaping by running while he punches animals.
My booze room is like a 3x3 square, with the middle section as the door/ramps. They are running around the middle tile.
But it's not 3x3 tiles--much larger
Just saying that it can be represented in that scale.
Also, he killed an adult in here and now died.
Since when he kills something, he is next to the explosion.
Connor: That is... good.

Arnab: It was one of my many block-churner masons.
Another peasant went melancholy...
Connor: Are the melancholy ones throwing themselves in to anything?

Arnab: They have nothing to throw themselves into--this is a warm/hot desert map, and it is a brook. I needed not a cistern, and the brook is not penetrable.
Tax collector broke his cabinet...
Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Arnab: Also, the only dwarves here that aren't miserable or very unhappy are the ecstatic ones that don't have any relationships except for passing acquaintances.
[Tantrumming] children are toppling my traps.
Connor: That must be how Kobolds do it. Tiny hands.

Arnab: The melancholy are all outside my fort walls slowly getting naked.
A mason just went berserk ._.
He's attacking a clothier...
Woot! Champion dwarf to the rescue!
The clothier does have neck, lower spine, brain, eye, ear, and nose injuries though.
OH SHIT
Connor: Three nerve injuries? Leave him to rot.

Arnab: Lost in the red text, a stonecrafter ALSO went berserk. He is down in my central stone-working area...
No, no, no, no, no...
current mayor walked into cloud of frozen explosion of berserk mason
YES! Emerged with damaged limbs, not death!
Yay superdwarvenly toughness
lol the philospher is throwing a tantrum
Connor: wow

Arnab: Another mason is melancholy... shit, I don't think I even need to update you this much. It's just gonna be more of this for a while.
Though from now on, my roads will all be constructed floors out of blocks to avoid this.
Connor: You didn't do that before? silly man.

Arnab: Of course not. I used most of my blocks to create a 5-level tower for them to live in.
YES THIS IS PERFECT
Deduk Alathfikod, Philospher has gone berserk.
(He went berserk by the shops, so I will assume it is because of capitalism.)
He's not going to cause any trouble. The shops are their own separate area, and he's the only one besides two gaur [like a water buffalo] and a war dog.
Connor: That is good!

Arnab: Yep. Dog froze but otherwise, that's all good.
How do I go about ending this tantrum?
Should I enlist a royal guard? Or fortress guard?
Connor: Lock up sane peasants with food, ignore ALL OTHER DWARVES.
Anyone who is Content or better.

Arnab: This fort is designed much differently from my others... it's a walled-off complex with a central tower that goes 6 z levels down with workshops of different types on every floor, and bedrooms on the 5-6 z-levels above ground.
And there's a separate nobles tower.
There are two flood-gate lever-controlled entrances, one side which extends into a barracks on the outside of the wall.
I don't have key chokepoint doors to lock off.

Sent at 2:09 PM on Thursday

Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Arnab: War animals are amazing.
...wooooooorst place to die.
At the entrance of the tower...
Where everyone passes through...
92 dwarves. [10 seconds pass]
85 dwarves. [10 more seconds pass]
77 dwarves
The only nobles left are the Duchess and the Dungeon Master, and the recently-made Captain of the Guard who is resting. It's my first mayor. My current mayor just died in that massive explosion at the entrance of the tower.
Note: have more than one entrance. No high-traffic exits in this mod EVER
Lost two legendary miners who were part of the original 7...
Connor: ffuuu

Arnab: The guards are vandalizing the roads...
70 dwarves.
Ah, the explosions have stopped.
What did we start at? 170? And now it's 70?
Connor: yep

Arnab: GODDAMN THAT TERRIBLE VERMIN

Sent at 2:24 PM on Thursday

Arnab: ...legendary miner went berserk.
Connor: Armok have mercy.

Arnab: She has an iron pick and legendary +5 mining skill
She just killed 4 war eagles and a war dog
And a war horse
And she's chasing everyone.
Oh, lucky. She'll die from the first dwarf kill, right.
...
she ran through the boiling statuecorpse with some wounds and is still going.
She's a mass killer of the war animals...
She killed a tantrumming tanner... or is killing...
She can't seem to kill the tanner. Also, the duchess is melancholy.
Connor: Hm?

Arnab: They're just next to each other, he's wounded and unconscious and in extreme pain.
Connor: Oh.

Sent at 2:35 PM on Thursday

Arnab: She died when I recruited a nearby mason to end the stalemate.
The mason is now very injured, the tanner died as he was unconscious and couldn't move away.
...
......
.........
Guess what just happened.

I can't wait for a response. A tax collector, hammerer, duke, consort, and philosopher all just showed up at my fort. No one else even considered making the journey to this cursed death-trap.
That's screwed up [because the duchess was still alive in this fort, making there a Duchess, a Duke, and a Duchess Consort], but I guess it considers the duchess as good as dead.

...the duchess just killed herself. Jumped off a cliff.
Connor: How many now?

Arnab: 68, but there are still plenty more insane that will die off soon.
I still have food and drink and could sustain any non-insane survivors.
Now is not the time for you kids to Go Shopping!

Sent at 2:45 PM on Thursday

Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Arnab: Gimme some time though, I'm going to grab lunch and all that jazz. See ya for now.

Sent at 3:00 PM on Thursday

Arnab: Hmmm... berserk champion...
Connor: Keep doors locked and keep praying. See if you can lock everyone in their own rooms with food until the storm subsides. Check happiness levels every 5 minutes.

Sent at 3:49 PM on Thursday

Arnab: I don't know how I can get food to their rooms in safety.
Connor: 1. Make many small stockpiles with no barrels allowed.
2. Dissolve current food stockpile.

Arnab: It's already over.
Connor: oh. Well that helps.

Arnab: He ran into traps.
Connor: Yikes.

Arnab: Yep. Berserked right into a line of my remaining stonefall traps.
I'm not quite done setting up my spike-trap/pressure plate system yet, so I haven't removed all the stonefalls yet. I'm going to push back the time that orcs go active, so I don't ever feel like using stonefall traps again. [Blah blah blah]

Sent at 4:04 PM on Thursday

Arnab: 60 dwarves, and 6 are outside babbling or wasting away to death.
Make that 59 and 5... Of course. That's 58 and 5. The guy who just died did it by jumping off my tower. And his explosion at the ground also killed a child.

Sent at 4:10 PM on Thursday

Arnab: Looking at my only remaining miner, who is "fine" on the happiness scale and is bedridden, she has lost her husband, both children, both pets, and fifteen friends in this big tantrum spiral.
Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Sent at 4:15 PM on Thursday

Arnab: Wow, appropriate. I have only one fortress guard guy right now going around and punishing all the surviving tantrummers. I just watched him beat two people. "He has a sense of duty. He is not easily moved to pity."
Also, taking a dwarf to jail... the task is called Chain Animal.

Sent at 4:23 PM on Thursday

Connor: lol
[Blah blah blah]

Arnab: 50 population.
Dishmab Kubukzat has been miserable lately. He brought somebody to bed lately.
Connor: lol [Blah blah blah]

Sent at 5:23 PM on Thursday

Arnab: My mayor is conducting diplomacy with the humans while chained up in jail.
Connor: [Blah blah blah]

Arnab: lolololol So, that tanner guy who was harmed badly but not killed by that berserk miner?
He's been lying on the ground for about half a season, no one rescuing him.
Solon Rakustzalis, Recruit has gone berserk!
Then immediately
Solon Rakustzalis, Recruit has starved to death.

Sent at 5:53 PM on Thursday

Arnab: The mayor starved to death in jail. All three mayors/ex-mayors have expired.

Sent at 5:56 PM on Thursday

Arnab: 37 dwarves.
Of those 37, 10 are children.
Of those 27 adults, 5 are nobles.
Of those 22 worker dwarves, 8 are resting their injuries.
Of those 14, 3 of them are chained up in jail.
11 effective dwarves. Woot!
Oh, some of these remaining 11 are actually babbling or melancholy and are going to die soon. 3 of them.
So 8 effective dwarves.

Sent at 6:05 PM on Thursday

Arnab: This game is awesome. When shit happens, shit really happens.

Sent at 6:08 PM on Thursday

[And now... I have 18 dwarves living, and everyone else is alive and at least content. There are 1900+ drinks and over 5000 forms of food. I will rise up again.]

[FluffyToast J]

Dear Armok. Truly that has to be one of the best way to kill a Fort. With exploding dwarves.

Carry on, good sir.