Goodness me, these all make my close calls pale in comparison!
*AHEM*
So, a vile force of darkness arrived. "Oh cool," i thought. Then i saw that it was composed mainly of bowmen and trolls, after which i let out a horrified squeak. My swamp-entrance-with-magma-inator (yeah i like phineas & ferb, keep reading) wasn't finished, so my only hope was my little squad of ironclad dorfs with moderate (read: proficient and below) skills. Although a caravan had arrived and killed some gobs, they went insane (a yak went melancholy too) and died, so that still left me with a sizable opposition. So obviously, with my fort being 100% sealable, i send my squad outside to deal with the siege, fully expecting them to drop like flies. Thing is, only half of them made it out before the gobs got too close for comfort, so i shut the gate and left my half-squad to die. My squad then got jumped by 7 trolls while being on the receiving end of the bow equivalent of a gatling gun. Shortly thereafter, i saw 7 troll corpses and the bowmen running around like headless chickens, due to them being chased by angry midget alcoholics in a martial trance with sharp axes and pointy sticks. I lost a single dorf, which made one of the others unhappy, but he still took the liberty of meticulously chopping the shit out of a goblin, despite the blinking red arrow of anger. Two of the dorfs automatically received titles after the siege.
Long story short, 5 standard soldier dorfs broke a medium-sized siege with only one casualty. I swear, it was glorious. If my squad had died, the siege could have had free reign in my fort, if it wasn't for the gate. Also, got a ton of loot from the dead caravan. :>
And now, for an actual close call.
I got visited by an ettin. "Wee, time to test my traps!" After the etting blundered around and killed some animals (and ruined a pump stack), it finally decided to come to my base. To my horror, I FORGOT TO SHUT THE MAIN ENTRANCE. It then immediately went downstairs and started breaking some grates next to my underground lake. Mind you, i had no military back then (due to overconfidence in the trapped entrance), so i couldn't really kill the thing with military might. "But hey! It's standing next to my 5/7 lake!" i thought. So, i swarm it with recruits in order to make it dodge into the lake. Fortunately, it did. Now obviously, it didn't drown either, but it somehow was totally fine with just chilling in the same spot for months. I then decided to drop the roof on its heads, which, while fatal for the ettin, triggered another, but less critical close call. A miner fell into the goddamn lake, due to the cave-in, and shattered numerous bones, including his skull. He didn't die, but fell unconscious multiple times in the water. Since there was no path to the hospital from there, i ordered one to be dug. Despite being all smashed up, he dug his own way out and waddled to the hospital, where he made an astoundingly fast recovery. Only one dorf, who tried to fistfight the ettin alone, died.
And finally, a shorter one.
I was channelling out a path for some magma to run from a volcano to a forge, so i could smelt like a boss. So, i poke a hole in the volcano, since i read that magma doesn't do pressure, and should fall into the channel just fine. It filled nicely, and OH GOD THE MAGMA KEEPS RISING. As it turned out, i had dug it the wrong way for the lack of pressure to prevent it from flooding. I instantly tell the dorfs to BUILD A FUCKING WALL RIGHT THERE YOU CRAZY BEARDLINGS. Fortunately, they complied in time, though now i have a room flooded completely with lava. The fortress is still prospering to this day.
Is it bad that two of them are due to my own carelessness?