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[Sutremaine]

The enemy: Spos, a feathered snail with wings and deadly spittle.
The dwarves: 13 swordmasters, kitted out with leather and bone armour, plus steel shields and shord swords, plus high general fighting skills.
The battleground: The winding cavern in which Spos has been fluttering around for the last... 35 years.

All in all it went fairly well. The beast opened with a spit attack, which was blocked by the (appointed and non-functional) DM. She responds with a boot to the body, followed up with a stab to Spos' body. Spos charges but fails to land a solid hit, merely knocking the DM over before again failing to hit her. This is the last effective thing Spos will do. At this point the other dwarves are close enough to join the battle, the FB tries to hit the DM again, and things become a little confused as the game refers to three of the five fighting dwarves as The Swordmaster. What follows is four pages of the dwarves delivering bruising punches and kicks, glancing sword slaps, and tearing sword strikes. This isn't doing much to Spos, but it isn't doing anything to them. All of its attacks flat-out miss and its single spit attack is blocked by a militia commander.

Finally some real wounding occurs, and the forgotten beast's severed right wing sails off in an arc! The DM, realising that she's the only dwarf who's going to even be touched in this fight, registers her displeasure by sinking her teeth into the hapless FB. Good job it's not its blood that's deadly. She holds on even as Spos collapses, providing a distraction as the other swordsdwarves go to work on its other wing. Off it goes! The beast is further dismantled, with the DM getting the honour of carving its shell off, and finally it gets kicked to death by the fort's resident miseryguts.

Everybody was then ordered to the hospital, which is accessible only through a dwarf dip.

All products of the FB were completely ignored by the haulers and cleaners (who I know from previous cleanups to be fairly responsive), and the masterpiece roast made primarily of minced intestines would have rotted in the kitchen had I not shunted it onto a food stockpile by dismantling and rebuilding the kitchen. I used dfclean to tidy up the washing area, and the four pieces of FB leather I got out of the fight are still sitting in the tanner's. We'll see if they ever get moved, or if anyone touches the roast.

[NecroRebel]

Sounds like a pretty fun first FB, though not as Fun as some can be 

I think my first FB kill was when I had had a dwarf who was multi-legendary in several combat skills from dealing with a couple early Fortress Defense mod sieges singlehandedly, and kitted out in full masterwork steel. She more-or-less just got bowled over and pushed back repeatedly until eventually she managed to dodge to the side when the beast charged and made it collide into an object, at which point she axed it to death.



My worst FB ever was more recent. It was a beast with deadly dust that first made victims incredibly drowsy, so my soldiers tried to go to bed halfway through killing it, and then, after a short while, made all of their blood suddenly and instantly leave their bodies. As in, they were apparently completely unharmed, then I would get messages about them resting injuries and then dying from blood loss within a couple of steps. THAT was the sort of Forgotten Beast syndrome that you hear about, though they're really not all that common; that was I think the seventh or eighth FB that one fort had dealt with, and I had never previously had a Beast with an instant-death syndrome before then, either.

[Maynot]

I had a forgotten beast with the deadly dust breath blow itself up with its own dust cloud.  Of course, after that the disease was being spread around by the children who don't know how to wear clothes or wash (aparently).

[vipre01]

I was thinking Facebook. Oh well, I guess killing a Forgotten Beast is cool too.

[brucemo]

Lots more interesting than my first FB, which walked into an early fort via the caverns, and interrupted a farmer, who immediately punched the beast's brain out through the back of his head. 

[Qinetix]

Well the first one I killed was in adventure mode , a shelled winged beast , killed some titans as well
Didn't spoted any MB's or FB's yet in DF mode

[SurfinShroom]

My first FB kill was an anti-climax, expecting something horrible from this swimming horned alligator, instead my axelord single handedly chopped it in pieces of 'tissue' bit by bit.
There wasn't even any blood/extract :L

[SenorOcho]

My first FB was some sort of web-spitting slug thing.

It approached my fort... and took a single crossbow bolt to the brain, dying instantly.  ಠ_ಠ

[thegoatgod_pan]

Qinetix--how did you meet an FB in adventurer mode--I've only had that happen when exploring a fortress that actually fell to one, but never spontaneously--did you spent a long time in the caverns or something?

[Gorm]

My first FB was a flying insectoid of some kind. "Beware its deadly dust" it said. 'Beware its omnidirectional omnicidal dust of inevitable doom' would have been more fitting.

I started fighting it by sending all of my 33 half-trained soldiers into the caverns. Only a handful survived, lying crippled on the ground. When the beast decided to climb the stairs into the actual fortress, I drafted everyone else and sent them to kill it. I fully expected the beast to kill all my civilians as well and it certainly did kill everyone that came too close. Then at some point it decided to fly back to the caverns to finish off what was left of my military. But when it grabbed one of my recruits and took off into the air, he punched the beast so hard that it could not hold itself in the air any longer and came crashing down into the muddy cavern ground. Neither of the two survived the impact.*

In the end, I had technically defeated the forgotten beast, but the losses were devastating. Of the 105 dwarves that once lived in the proud and flourishing fortress, only seven were still alive. Three of them were young children who had just lost at least one parent, another three had rotten feet and would clearly not survive the coming months and the last one was my chief medical dwarf who decided to spend most of his time sleeping and eating. Seven dwarves had once founded the fortress, seven dwarves would abandon it and scatter into the sorrounding swamps, never to be heard of again.


* I can't say what exactly happened down there as I only saw the results and what I described here is my interpretation of the event, based on my imagination and what I remember of the scene and the combat reports.

[Alarion]

My first, and most memorable one was Imi, a great blob with wings. It first appeared about a year after breaching the caverns, terrified the dorfs that met it and seemed sure to send the fortress to its early doom... but instead it flew away into an upper cavern and eventually ended up in a HUGE underground lake. There, the brave Serpent Woman Spearwoman Kaslalrongquan engaged the beast, driving it back and wounding it, but it kept fighting back with its deadly spittle and evil-looking wings... and so they would remain, locked in deadly combat, for more than two years. During this time, a great project was devised that would open a hole in the above cavern, channel the water into a holed-out area below and thus effectively drain the entire lake into an even lower cavern, allowing speardwarves, swordsdwarves and marksdwarves in to attack and hopefully defeat the beast. Alas, it was not to be, and after a year of strenous work that saw two miners dead, three severely injured and a large section of the flooring collapse to 10 z-levels below, the project was abandoned and it was thought that maybe the beast and his adversary would simply remain in eternal combat, as a sort of symbol of the eternal struggle all dwarves must face in the trials and tribulations of their daily lives.

But lo! One day, the serpentwoman suddenly and unexpectedly slew the beast, and sent its corpse flying into a wall. She was hailed a hero, and became an eternal friend of the Mountainhome for her heroic actions. The beast's humongous body (about 11,000 units of mass in all) was turned into biscuits, stews, roast and other delicious things, or simply eaten raw; the sheer value of the beast's now-deceased corpse and its parts made up the bulk of exports for over four years, with a single meal made from its remains valued in the hundreds or thousands of dwarfbucks, and there being literally 11,000 pieces of it to cook, the supply was nearly limitless. Other beasts came and went, including those made of rutile (with deadly dust akin to a cave collapse- took half a year to defeat), blood (died in one hit), and snow (died instantly from it being too warm... ...), but none was remembered so fondly as the great Imi, source of the fortress' newfound wealth, its fame and most of its meals, and a legend was already beginning to form around it and its deeds, and of the mighty prowess of she who would after a battle worthy of Armok himself, slay it; unfortunately, it was cut short by a goblin invasion, a partial submersion of the fortress and a giant troll breaking down the last parts of doors that kept the unwary out, submitting them and all of Tomeauthored to a fate reserved for those who fall in epics, and being a great story still for the surviving parts of their civilization that would later find it, scattered and broken, and of the axelady master that returned in fury to avenge her brethren after an epic journey across the very tops of a world-spanning mountain range, only to be cut down by the nefarious lash of a goblin master, and reduced to a pulp by his evil troll masters and sword-wielding kin soon thereafter; however, none of this bothered the ones now taken up residence in the fort, who boasted of their might, power and ability to defeat the foul bearded ones... until a day much later, when a dark shadow rose from the neglected caverns below them... but that is a story for another time, and indeed other ears than were now so vain and ignorant as to think to ignore that which does under the living earth lie... in watching, and in wait.


Best part?

It was composed of vomit.

[Makigall]

Hopefully not too much of a necro.

After playing for a few weeks I've started looking for some Fun and I've been taking on the caverns.  My current fort has had 4 or 5 forgotten beasts come to live in the third cavern layer.  I've been mostly taking on the flying FBs by carving fortifications into the cavern walls and sending my marksdwarfs to do their thing.  My first kill fell into some lava and is unrecoverable.  The second kill landed just outside my fortification.  And this got me thinking.  The OP in this thread mentioned Forgotten Beast leather and forgotten beast roast.  Are FB products safe?  Or would it just result in a lot of Fun?

I guess I'm mostly wondering because it seems like I mostly just hear the horror stories of dwarfs killing a forgotten beast and then a month later everyone's eyes are rotting or their stomach breaks.  How common are these syndromes?  Saving now, if nobody can say for sure then I'll open up the cave and butcher the body, turn it into roast, distribute it to my dwarfs and encourage them to drink from forgotten beast leather waterskins.  For !!SCIENCE!!

EDIT:  Ok, so as soon as I opened the cavern to retrieve the corpse I was rushed by a couple other forgotten beasts.  Militia dispatched them, the corpse hauler made it out with only a few bruises.  Militia took a dip in some water and I dfcleanmap'd the pools of ichor and blood away.  The butchering has begun.  The first beast yielded 117 units of meat, 26 brain, 80 intestine, 13 heart and 65 fat.  Second beast gives me 476 meat, 28 lung, 7 heart, 43 intestine, 14 brain, 122 bone, 70 fat, an eye, a skull and a feather.  And one of my axedwarfs ate a piece of meat and he didn't fall over dead from the experience.  The second beast was the one that was taken down by marksdwarfs, so its body was completely intact and not mangled.  The first one met the axedwarfs.  The third beast I mentioned was made of ice and promptly melted when it died.  I'll see if I can track down any parts that got hacked off.  And the 3000 kilogram skin off the first one somehow got turned into a 2 kilo piece of leather.  I'm not exactly sure what they're doing with the other skin, it doesn't appear to be rotten.  Anyway, if their eyes boil out later or something I'll let everyone know.  I'll certainly be sending my forgotten beast roasts of as offerings to the elves.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

If the FB itself didn't have any poisonous attacks it should be fine. Though if another FB with poison died in the same cavern you might want to be careful; watch out for piles of forgotten beast extract.

[LilGunmanX]

I didn't think FB roasts, cooked properly, could actually be poisonous... rather, I thought it was just the ichor that was toxic. Then again, I don't know much about the subject, so I could be wrong entirely.

In any case, seeing as how I had intentionally let the beasts of the caverns be until just recently, my first beast kill came from a giant toad made out of jute or some similar material which was belching fire everywhere. Yeah, it was a giant fire-breathing scarecrow toad. So I killed it and somebody made an artifact war-hammer from its bones. Needless to say, it was extremely boss.

That was the same fort where I needed like 32 kitchens and 16 stills producing at all times just to keep the crap out of my stockpiles. Good times. I hope I still have the save somewhere. The reason I stopped playing it was just because it had gotten too easy after 7 years of patrol from my danger room-trained dwarven warriors. I wound up capturing and breeding entire armies of draltha and rutherers, and my war dog supply was so big that I actually started feeding the puppies to my captured salt-beast and built a gas chamber around it. I wanted a better beast for the chamber, but there was a massive... utterly massive!... colony of cave swallow people in the caverns who kept killing them. In the end, genocide became necessary.

[shmelse]

I guess I'm mostly wondering because it seems like I mostly just hear the horror stories of dwarfs killing a forgotten beast and then a month later everyone's eyes are rotting or their stomach breaks. 

I've made some pretty awesome FB roasts.  No problems with them so far.  FB roasts are the only things that I really manipulate the kitchen to make, cooking them with 3 stacks of syrup makes for some ridiculously expensive food.  I think the last one was worth almost 100k.  No problems with dwarves dying from it, though.

The third beast I mentioned was made of ice and promptly melted when it died.  I'll see if I can track down any parts that got hacked off. 

Just so you know, FBs made of materials other than meat (that's FBs made of anything the game tells you about, from coal to ice) can't be butchered or used in any way.  I was super disappointed, since right now I have a FB made of black diamond that's going to be ridiculously hard to kill and I won't even get any diamonds out of it if I manage it.  But yah, you were pretty lucky to have both of your first kills be butcherable.  I've had plenty that weren't.

Edited to add: This post reminded me that I had a bunch of FB meat that I needed to cook up again, and this time the stack is worth 200k.  So thanks for the reminder!!