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Winecave had its first artifact created today, by no one less than a four-year-old child. It turned out to be a donkey bone mace studded with gems, so I gave it to my hammerer to reduce the number of accidental hammering deaths in the future.

Then I saw the following on the child's status screen:

She dreamed of creating a great work of art, and that dream was fulfilled.

A little heartwarming tale in a fortress where one-twentieth of the population died a snake-related death.

So for this character I chose an axe. I've never chosen an axe before. I always, always go sword. And apparently I picked the wrong version to do so, because now I'm fucking useless against all this armor. I should have gone spear.

Anyway, I'm slogging through a vault. I only have one functioning arm and leg, but if I rest I'll have to fight my way through the whole stupid thing again! My strategy involves repeatedly hacking at the torso of the angels until their clothes break (they don't have chestplates), then cutting off their now-exposed necks. If I can sneak up behind them, though, I strangle them.

EDIT: I got through the vault, read the demon's true name, and skedaddled. My loot includes:
 - a set of never-still cloth clothing
 - twisting metal high boots, gauntlets, and helm
 - a twisting metal crossbow, pike, spear, and blade
 - a lot more scars
After that I walked for a few days and arrived at the shrine of a bronze colossus my lord sent me to kill. I needed the twisting metal so I could damage it. After chipping off all its limbs with the spear, it's time to train!

I love how you went and killed some servants of the gods themselves, just so you could steal their stuff and kill an uppity statue. DF is epic indeed.

Or hell, you should've smoothed and fortifired a viewing window, instead of tunneling into it.

Indeed I should've. Hindsight is 20/20.


And now as promised: the story of Fleshpages:

The expedition for Fleshpages was the third that year. The first had gotten decimated by freakish weather and undead birds before a decent colony could be founded, the second was overrun from the inside when a dwarf expired and rose as an undead. As a result, it wasn't founded until early autumn: not the best time to begin a new fortress.

Fleshpages was founded in the same biome as the second fortress: shallow metal, deep metals, flux stone, trees, water, high savagery and high evil. Sounds decent, right? It really wasn't.

The embark site was a small valley with a brook flowing through. Dozens of trees stood, ready to be cut down. Problem: all were dead. No renewable wood for you!

The dwarves quickly dug a staircase down and began moving their equipment into the underground room. They weren't fast enough: evil rain started coming down, nauseating all of them. Fortunately, worse symptoms didn't emerge, and after a while I had a decent early fortress, with workshops, a dormitory and a dining room.

A few in-game days later, a caravan arrived. The dwarves quickly built a trade depot somewhere underground, and the merchants rushed forward. They never made it: nausea from the rain and an attack of zombie capybara people killed all of them off. The merchants and their animals promptly reanimated, as well as several of the capybaras' body parts. I just ordered all surface material forbidden then.

The fortress continued to grow. Migrants arrived, but the lack of exported wealth meant only two dared travel here. Both made it, fortunately. The outpost liason, who'd escaped the caravan's fate and made it in, wanted to leave and was promptly devoured by a zombie, which I then locked in my airlock. A glance at the civilization screen reveals he's been replaced by a bowyer.

I saw myself forced to slaughter my two yaks and constructed a remote butcher's shop with several cage traps in the only nearby corridor. Sure enough, yak skins and hair rise, but all get either caught in the traps or killed by my militia commander. I find out she likes yaks, so the caged undead are put in the barracks, providing a steady supply of happy thoughts.

The cavern layers are discovered but walled off immediately. Down and down my miners dig, until they arrive at semi-molten rock. There, I decide, a proper fortress shall be built.

I briefly reopen the first cavern layer to get some wood. A giant bat uses the opportunity to wound two of my dwarves, but it flees when a brave planter scratches its nose off. The cave layers are closed again.

The days pass. A few migrants appear, some of which get eaten by undead. One time a ghost rises and is put to rest again. I discover that the 'shallow metal' consists entirely of cassiterite and the 'deep metals' are native silver and galena. My fortress waits for the next caravan, knowing it will spread word of their wealth and get them some non-sucky metals.

A horde of crundles has found its way to my cave entrance and seems insistent on not leaving. Perhaps it has something to do with the one crundle I caught in a cage trap?

The caravan arrives, and even makes it to the trade depot... but my asocial broker angers them (is a profit of 650 seriously not enough guys?) and they leave.

Screw that, I want my steel pick. The doors to the trade room are locked, and I wait for the merchants to go berserk. Some time later accidentally open the doors to the room and sure enough the merchants go berserk at that exact time. Result: a caged merchant, a dead merchant and a dead buffalo. The buffalo reanimates and is killed again, the merchant doesn't raise until he's locked in. The caged merchant is lost when a frightened dwarf drops the cage. It will now spend its remaining days locked in a room with its reanimated friend: serves it well.

The outpost liason who came with the merchants stays for a while, but eventually leaves. Miraculously, he escapes without getting killed or even attacked.

The injuries suffered in the merchant battle force me to briefly open the doors to the surface so people can get water for the wounded. I decide to build a well to avoid having to do so in the future. A 70+ z-level shaft is dug, winding around three cave layers and ending a few feet below the brook. I order two rows of floodgates built, so I can prevent zombies from getting in. I then open both gates and order the shaft's ceiling breached.

Turns out there's a lot of pressure behind 70+ z-levels of water. The rushing tide almost drowns my miner, fills the reservoir in a matter of seconds, and causes my wells to overflow. Only by quickly closing the floodgates is the danger of a flooded fort averted.

I dig yet another shaft, this one to drain the flooded reservoir into the magma sea. The scheme succeeds and the remaining water starts to evaporate. I decide to use the flooded, muddy well room to grow plump helmets and pig tails.

Deep down, a forgotten beast appears. A salt blob with a shell. I leave it be and discover a short time later it's killed all the crundles before being killed itself. Now I have zombie crundles guarding my door: just great. I've also never been more grateful that salt can't reanimate.

In the future, I'm planning to enlarge the reservoir, move my dwarves downstairs, and build a great library to honor the fortress' name. Too bad parchment is so hard to get in a reanimating biome: guess I'll have to rely on pig tails.

Dear traders,

First of all, props for making it through several dozen of evil or savage world map squares all the way to my fortress. Shows real dedication. You even killed some of the undead outside for me, which I appreciate.

However, if I offer you a 650 profit, please consider actually accepting my offer. I only have silver, tin and lead to work with here: I'm going to need to buy copper or iron if you want me to make this colony flourish. Don't force me to lock you in and then plunder your still-warm corpses.

Also, reanimating and forcing me to close off yet another entrance to my fortress was unnecessary.

I had a vaguely similar thing occur with a gorilla randomly joining my civ, but this is something else. 

Deciding I wouldn't let a terrifying biome get the better of me, I created a new, almost completely evil world and embarked.

Note that when I say 'almost completely evil', that's literally what it was. The left half of the continent had a single non-evil area: a mountain range where the world's only dwarven civilization lived (and somehow managed to endure 50+ years next to evil forests, wastelands, and goblinoids). Further to the east was the world's second non-evil area: a plain where the slightly more successful humans fought with another goblin civilization.

I myself embarked in a terrifying freshwater swamp. The first thing I noticed upon arrival: all natural life was dead. The trees were dead. The saplings were dead. The ground plants were dead. The animals were undead. The only living things except for my dwarves and lifestock were a number of vermin.

I immediately dig a hole and start moving stuff down there. An undead weasel interrupts my dwarves once, but it gets killed and things are going pretty well except for that. I finish the initial stockpile and meeting area just in time: a swarm of undead giant flies appears to have entered my lands. Everyone is burrowed underground and the entrance is closed off.

Then I find myself needing some more wood. I got some of the cut down trees moved to my stockpile before the flies arrived, but there's a lot of wood lying outside, waiting to be picked up. Sure, some evil rain has fallen, but how bad can it be? Very bad, as it turns out.

The two dwarves who touched the sludge before I realized my mistake are first overcome by nausea and full-body swelling. The swollen body parts then start to rot. I put the infected in a squad and station them in a corner of the fledgeling fortress, but every once in a while a dwarf or pet passes by and gets a face full of miasma.

As the syndrome develops further, all outside body parts are fractured. In other words, I now have blind (rotten eyes), lame (fractured legs) dwarves who can't even grab things (fractured arms and hands) yet continue to drain my fortress of booze and food. One of them, who seemed to have been affected more severely by the disease, got locked in the hospital. The other may live... for now.

While all this was going on, I was forced to slaughter my two water buffalos. This happened in an isolated room with the door locked, then a long corridor, then another locked door, and finally a solid wall. I ain't taking no chances with zombie skins in my fortress.

Dear dwarves,

Please remember that if blood-colored muck falls from the sky, it's a bad thing, and you should stay away from it. If you'd come to this simple realization, you wouldn't be about to be locked in because I'm not letting your broken, rotting, useless bodies crawl over to the meeting hall then die and reanimate.

Because I'm not completely heartless, though, I may send a few trained military dwarves into your room to end your corpse's miserable attempt at living in a few years, after which you'll receive a honorless lava burial.

Sincerely, Derro

1350. It gives me the space to buy everything I need while still forcing some degree of resource management.