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[PCpaste]

"A towering hairy spider. It has thin wings of stretched skin and it undulates rhythmatically. Its pearl hair is long and straight. Beware its poisonous bite!"...

This horrid monster came out of the depths, and my supersoldier was sent to dispose of him... But he only managed to break all of the spider's limbs.

He proceded to crawl around my fortress, killing most of the animals and dwarves. After nearly all of my population was dead, a cornered miner killed the beastie with a single attack from his copper pick. My fortress is covered in blood, and the landscape is writtled with the corpses of my fallen dwarves, untuil I make enough caskets..

This was probably the closest to a game over i've ever been, usually I just abandon when things look ill fated.

Out of curiosity, what was the closest, or most amazing save you've ever had?

[Cotes]

An ambush sneaked in once, which killed some dwarves before I took them down. Then came a Titan with a syndrome that left about fifteen militia dwarves with all of their body parts rotting and filling the fortress with miasma.

A tantrum spiral ensued and I eventually I had to lock most of my population into the catacombs with the crazies (this was after my coffin production couldn't keep up with the death anymore). At this point I had only one proper soldier, a marksdwarf, left and a handful of survivors that weren't on the next train to loony-town.

Of course next comes a goblin siege, which would have been fine, seeing how my fortress had a wall, weren't it for the fact my fortress' most central structures were built next to a river... And there was a perfect snipers perch looming over it on the other side of the river for the goblin archer squad, which was hanging around uncomfortably close to the place, taking potshots at the dwarves that wandered outside after going insane.

So, I recruit a bunch of miserable dwarves to go outside with the one marksdwarf for a last stand - meaning about five completely unequipped dwarves who weren't shitting their pants so bad they couldn't even get their asses through the gate, against two squads of goblins riding on alligators.

And I won. The goblins ran away from them. The only dwarves surviving the battle were the mayor, who was immediately struck with melancholy, and the marksdwarf, who had lost more than one organ. The best part is that as the marksdwarf is walking back into the fortress, I notice the her mood had gone from 'miserable' to 'content' - and after she had died I had exactly seven dwarves left to rebuild with.

[Dutchling]

Elf ambush, killing everyone with their wooden weapons (I was at was with them but I didn't know so I had no military)
Than my miners kills one and they all flee

[Lord Darkstar]

I had a goblin siege get into one of my early fortress designs. I was using floodgates as "security walls" to block off my fortress from attackers and learned the hard way that trolls can destroy floodgates. So the siege ran into the fortress, and they slaughtered a fortress of 210 dwarves down to 1 mobile adult (a peasant/pump operator that had been off from all the others trying to get water raised up into and irrigation channel), 12 forever bed riding adults (the remains of my militia), 10 kids (6 forever bed riders), and 31 infants (most who would grow up to be bed riding children and adults thanks to being meat shields for their mothers), 3 cats, and 13 dogs.

That fortress ACTUALLY recovered within a few years--- despite only having 1 working adult. It didn't get a single migrant for over 12 years, but it traded and fed and boozed every bed rider. Lost most of the babies, but a few managed to pop to child due to age before starving. 1 of those 3 that survived was actually able to get around, although she was missing one of her arms. She eventually became a legendary axe user, a mayor, and champion of the fort. Then FPS death caused me to lose interest in the fort. That was under the old 40d release.

I've actually lost several forts to goblins. Or at least, to the after effects of a goblin siege finding someplace to get in. Seems they retreat more often and leave more survivors behind under the 31.x family.

[ISGC]

I've had two forts that I've brought back from 3 dwarves after various disasters
one of them was fantastic, where the three held off the rest of a siege by pegging them from behind a fortification with their crossbows until they ran out of ammo, but a caravan arrived and the guards took care of the rest, leaving only a few to run off.
the other one wasn't as exciting.

[Untelligent]

My 40-year 40d fort would have lasted less than ten years due to a tantrum spiral that resulted from a goblin ambush killing most of my dwarves. It was saved because my fortress guard managed to jail the worst offenders before they murdered too many people. Still, lots of dwarves died and I think I went from 150ish dwarves down to 20ish, so it was pretty close. Never taking the fortress guard for granted again.

[SirAaronIII]

A forgotten beast swam up my well and started shanking people.

Then a guy walled it in and we were all happy again.

[ThirdSpartacus]

When my fortress just started out with 7 dwarves, my expedition leader got into a scuffle with a wild duck and the duck actually killed him!

It turned out that the victim dwarf was the husband of one of my other dwarves. She went into tantrum and pushed one, then a second, and then a third, dwarf to their death in a murky pool. Oh, and the first and second victim were my miners. 

This led her to tantrum more but when she went to shove the fourth victim, the sturdy fella was all like "Oh hell no!" and promptly fatally ripped off the arm of the offender and my fortress was saved!

But that's not it! With only two dwarves left, a gang of three ogres (two of them were ogressess actually), stormed in my as-yet-unconstructed fort, and killed one of my two remaining dwarves. The survivor, who by fate was the one to dispatch the tantrum-ing dwarf, actually managed to kill one ogress and the male ogre. Now a pretty damn-accomplished wrestler, this last dwarf wrestled with Fiona (lulz, the ogress) and in the scuffle managed to finger-nail cut her to death, but with now-fatal wounds to the body: ripped-open chest, no legs, one arm mangled, unconscious head concussion. The second before he died, five migrants just happened to arrive!

I can just imagine the migrant dwarves walking into the fortress and the last dwarf - Goden, or something - saying with his dying breath: "Remember what happened here!".

So yeah, I mass-produced some pretty epic engravings afterwards. This was before I went off to sleep, so, as you can imagine, I felt pretty damn happy to have witnessed this... history!

[Ghills]

I got tired of goblin sieges and decided to begin experimenting with magma, a la Boatmurdered, after my 30+ herd of war elephants failed to do the trick. This was on an embark with a volcano and a river, btw.

I burned down the goblins...and started fires all over the map. Including in my above-ground trade depot area.  So I build a flooding system to contain the magma & fires...and there went the rest of the map, 1/3 of my dwarves, and a large percentage of my herd of war elephants.  This was the point at which I started using dfcleanmap. That didn't help with the dwarves who, once the floods had died down, went outside to retrieve their former comrades, caught on fire, and brought their flaming selves, with the flaming corpse, back inside. Where they set other dwarves on fire.

I frantically built all kinds of pretty things and managed to stave off (most) tantrums. The fortress as it last stood was covered in blood, mud, and fire, filled with content dwarves and glittering statues. The landscape outside was a wasteland of fire (I never actually managed to put all of the fires out) and ash, with pieces of goblinite fetching up against the newly-made obsidian pillars and small patches of dirty, ashy water sloshing about in ponds, filled with dorf and goblin corpses.

It was like some kind of hellish dystopia where everyone is constantly stoned. Occasionally, a dorf would set themselves on fire. Everyone was 'getting used to tragedy.'

[numerobis]

A forgotten beast flew up a down staircase into a cave, and before I knew he killed my military.  I had just smelted my first pair of steel bars.

I mustered a large militia, which eventually beat him -- but they were all dead dwarves walking because of the poison powder.  After the tantrum spiral and an ignorable goblin ambush, I had 9 dwarves.

A major immigration wave came and brought me up over 30 dwarves.  I buried all the dead (about 50 of them) and trained an army again, but before I had a chance to equip them properly, a second ambush came.

I gathered the soldiers, and, as recounted elsewhere, at the moment of truth, instead of falling upon the enemy, they turned to engage some capybaras.

I mustered the survivors but they fell one by one.  Then, mysteriously, the goblins left.  I had a child and one adult remaining...

(OK, they were injured in bed and thus doomed to starve, so maybe my story doesn't count as a close shave...)

[Nyxalinth]

I had set a pop cap on my fort of 50, and then something or other happened and a tantrum spiral reduced my fort to 2 kids and four adults.  I bumpoed the cap back up and got migrants just in the nick of time.

Current fort is teetering on disaster's edge, but hasn't fallen over it yet.

[vhappylurker]

Wild mountain goats got into one of my old 40.x forts via a badly placed hole in my farm level. They proceed to run rampant, wrecking things and mauling dwarfs. I lost that fort due to the damages. I lost a fort not to goblins or dwarfly stupidity, but the freaking MOUNTAIN GOATS. *is ashamed*

A similiar incident happened in a more recent fort-this time involving elk birds- but I was ready for them. Que my five dwarf militia murdering the invaders and my dwarfs feasting on tasty elk bird for a few seasons.