Oh, crikey.
This fort has been slowly falling apart for quite some time, since my main goal was to dig out this big impressive tower/castle from the rock with a chasm around it and as such I didn't pay too much attention to other, more temporary concerns.
Unfortunately I screwed up my semi-megaproject beyond repair, so I cobbled together a really crude little mini-fort up on the northern edge of the map and my dwarves divided their time between that and the outbuildings from the intended castle.
I'd been meaning to retire this shambolic excuse for a fortress for a while, but I always got sidetracked dealing with something else. Just when I was about convinced that it was time to leave these poor dwarves to their own devices and start anew, a Vile Force of Darkness arrived.
Uh oh.
Looking at the attackers with the game paused, though, their force didn't seem too threatening. A couple of goblins, an elf... yeah, even my cruddy makeshift military could probably take them on, I thought. I stationed my two melee squads sort-of in the centre of the shacks and hovels near the abandoned construction site, with the tavern between them and the invaders.
(I also intended for the militia commander - a skilled marksdwarf in a squad of her own since I hadn't got around to training or equipping any others - to be positioned nearby to fire on them as they advanced, but the lazy b**** decided it was a good time to go update her outfit on the other side of the map. Probably a prudent move on her part, as it turns out...) As they came slowly towards us, a few more attackers filed onto the map behind them, and my heart skipped a beat - an
ampersand! That's right, these bloody goblins had brought along a very frightening auxiliary - a white wraith, which is apparently a "great" (could you be a little more specific, game? A ballpark estimate on how gigantic that actually means?!) quadruped comprised of salt, with two long, hanging tales and a habit of fidgeting constantly.
Now, salt seemed like a fairly threatening substance for such a creature to be made from, in my limited experience, but what was worse is that several more of the beasts came along behind it. Good grief. Well, nothing for it - we held our positions and waited.
The goblins (and elf!) were advancing well ahead of their fearsome allies, and before too long they reached the opposite wall of the tavern. Instead of coming around the corner (or even inside, to be dealt with by our various armed guests), however, they scrambled up the wall and came straight over the top, dropping down into the midst of our surprised soldiers. One of them fell like a sack of potatoes and was swiftly beaten to death by a rain of punches, kicks and clawings (since almost nobody had deigned to arm themselves for some reason), whilst the other one put up a bit more of a fight before being put down with a faceful o' mace.
Surprisingly enough, the elf proved to be by far the most threatening out of this advance party - the two goblins were actually just unarmed recruits, whereas the elf had a steel helm and wielded a silver spear to deadly effect. We barely managed to touch her as she swiftly crippled three or four dwarves with expert strikes of the spear, before a human maceman came out of the tavern, landed a hit on her and finished off the wounded elf with our assistance.
Then, since the one white wraith who'd actually left the map's edge seemed to be wandering around distracted, we (including our helpful guest the maceman!) rushed the crossbowgob and were able to kill them seemingly without them getting off a shot.
At that point, however, our luck very suddenly ran out. The wraith swooped in (did I mention the things can fly, despite there being no mention of wings in their description!?) with a kick.
Oh, it bruised someone's leg, that's not so ba--
...I'll spare the gruesome details, but suffice it to say just about its every subsequent strike pulped some important part of a dwarf. Whether or not rock salt is a sturdy material proved to be a moot point, since this thing was insanely skilled in combat and we literally landed not a single hit on it.
I hoped that perhaps our friend the maceman might have better luck, but when I looked over to him he was already walking (strolling? Sprinting? Who knows) back to the pub. A wise move, I suppose. Six of our dwarves and one unlucky guest were mowed down in seconds, then the beast took flight again, killing an elf and a pig on the roof of the tavern before plunging back into the main force of our remaining militia.
Things continued about as well as they'd begun. I ordered all surviving dwarves to stay in burrows, although a few stragglers (and idiots trying to get to the tavern, since I'm not great at using burrows) were swiftly and mercilessly picked off by the wraith.
Now it's just hovering next to the farming guildhall, apparently having sated its bloodlust for now. None of the other white wraiths have moved from the map's edge. I had someone disassemble a staircase for wood with which to plug a hole in the tavern's ceiling, which the thing fortunately hadn't taken advantage of. It's very packed in here.
I'm currently having my Captain of the Guard, also a legendary miner, dig a tunnel from the separate mini-fort at the northern edge of the map down to the tavern so that we might escape up that way - I'm pretty sure we could survive more-or-less indefinitely in the mini-fort, since it's partially build over a stream for access to fish and drinking water (I trick I learned from watching the prologue of Steelclutches, though in this case I have at least one pick so the fort can extend indefinitely downwards). We'll see.
I actually feel kinda bad for the visitors showing up to visit this tavern they'd apparently heard good things about, only to find themselves wading through piles of splattered corpses to find the doors locked tight from the inside - and that's if they're lucky and don't catch the attention of
it! Edit: after saving everyone by digging the aforementioned tunnel, said miner (my favourite surviving dwarf by far) decided to just wander out in the open and get inevitably killed, even ignoring my orders when I drafted him and told him to gtfo. Ugh. I wish there was a way to actually restrict dwarves to their burrows!
