I'm not too great at creative writing so I'll just tell this my own way. It's a little inspiring story about tenacity, fire blobs and dwarves. It menaces with spikes of melted fat.
So, we got our first forgotten beast. My farm's down in cavern 3 because I find it more peaceful than the first two; sure you get occasional voracious cave crawlers mangling your doors, but the water's safer without cave crocs and giant toads. (I wonder if my priorities here are skewed...) I've also added some plants to my game which can only be found in the deeper caverns, so it's worth going down there if you want to find and cultivate a rare plant which gives the dwarven equivalent of Sunshine. Also, voracious cave crawlers are delicious.
Where was I? Right. My farm. It's in cavern 3, behind a regular door. Which blind cave ogres, voracious cave crawlers, and eldritch blobs made of flame can break down. I probably should have used a bridge and lever instead. Oh well. I haven't got time to build anything so I send my best axe squad down to stop Mr Blob before he gets to my nice door.
Meet Etur Chucklancer the Helmed Crescent of Beards and Vabok Pulleyfold the Fleshy Dell of Squirting (I... don't want to know), my two best soldiers. Vabok has eight notable kills, Etur has nineteen and was one of the seven founders. I really like these dwarves, titles aside. They are the first to answer the summons.
Sest Tostraongas Sposnungordax is getting too close for comfort. I tell Etur and Vabok not to wait for the rest of their squad, but to just go out and kill it. Off they go. They surprise the blob by hiding behind a corner, and WHACK! One hit, he's down and the mighty Etur is credited with the kill.
Unfortunately, hitting a blob made of flame with a steel axe does what one could reasonably expect it to do, and both Etur and Vabok are "caught in a burst of flame" several times. When the red cloud dies down I check on them. They are not, thankfully on fire. However, they are both "melted". Their upper bodies are melted. Their legs are melted. Their lower bodies are melted. And they're standing in pools of their own blood. I watch them go from Faint to Pale and start flashing red crosses. I am... quite distressed.
I quickly find a migrant with good diagnosis skill and appoint him as Chief Medical Dwarf, then draw a hospital zone around a couple of unassigned beds. Then I unpause, and de-station the military. Vabok and Etur stand around together, thinking about who knows what--perhaps their mortality. A hauler comes down to get the body of the dead blob and take it to the refuse pile on the surface. I'm waiting for someone to come and get Vabok and Etur, take them to the hospital.
Nobody comes. There's not even a diagnosis request. Come to think of it, dwarven doctors probably have no idea how to handle this sort of injury, and anyway they're not resting. I see them slowly begin to move off together, towards the farms and the upward stairs. They're going to... Individual Combat Drill!? On the health screen their info has gone from Bl~ blood loss to Bl+ severe blood loss.
I build two tombs. Gold sarcophagi on smooth rose quartz floor from where I'd dug some gems out earlier. Gold block walls. These will be the first two dwarves to die in this fortress, and given how they went out, the least I can do for them is give them Grand Mausoleums.
Etur is the first to notice his gift. He slowly heads back downstairs, holding a pig tail sock. He puts it in the tomb. With typical dwarven practicality, since there aren't any assigned bedrooms yet, he's decided to use his tomb as a wardrobe. Vabok starts doing the same thing.
I go back to the general business of running my fort, but I am distracted, waiting for my two heroes to die. I check on them every few minutes. They're doing Individual Combat Drill, leaking blood all over the snow. When I remove the barracks they want to help with the hauling instead. They absolutely will not quit. And they just go on... and on...
A month later, Etur has gone from Pale to Faint. So has Vabok. And the bleeding's gone back to Bl~
I can't believe it, but they're going to live.
Two years later, here are Etur and Vabok.
Both legendary axedwarf/fighters; Vabok also a legendary shield and armor user. Still active military members, happy and healthy, aside from, you know, having had half their fat burned off. I'd like to show a picture of the huge amounts of blood they left in the snow at the surface of my fort while doing a month and a half of Individual Combat Dill with severe bleeding, but I ran dfcleanmap at a subsequent point to try and improve FPS when I went below 10 (aboveground castle fort).
If I ever get a dragon at this fort, I know who I'm calling on to fight it.
