about a year ago in version 38 or so I had a lady Dwarf decieded to join an hostile faction during a tantrum (bug reported and fixed now), She proceeded to slay her children and start a viscious tantrum spiral with one of the really good marks dwarves also joining the enemy faction. Woulnded dwarves lay everywhere one had a bolt stuck in his left eye , another had one in his right lung, and no civilian dwarves could approach the hospital beds , being scared off by one of the unconcious hostile faction dwarves laying in a bed. so the woulnded and incapicated dwarves slowly dying of thirst and starving to death, the situation eventually resolved itself and I started to be able to do things for the woulnded. Pulled out the bolt stuck in the eye and the dwarf promptly died. Once the last trantum was over and all the insane ones shuffled off to their decaying spot I had three dwarves left. One of the starting 7, legendary in mechanic, a pesant immigrant, and a third dwarf who's skills did not matter as he would not do any work, and yes his profile stated he was lazy and does not like helping others and unwilling to do any unecassary work.
I Surveyed the carnage, about 120 dead dwarves littered the entieity of the fort, all the bodies has rotted to loose bones, and all the severed bits meant I had nearly 1000 dwarf trips needed to place all the bones in coffins, and the need to sort out which bones belonged to which dwarf. and I had to build 120+ coffins and emplace them a formidble task indeed for only three dwarves. Then there were kobold raids and goblins trying to ambush, and forces of darkness to deal with. The design of the fort was a large surface level wall with three openings widely spaced and weapon traps of the crossbow variety abundantly scattered in places the aproaching goblins were likely to path. unlocking one door for them to path into the fort, wait till a squad nearly there then lock that door, and unlock another, usually did the trick, causing the goblins to lose many members and choose to depart. the closest I came was when a swarm of kobolds had opened the doors while a siege was aproaching, one goblin managed two steps past the last trap before dying from pierced lungs and heart. The legandry dwarf was able to reclaim the door and clear the bodies from the doorway before the next goblin squad got to the doorway, while the pesant was drafted and fought the kobolds. There were no immigrants that year or for the next five. Goblin siege after goblin siege appeared with the dwarves clearing the bodies and reloading the crossbows in between assults. the lazy dwarf, once I saw the 50 or so little statuettes in his bedroom that he had been collecting, and not doing any work... his fate was sealed, next ambush he was drafted , equipped with a crossbow and ordered to chase opponents, he bashed 3 goblins to death before a mace goblin sent him flying about 20 tiles. Then there were two dwarves. The pesant had become a novice at mechanics, but was too slow at reloading and finally one day he fell asleap right on the trap he was loading. The legandry mechanic cleared the body and completed reloading the trap and all the rest, and was the only dwarf in the fortress for the next three years defeating another 6 goblin sieges before some immigrants arrived. I continued playing the fort till I had every dead dwarf neatly tucked into a coffin, and most of the goblin's gear sold off to caravans. at last count I had 20 dwarves, and the fort was all cleaned up. No longer interesting, and the bug fixes were out to fix the two bugs that nearly killed this fort, and so I moved on to version 40 leaving with fond memories of the little mechanic that stood off the goblins single handed, for several years.
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Topic: Starting Over, AKA Story Time! (Read 946 times)