Urdim was one of the starting seven for my current and longest-running fort. He was the militia commander, and quickly became an Axe Lord while dealing with the ambushes. A couple years into the fort, Kosoth shows up in one of the immigrant waves. She's a macedwarf with higher skills than Urdim, so I made her militia commander instead. Urdim must've taken it pretty rough, because his demotion was a favorite topic for my engravers and masons in their artwork, second only to the founding of the fortress.
Fast forward to year seven. Urdim has maybe a dozen kills by this point, and both he and Kosoth are legendary fighters. A siege shows up, and I send my military out to stomp on the squads one at a time before they link up. The first target is a group of hammergoblins, which barely counts as a speedbump. On the way, though, Urdim spots two squads of bowgoblins who spawned in the same place. Eager to prove himself, or else just hoping to die nobly and end his shame, Urdim charges them. By himself.
The moment I notice this, I send the rest of the army to back him up, but they're engaged with the hammergoblins and it takes them some time to finish. Meanwhile Urdim charges through a hail of bolts and slaughters seven goblins and trolls before a lucky shot shatters his spine. A troll grabs him by the leg and starts beating him to death, but Urdim is wearing exceptional steel armor so this is taking a while.
The rest of my military shows up and steamrolls the bowgoblins without any injuries I noticed. Kosoth personally takes down the troll that grabbed Urdim. The goblins break and run like the cowards they are, and my military chases after, rushing past Urdim, who is still barely alive. It's while he's dragging himself after the fleeing goblins, trying to keep up with the comrades who rejected him, that he suffocates from a punctured lung.
I wanted to give him his old post back posthumously, but all I could give him was a platinum sarcophagus surrounded by gold statues. It doesn't feel like enough.