Well fuck moments #2

Just had a WELL FUCK moment not two hours prior.

I had about a 100-dorf fort (at a 50-pop cap, mind you) running. Now, this fort was unlike most other dwarven expeditions you would hear about. Instead of tunneling underground and building vast structures just under the surface, this expeditionary party tunneled all the way to the first cavern they found and set up shop there.

It was looking to be successful; I had seven dwarves to start off with, and we just hit the floor of a plateau in the cavern. I immediately set my mason off to work, sealing off the entrances to the plateau, and my miner began to dig into the sheer wall that bordered half o' the cavernous outcrop. My woodcutter and my hunter, the sole dwarves of my militia, were tasked with the charge of the rest of the expedition. Their only task insofar was to ensure that none of the dwarves met their doom prematurely.

Well, as you might guess, they failed. A handful of disgustingly scarred and twisted troglodytes saw to it that my dwarves were slaughtered without hesitation. Clearly my woodcutter didnt practise his chop on enough of the fungiwood to wipe these troggies quick enough. One by one, my dwarves succumbed to the horde of monsterlets.

On a determined streak, a reclamatory expeditionary force was dispatched to the fort. Thankfully, with the groundwork laid and some of the major entrances sealed off. the cavern plateau was relatively safe. Between a troglodyte ambush and a handful of agitated elk birds, I only lost one dwarf and the fortress persevered. I had a multi-tiered, half-cavern-fauna half-irrigation farm running, a slough of workshops churning out diorite toys and phyllite necklaces, a few legendary masons filling my halls with statues and tables and rock thrones, and a gemcutter refining the piles of uncut beauties that my team of miners uncovered.

The unique architecture of the water-carved cavern made for some interesting decisions in location of my various industries and facilities. My dining hall was a 3-z-level, channeled out pillar in the cavern, holding perhaps nigh fifty rock tables and twice that in chairs. This alone kept the dwarves happy, making my generous sprinkling of statues more than superfluous. All in all, my fort progressed happily.

With the cavern's dangerous spawning edges sealed off, ground threats were a non-issue. Various troglodytes and gremlins and the like came and went. A forgotten beast even roamed around the cavern floor, killing a stray alpaca or two that fell off the plateau. Attacks from the surface were carefully dissected and destroyed by my intricate system of bridges over a 4-z-level deep pit, the sides carved into fortifications for my marksdorfs' pleasure. The caravans (one of which, an elven one, was lost to a poorly [well?] timed goblin ambush of speargobbers) graciously accepted my stores of crafts, toys, and food in return for metric tons of wood, clothing, and the occasional high-quality weapon, though between the offending ambushes aplenty and the less-than-bright gobbo thieves, my weapon and armor stores were brimming.

My mining expeditions were progressing swimmingly as well, as much intended to make room for storage of the fruits of my industries as much as they were for providing stone for my ravenous workshops and gems for my gemcutter. I tunneled to the bottom of the cavern to uncover some gems and other goodies I saw against the cavern wall, but how was I to know this would be my fort's downfall?

My dwarves collected the amethysts and headed back up the stairs and on with their milling about. The mining shaft, i should mention, lead straight through my barracks, meaning anything that would want to attack through the mining shaft would have to go through my training dwarves first.

That would be fine and dandy for the occasional horde of gremlins, but DID YOU REMEMBER THE FORGOTTEN BEAST. IT WAS A GIANT MULTIARMED CAVE SPIDER WITH FIRE BREATH. It basically wiped all my military dwarves by holding on to their head and shaking them around. Now this would normally only leave them paralysed should it have been a normal giant cave spider, but the flammable goo that spat forth from its maw also served to torch the poor dwarrow in their neatly crafted iron helms. My mlitary gone for the most part, my fort rushed in to collect the corpses only to be greeted by the monstrosity.

I couldn't follow the combat step-by-step like I normally do - it was too painful. I let it run and watched my dwarf count dwindle. Down from 106 to 98, to 75, to 50, to 55, to 52. It stopped dropping them, and I drew the courage to check the logs.

My militia commander, the original woodcutter of this expedition, managed to wade through the sea of webs and hack the damned beast in the face so many times that its head eventually came disconnected from its gargantuan putrid body.

That is where the state of my game is now. I could continue the fort with half my dwarves, but their will is gone. Their dwarven babies were devoured in front of them and their legendary mason peers were messily thrown off the cliff into the stalagmites below, their corpses virtually unrecoverable. I think i will abandon this fortress for good. It has seen too much death.

TL;DR FORGOTTEN BEASTS SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO MOVE THROUGH DIAGONAL CORNER OPENINGS.