The call goes up. The dead walk! They come from the south, circling around the ditch to the bridge. There are so many, and most of them even have weapons...
There are two- no, three necromancers leading the shuffling mob. It's mostly elves and goblins, but there are a few dwarves thrown in too. I order the military to the depot outcrop and order the outer bridge to be raised. The last dwarf runs past the military just as the bridge raises.
The first casualty is a wild camel, which is raised as a zombie. The second is a giant wren, shot down by archers. The corpse lands inside the ditch, out of the necromancers' sight. Said necromancers have apparently fled the field, though their soldiers still march.
Approaching the raised bridge, our markdwarves trade bolts with their archers. Several are wounded and carried off the field. After both sides exhaust their ammunition, the marksdwarves and archers leap into the ditch and charge each other! I order the outer bridge lowered so that the other soldiers can help their comrades, but they are too late to save one marksdwarf.
The bridge crashes down and battle is joined. Dwarves and zombies meet in combat on the center of the bridge. The frontrunners, two axedwarves, are killed as the zombies surround and overwhelm them.
With everyone gone from the depot area, the only rearguard is a lone speardwarf and a few war dogs. A few zombies take advantage of this, climbing the side of the ourcrop. The speardwarf is killed and the dogs are pushed back toward the cage traps. Fearing the zombies will get into the undefended fort, I order the bridges raised.
Many dwarves and zombies are knocked from the bridge and continue combat on the ground. The number of dwarves on the bridge shrinks until only one is left: Thoryane. She bravely holds back dozens of zombies, back to the edge, axe parrying dozens of blades. Finally, a zombie goblin jumps into her and bodily knocks her off the bridge. She collapses on the ground, exhausted.
The levers are pulled, the bridges raise. Dozens of zombies are catapulted into the air and fall towards the soldiers waiting below. The dwarves quickly fall upon the zombies with newfound strength. But they are not quick enough to save Thoryane.
When the last of the zombies in the ditch are mopped up, the military retreats back to the fort to regroup. The inner bridge is lowered and the dwarves advance to the depot outcrop. The outer bridge is lowered and the dwarves charge out to slay some zombies.
There are no more casualties. The last thing to die is the zombie camel. Bodies are buried, limbs are dumped, clothes are collected, weapons are melted. The fortress endures.
Okay, so that happened in about mid-turn, so there was a bunch of other stuff that happened before and after. Firstly, I claimed a smith as Flame II and trained her (yep, her, I'm cursed) up to Legendary +5 weaponsmith.
Secondly, I created a sort of serrated disc/dodge me/marksdwarf trap in the third cavern to kill the zombies. This is an old picture, the current model has the whole first row full of disc traps and that little ledge in the corner got cleaned up. Two dwarves died in various shenanigans involving some zombie gremlin bits. How does a disembodied arm jump anyway?! But other than that little mess-up, the trap works great! Just unlock both doors, wait for zombies to show up, and make sure nobody charges out into the caverns.
For the trap's maiden voyage, I loaded it with everyone's pets and opened the cavern door. They all died, but one goat managed to escape and run around the third cavern, avoiding hundreds of zombies, until it finally became exhausted and got its head bitten off. Anyway, that's why the third cavern got revealed.
We also found the second cavern.
Here's the piece of the second cavern that the goat found. We should probably find more of it, especially if we're going to make a magma pump stack.
I made a spot for the marksdwarves to train. Here's them doing so.
I think this quern pretty accurately describes life at Murderflood.
We also had a bit of a mishap with a giant tick mist husk, which is far more terrifying than it sounds. It attacked several haulers picking up camel corpses. Only one glassmaker was killed, thanks to the tick's habit of biting dwarves so hard they flew
several tiles.
Three dwarves were put in the hospital before the military showed up, and one trapper was wounded so badly he had no operable limbs. He had more wounds than I've ever seen outside of adventure mode. He made a full recovery, but it took a while.
Even when the military showed up, it took quite a while for them to kill it. Seriously, they killed an
entire goblin siege faster than they killed this thing. And not for lack of trying.
Swordsdwarf Sibrek got the kill. No swordsdwarves died during the zombie siege, so I'm pretty sure he's still alive.
This point is about where the zombie siege happened.
So after the siege, I tried to fill all the holes in our security that the zombies exploited. For one thing, I fortified the entire inner wall of the ditch, making it unclimbable. The reason I acted so aggressively during the siege instead of staying behind our defenses is because zombies really like to climb dirt walls like the ones defending several sections of our fort.
I replaced dirt with smooth bricks and fortifications. No way zombies are climbing those. Now we can act more defensively and strike only when we're prepared from now on.
Remember that goblin siege I mentioned earlier? Well, it came at around early winter. I just sent the military out to go kill them all, and kill they did. They ripped though ~40 goblins and trolls in a few seconds. Seriously, I haven't seen bloodshed like that since I led a hydra into a town market. The dwarves were still cleaning it up when spring arrived.
And to finish off, here's one of our bonecarvers making trinkets out of zombie arms.
SAVESome things you might want to do:
- Gwolfski is paralyzed, done in by a zombie's arrow. You might want to put him in charge of a squad of recruits to utilize his teaching skill, since he won't be doing much fighting.
- At least dig the pump stack for the magma dyke. Someone else can build it and power it.
- The fort still needs a bit more fortification. Stick some marksdwarf towers on either side of the main entrance, maybe? Some disc traps in that choke-point south of the bridge where enemies come around the ditch?
- Stick some more traps in the zombie trap and run it some. We need to get rid of all those zombies. Seriously, if we get a vampire, he's going to get put on permanent zombie cleanup duty.
- Somehow get some better weapons and armor for the military. We need some badly. We're using
copper, for crying out loud!
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Topic: 'Murderflood: (Ardentdikes IIIv3) You, there, grab this save! (Read 215780 times)