I got this fox man for my character. Yeah, yeah, his traits aren't the best given what you can do with animal people. But assassinating goblins is a lot more fun if you do it as a fox, mostly because they're known for sneakiness, and cunning.
If you want to read how I got him going,
here's my story on that. In a nutshell, I built a fortress and developed it into maturity just so I could get fox man sized armor.
I spawn in the mountain home. As anyone who has ever seriously played adventure mode knows, these settlements are a total maze. It took me 30 real minutes to get out of there, although I spent most of my time looking for companions. I found the exit stairs within 5 minutes. In the end, I found only one companion, and he was on the surface. I spent about a day looking around in hillocks, mostly just for fun, as I know that the only companions you can get there are drunks, which don't make very good companions.
One day later I went to my Fort, which was not 1 in game hour away from the closest hillock, and no more than three from the mountain home. I didn't expect to find a lot of order there, which I didn't, but I actually managed to recruit two more companions, both of which were visitors. I got my armor and it all worked fine.
Now, I decided to sidetrack a little. I backed up my save, retired my adventurer inside the fort, and unretired the fort. The place was a complete mess - literally nobody was doing anything, everybody had "No job," and the game had assigned positions for all nobles. Also, I had a lot of visitors, but only two of them were actually listed as guests - all others were listed as hostile, although none of them attacked my dwarves. There were even two elf merchants, who had the same psuedo-hostility. Now there was something funny with my livestock. I had all the animals I had when I retired the fort, plus two more - "Mule" and "Horse".
That was it.
No "stray," no gender tag, no names, just an animal listed as "Mule" and an animal listed as "Horse".
I had no idea where they came from, but frankly, I didn't care. What I was more interested in was my adventurer. He was there, actually - but it seems he had applied for long-term residency as a performer, because I couldn't assign labors to him, but I could assign occupations to him. I could also view his skills and his moods and preferences screen as any other citizen. For some reason he had taken off all of his armor, too. Now, remember at this point I had three companions. One of them seemed to have done the same thing. Resident status, no labors, yes occupations. The other two had taken on the same psuedo-hostility as many other visitors.
Now, there was another weird thing. His profession was "Fox man Swordsman." (although it would be cool if he was a "Swordsfox".) He was assigned to a squad with a random name, but I couldn't see it in the military screen. And as soon as I unpaused the game, he became a "Fox man", listed at the same level in the units screen as peasants, and he removed himself from his squad. I could still not assign him to another one. And with all those other glitches that followed the retirement, I decided to end my sidetracking here.
So I deleted the save and resumed from the backup I made.
Now I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to rent a room for the night at my tavern. After concluding that it wasn't possible, I asked around for quests and got a "criminal organization." I decided that taking them out was my goal. That place was really far away though, and I don't get how they could possibly be affected by them. There was a mountain in between the two places! But that wasn't going to stop me. And it was a good opportunity to test out guides, you know, companions that guide you to a location. So I asked around, and everyone told me that some human could guide me there. I spent a whole day looking for him, and back at the mountain home, I got told that if I wanted to know where he was, a certain badger woman could tell me.
Now earlier I had the tracks and odor HUD turned on, and near the entrance of the mountain home I noticed that the strongest odor was of badger women. So it was obvious that she was there right? No. After another whole day of searching, it turned out that she was right back where I started my search, in my own Fort. Pretty lame. But she was able to guide me straight to the criminals, instead of having to search for that human.
Travelling there took me two whole days, and it turned out that the "criminal organization" was a human town.
*facepalm*
I went straight back to my home area. Now I decided to have a little fun. I noticed that there was a dark pits near my location, and I thought I that the mountain home would surely appreciate it if I carried out a sneak attack on them.
To get there, I had to go through a mountain, not around it like I did with the "criminals." This actually took me a lot less time than I thought it would. After about a day, I arrived at the dark pits. Turned sneaking mode on, I'm ready for action. My companion didn't seem to care, though, as he kept talking all the time.
Arriving there, there were only trenches. No goblins, just trenches. And very cliffy terrain. Going a little further and I found my first landmark, which was some sort of tower. Probably meant as a lookout tower, but there was nothing to look put from; no windows, fortifications, or roof. Pretty strange. I decided to go a further, and there was a Goblin leatherworker, which I decided not to attack just yet. I was still getting down from the cliff, and he was out of sight almost immediately.
Then after coming down from the cliff, There was a little clearing with another tower in the middle. There were a lot of goblins going in there, but not enough that I had no chance of sneaking through. I sneaked to the side of the tower and waited outside for my first victim.
And after only a few turns, one came out. I was out of his view range, and I attacked him immediately. He tried to scream, but it seems that either nobody heard him or the game has no code to make these screams actually alarming to nearby civilization member. His corpse certainly did, though.
This repeated itself about three times. The last victim was a hunter, and I kept his weapons and ammo. I did a short crossbow training, and went inside the tower. There was a staircase going down. Going in it revealed some kind of cave, with many doors, and this seemed to be the Goblin variant of bedrooms. The rooms had no furniture though. I killed a few more goblins before finding a large open underground area that seemed to be some kind of meeting hall for the goblins. Sniping the goblins was definitely not a good idea, so I went back outside to find more targets.
After killing a few more and chasing one up a cliff I realized I had lost my companion. Well, he didn't exactly help in the killings, but now I had no way of safely going back home. Maybe I could surround myself with campfires and wait out any attacks? Well, it was still noon, so I had some time left. Unfortunately, the mountain home was too far away. I decided to back into the pits and hope I could come up with a plan before it got dark, as I couldn't rest within the site. I couldn't fast-travel through it, either.
I went back into the underground area. I think the local overseer finally noticed that there was a killer on the loose, because I encountered a lone soldier who seemed to already want to kill me, despite not actually seeing me. After a lengthy fight in a narrow hallway, I killed the soldier, but I broke my left arm. No more shields for me.
I decided that a shield was too essential and I could probably wait out my injuries. So I went back outside and headed for the edge of the site, so I could plan my escape.
It turned out that the companion was waiting for me on the edge of the site. He followed me immediately, and I got back to the mountain home safely. My arm was still broken.
In the end, my arm didn't heal within a few days as I had hoped, and I retired my adventurer at the mountain home. The end.