I had a fort that had gotten established -- a hospital with a well, we were making steel armor for the military, etc. I only nickname dwarfs once they are masters in their jobs, or for military once they do something worthy. My dwarfs have to earn their nicknames. So I didn't have many dwarves of distinction yet, but things were going well.
Then I get a ton of messages about civilians falling over dead. I had screwed up when constructing my well, leaving a diagonal passageway into the caverns. One of the worst possible Forgotten Beasts -- a blob, with 'deadly dust' emanating from it, had crawled up into my hospital, massacred the staff and was headed for the civilian bedrooms.
I throw my military down there, hoping they would be able to stop the thing.
Almost all of the military die on contact with the beast. They do, however, manage to shift the combat back to the hospital. Then one axedwarf does something that's either terrifically stupid or boneheaded bravery -- he falls down the well, and somehow takes the forgotten beast with him.
This buys my fort some time. I pave over the well. I let the civilians out of the panic burrow and they start cleaning up the carnage. The axedwarf in the well is unconscious, underwater and being clubbed nonstop by the beast, but *he stays alive*. (This has to be a bug.) He distracts the beast long enough that one of my miners is able to dig a rockfall that drops a block of stone down the well to kill the beast.
The dwarf in the well dies also, of course. I name him 'Aquadwarf', and give him a tomb of steel.
The deadly dust causes some problems, but after a while I wash the halls and everything's fine. Only a few minor tantrums; I keep my dwarves happy. The main problem is the military. They all die on their hospital beds, except for one dwarf who has rot on *every* body part. I should have saved a screenshot -- it went on for a screen and a half with, 'His cheeks are rotting. His lower lip is rotting. His upper lip is rotting.' and so on. I have no surviving doctors, so all I can do for him is give him water and ready his tomb.
But he *survives*. Every body part that used to have rot on it now has a wicked scar. When he walks out of the hospital I name him 'Zombo', and make him the captain of the militia. Every dwarf in the next migrant wave is handed a weapon and told to report to a dwarf literally *covered* in scars, with some horrifying stories to tell.
And the fort went on.
(I quit it about 8 years later due to lag. Zombo survived to the end, with two more Forgotten beast kills to his squad's credit.)