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[DoctorMonch]

That moment.

Name that one moment during dwarf fortress that has had you on edge for a game rendered in ASCII.

That one moment where your hair stood on end and you felt that you had a personal stake with these dwarves.

...

Mine was when I was attacked by an emaciated, two tailed, green, ceratopsid. Was in one of my first fortresses, and I had embarked on a glacier. The beast came storming full speed toward my fortress, so I sent my militia.

They were mercilessly slaughtered in seconds, so I got freaked out.

Turns out ONE guy lived through the onslaught and was actually dodging very effectively. My cavern had a MASSIVE 20 or so z-level chasm that lead to the magma sea, and the dwarf was dodging attacks and getting pushed back to said chasm. All at once, the dwarf dodges out of the way, then immediately charges the beast. They BOTH go tumbling in to the magma sea.

I imagined the dwarf's last words were "YOU! SHALL! NOT! PAAASSS!"

... It was incredible.

[Necro910]

That FB can't handle the win of that magmatude!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Not as !!awesome!!, but one recent fort had a blizzard man kill half my domestic animals and a couple dwarves before strangling my expedition leader, passing out from exhaustion, standing up, and repeating for a few months. Good thing, too; the BM would have wiped out that fledgling fort.
No more pickless embarks on evil glaciers for me!

[Necro910]

I need to find the thread where I posted the story of my mayor who single handedly defeated a whole siege unarmed, without skills, and was not in the military.

He took out 7, maybe more trolls. The goblins ran away screaming.

[Necro910]

I need to find the thread where I posted the story of my mayor who single handedly defeated a whole siege unarmed, without skills, and was not in the military.

He took out 7, maybe more trolls. The goblins ran away screaming.

I found it! WOOHOO!

Fear his awesomeness!

[ledgekindred]

I've had a few of these moments that have really stuck in my memory.  Some of which I've already written on. 

One of the first is the story of Zulban Rulbomrek, Numal Dumatalmôsh's forever-faithful war dog:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63861.0

There was also my Legendary Hammerdwarf, Reg Liruklor, eternally kill-less, until one fateful day:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=65866.0

Just recently I had Atir Stigildegel, legless hero of Diamondrelic:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=83136.0

Also in Diamondrelic shortly after was a dwarven child, running from a troglodyte coming up the stairs from the caverns that the rest of the fort was too scared to go near.  Before I could call in my military, the filthy trog had started to attack the poor kid.  The two flashed 'X' back and forth a few times and I felt bad that this kid was going to die alone, on the stairs.  Then the filthy trog turned into a corpse and the kid ran back upstairs.  When I looked at the battle report, the two had wrestled with each other for a couple of pages, then with a single blow, the child punched the filthy trog's skull into its brain and killed it instantly.  I've no idea why I was suddenly so concerned about the kid since they are usually annoying little alcohol-sinks.  Probably something to do with the fact that it was a lone child on the stairs with the rest of the fort running away in a panic, getting caught by some hairy monster from the caverns below - pretty much every child's worst nightmare.  I gave her her own room after that.

[Shook]

Dorfs can be hardcore little bastards. And sometimes, they take the hardcore and shit down its neck with the glorious fury of Armok, all while sleeping on a bed with a beer keg in one hand.

Also, a lil' story of my own; A forgotten beast had found its way into my fort. "Oh god, and it has toxic blood!" i thought, shortly followed by "OH MY GOODNESS THERE IS A GIGANTIC PURPLE CROCODILE WITH DEADLY BLOOD RAMPAGING AROUND IN MY MAIN HALL". So i send my silly military after it, which amounted to two steel-clad dorfs wielding picks, entirely untrained in mining (the only legendary miner i had left was resting her injuries). Obviously, i expected them to die quickly, but they FUCKED ITS SHIT UP. A few days after the fight started, they had killed it by systematically mining out almost every bone and organ in its body, with obviously bloody results. None of them sustained any injuries, apart from spontaneous bleedouts caused by infections from the blood, which went on to cause several deaths.

This fort also had a nice moment to begin with. A wild polar bear approached my newly arrived band of dorfs. There were no military dorfs among the 7, so i just set them all to military so they could have a go at the bear before it ate them. First thing that happens is that one of my miners blazes after the bear, and initiates a savage fistfight with it. Although she was on the losing side (received numerous crippling injuries, and was doomed to be a crutchwalker), she held out until the other dorfs arrived, after which they began punching it to death in a spectacular symphony of fists and beards. The bear died, and the miner became the most hardcore dorf in the entire fortress, even after a few years with more than one accident involving broken bones.

[PTTG??]

A bit similar to the OP, I had a starting adventurer get a quest to kill a cyclops that was wayyy stronger than me. I went to the cave and had a change of heart. At that point the cyclops spotted me and I started running back to town, figuring the peasants would mob it to shreds. That's when I noticed the volcano two tiles south.

I lure the cyclops to the top of the volcano, then, carefully avoiding getting to close to the edge myself, I maneuver it to the edge and then attack.

It dodges juuuuust right.

Never before or since has a plan made in Dwarf Fortress gone of so efficiently.

[lanceleoghauni]

I accidently started a fort only a year before the end of the world, and then all news from the mountainhome ceased, and the attacks ceased, out of terror my dwarves dug beneath the river at the base of their canyon through the winter ice and built an arcology to repopulate the dwarven race.

 It was tough at first. endless labor, low food and water, fewer supplies, we completely lost the ability to work with metal, as we never got an anvil. But we endured, for over 20 years they endured and grew until the First Generation of the new Dwarves had never even seen the surface, nevermind the sun. We'd lost All but a few plant types to a failure of the waterlocks restraining the river for irrigation of new plots. Gone were the days of metal armor, my military strode forth into the dark  caverns with Crossbows and the Blue Cloth Regalia of their people. We'd captured enough spider silk to make their armor out of the best we could, and had a mushroom farm for wood. It was slow, and the scouts were a very small, but elite contingent. we could not afford to lose able bodied Dwarves senselessly.

Life before the arcology faded into legend, there was nothing above, aside from the water reactors Below there was the danger of the caverns, Forgotten beasts roaming the floor while the stalactite city above thrived, Prospered Even. Each resident had fine rooms, food was plentiful and good. and the orbital defenses, along with the scouts kept the caverns relatively safe.

[PTTG??]

I like it. How did the end of the world happen?

[lanceleoghauni]

It just hit the end of the world counter, we don't know.

Most of our animals died in the floods from the poorly engineered waterlocks that first spring, so after the last pet died we didn't have animals either, we had to send teh scouts to try and find meat on the cavern floors.