An ambush! Curse all friends of nature!
I decided to start a new fort to check out some of the stress fixes and such. I figured I'd want a fairly open fort with plenty of invaders and lots of activity on the surface to expose people to corpses and weather and decided to run my hulking, tentacled ylth this time. So far, the elves are the only opposition to show up, but they brought quite a few war tigers and some other critters along on their second visit - 80-something invaders, all together, to meet the 43 residents of Lashscrapes.
They turned up on the side of town where the hammer training squad, Crypt Watch, was training. The squad has two capable fighters and a new addition who hadn't gotten into the sparring yet. Naturally, when war tigers and elves started popping out of the bushes, they immediately charged. With Zodsto Drill, the new trainee, running ahead of the others into the middle of the invaders and the ambush message going off repeatedly, I sent the rest of the militia up to join the fighting. Zodsto got rather chewed up and there were a few other injuries, but nothing serious. The attackers lost about 60, so that gives a good start on getting my people used to corpses lying around. The most obnoxious part of the fight was chasing down the elves that were riding horses after most of the other were dead or fled. One of 'em got to the other side of town and kept launching arrows at my ostriches while running away from everyone with a weapon.
It is definitely nice to see people enjoying well cooked meals without needing their hard to get or dangerous favorites! The site seems to be well supplied with ore, but no sign of coal so far. There's a giant flamingo with a trunk running around in the first cavern layer setting everything on fire - including itself, from the looks of it.