I went from from a fully functional metropolis of 267 dwarves, to a skeleton crew of 13 in a matter of a month. I'm simply stunned.
I believe it all began with twelve of my miners channeling a 10x10 hole about 15 z-levels deep. I refused to let them out until they had finished their job. I needed that drop for my mass pit, and I needed it yesterday. Goblins and other caged nasties were piling up fast. One of the miners managed to starve to death, even though i thought i'd given her a path out. I hadn't. Her husband, Urist McCarpenter, was understandably upset. But he talked to the mayor, she comforted him, and the world moved on.
What I forgot about was that Urist had a baby son with his lovely, now deceased, wife. Evidently, Urist forgot about him, too, because the child starved to death, alone at the bottom of that pit where his mother had passed on into the arms of Armok. Only when his first-born died did Urist remember him. And from that point forward, things started going badly.
As I started getting messages about "dwarven child has been slain" I jumped down into my half-finished diorite dorms to find several bedrooms covered in blood, courtesy of Mr. McCarpenter. "Sad," I said to myself, and waited for my Hammerer or Captain of the Guard to execute him or jail him. "So many useless children in my fort, at least this will thin out the herd a little."
Foolish, foolish noob.
Two of the slain children belonged to miners. Legendary miners.
This is where it went from bad to Dead Space 2.
The horror, the absolute horror of berserk, child-bereft miners is impossible to describe. The military, the archers; all gone within seconds. Walls of white, spattered red. Level after level of my marble tower, jutting proudly into the heavens as a testament to the glory of our barony, now dripping with blood. Peasants, screaming, running amok, cut down like golden wheat before the threshers. It all happened so terribly, viciously fast.
Eventually, and thankfully, the miners turned on each other. But the damage was done.
No amount of waterfalls, legendary dining halls, and tastefully arranged statue gardens could have saved the remaining 62 (that's right, SIXTY-TWO) dwarves from the emotional devastation of that massacre. Not even Ishgasol Sankestkudar, our glorious, native gold artifact cabinet (so beautiful that it has an image of itself etched into its doors), could penetrate the desolation of so much lost life.
At some point, in the midst of all the carnage, my lone vampire was released from her prison. It was too much. Even for her. Now she wanders the echoing, empty halls. Listless, shattered, forever thirsting, but refusing to feed. Too much death, even for a vampire.
It's a blur, really. I'm still not even sure how I managed to save the thirteen dwarves who made it out of that nightmare. So many times I thought of abandoning Atolunol Thatthil. But I couldn't. I just couldn't.
Several months have passed now, and the Lucky Thirteen, as they are now known (and not without irony) back in Mountainhome, are slowly rebuilding. Ever so slowly.
We managed to seal off the caves to stave off the troglodytes. Our river bridges have been rebuilt, and we finally managed to get a new trade depot set up and running. Humans came late this summer and, by some mysterious fortune, one of our legendary cooks survived, so we had enough to trade for essentials.
A necropolis has been built at the foot of the falls. Rooms upon rooms of coffins house our missing loved ones. The ghosts don't haunt us as frequently as they used to, but there are a few left. Mostly children who had drowned in their locked burrow that was flooded by an insane, grief-stricken mother. We still haven't managed to drain it.
But soon.
And then the last of the dead can finally rest.
At some point, maybe I'll be brave enough to go back and read the logs. I think. But there are some things better left unread.
Truly, the God of Blood has been served.
TL;DR: Hide yo kids! Hide yo wife! Hide yo picks!