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[Nasikabatrachus]

This just happened to me.

So I made a very twisty hallway between my fort proper and the caves, filled it with roughly 45 stone fall traps, put bridges at both ends of the hallway, and to set my plan in motion I mined away the last rock between the hallway and the cavern. Several "What THE SHI--" moments subsequently occurred.

1. The miner moves slowly along the hallway. The Forgotten Beast-- Sutu the Deep Barbs, a towering sauropod--moves in to attack the doors I set up as building destroyer bait at the end of the hallway. Turns out, he moves much faster than a dwarf. By the time the miner is almost home, Sutu is nearly upn him. And hey, what the--

2. The stone-fall traps aren't working. Not a single one activates. (In retrospect, I should have known, really.) Luckily the miner escaped, but what the--

3. A farmerdwarf enters the hallway. Oh man, I thought I turned off "auto collect webs," but apparently not. Get the heck out of there so I can raise the bridge, fool! More dwarves coming? What the--

4. As my oblivious dwarves retreat from the freaking brontosaurus, they open the doors, allowing the Forgotten Beast to move through some of them. But then my dwarves escape, so the potential disaster is averted for now. Please, Armok, let them pull the lever in time!

5. Some blue dwarf starts going into the hallway again, and is attacked by the beast. Oh well, it can probably get away, and even if it doesn't, surely it's not important. Hey, when is that bridge going to raise? Get out of there, Dorf! I don't think it's going to mak--

"Rakust Sakzullam, Stonecrafter, has been crushed by a drawbridge."

Rakust Sakzullam? You mean the legendary stonecrafter who has single-handedly produced perhaps nine-tenths of the exported wealth of this coal-less, iron-less, entire fort? THAT Rakust Sakzullam?

...

WHAT THE SHI--


The thing that puzzles me the most is why she was there to begin with. She was set up in a craftsdwarf's shop on a layer full of marble rocks. The path between her and the nearest marble was much shorter than whatever was in that hallway. She can't have been trying to collect webs. Was she trying to get some gabbro? Just going for a stroll in the cave with the Diplodocus?

Sigh.

[Necro910]

This just happened to me.

So I made a very twisty hallway between my fort proper and the caves, filled it with roughly 45 stone fall traps, put bridges at both ends of the hallway, and to set my plan in motion I mined away the last rock between the hallway and the cavern. Several "What THE SHI--" moments subsequently occurred.

1. The miner moves slowly along the hallway. The Forgotten Beast-- Sutu the Deep Barbs, a towering sauropod--moves in to attack the doors I set up as building destroyer bait at the end of the hallway. Turns out, he moves much faster than a dwarf. By the time the miner is almost home, Sutu is nearly upn him. And hey, what the--

2. The stone-fall traps aren't working. Not a single one activates. (In retrospect, I should have known, really.) Luckily the miner escaped, but what the--

3. A farmerdwarf enters the hallway. Oh man, I thought I turned off "auto collect webs," but apparently not. Get the heck out of there so I can raise the bridge, fool! More dwarves coming? What the--

4. As my oblivious dwarves retreat from the freaking brontosaurus, they open the doors, allowing the Forgotten Beast to move through some of them. But then my dwarves escape, so the potential disaster is averted for now. Please, Armok, let them pull the lever in time!

5. Some blue dwarf starts going into the hallway again, and is attacked by the beast. Oh well, it can probably get away, and even if it doesn't, surely it's not important. Hey, when is that bridge going to raise? Get out of there, Dorf! I don't think it's going to mak--

"Rakust Sakzullam, Stonecrafter, has been crushed by a drawbridge."

Rakust Sakzullam? You mean the legendary stonecrafter who has single-handedly produced perhaps nine-tenths of the exported wealth of this coal-less, iron-less, entire fort? THAT Rakust Sakzullam?

...

WHAT THE SHI--


The thing that puzzles me the most is why she was there to begin with. She was set up in a craftsdwarf's shop on a layer full of marble rocks. The path between her and the nearest marble was much shorter than whatever was in that hallway. She can't have been trying to collect webs. Was she trying to get some gabbro? Just going for a stroll in the cave with the Diplodocus?

Sigh.

He probably wanted to go see Jurassic Park. Four miles below the surface of the world.

[swampwater]

I just had a great teachable moment happen in my current fort- the first lesson being that when your ambitious tower that expands in width as it gets taller overhangs your windmill, the wind gets blocked and kills your power. Oops. So when I went to backtrack and dismantle the offending tower wall, lesson 2 reared it's ugly head. I discovered 7 z-layers is the crucial distance to turn a serpentine block from a simple falling hazard to a 3-z-level piercing missle.  The blocks drilled through the ground on either side of my trade depot, through my finished good stockpiles, bonecarving and blockmaking workshops (knocking a hole in the floor deletes a stockpile, lesson 2a), and came to rest amid a pile of bones and stones in my throne room. My duchess was somewhere down there and got all her arms and legs broken and busted open, along with a bunch of dust-choked kids- since it was all pretty non-essential personnel I had to laugh, even though they're all now filling up my hospital, just when my elite squad got banged up by a massive siege that happened along before the dust had even settled. Maybe they heard the boom?  
One curious thing was some kind of message about magma as the blocks punched through- apparently flying blocks hitting rock layers results in instant melting? i don't remember the message exactly as I got covered up in combat spam pretty quickly.

[Frango Nicolbidok]

Dwarf 1: Hey guise, let's all walk over to the garbage chute together to throw our crap away!
Dwarf 2: Off to pull the lever...

That day, 2 dwarves 'died after colliding with another object.' Facepalm

One other was mortally wounded.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He succumbed to infection.

[Dragonfel]

Found a perfect place to build my mega-city. Great ore, flux stone, river, sand, clay and plenty of trees. To top it all off, there was even a carnival tent. So the first 2 years go by just fine, I created wealth slowly to avoid getting too many goblins too quickly. And all of a sudden, a Cyclops loads up on the map. Well no worries, I have some 7 military dwarves who have been training for a year! Turns out they where no match for it... 7 dead, cyclops eventually taken down by war polar bears.

Autumn comes, and to rebuild my military in short order I decided to build a danger room with 5 spears per trap. Haven't had time to sort out and draft anyone besides my new Military Commander but she's already adept or  skilled in combat now. Caravan shows up, ambush shows up. I send the new MC out and she turns goblins into meat patties with her war hammer. A second ambush shows up and she kills all but one of them before she makes an evasion roll or something off a cliff. Broke both legs! Drafted the miners to go outside and kill the last goblin who was unconscious so I could recover her. Third ambush group shows up and murders 4/5 of my legendary miners plus the MC. 13 dead and still rising...

Last ditch effort to rebuild my military, I drafted random dwarfs who didn't have overly important jobs and sent them into the danger room. Big mistake, 3 of them where women who had recently given birth and where carrying their children. I think the messages I got where something like "Dwarfbaby1 has died. Impaled on training spear." So now I've got a bloody mess outside, a danger room filled with upset dwarves covered in the blood of their babies, and a caravan that's getting upset because I won't let them out. The new military is having a tantrum and group of rhesus macaque are stealing the socks off my dead dwarves.

[Togre]

Why aren't all those idle dwarfs carrying that wood to the stock pile?  I've chopped down a whole forest and it just sits there?  I need it to make beds and stuff.

Well, at least those walls I told them to build to protect my grazing animals from animals finally got built.

Now where is the staircase into my fortress again.  It should be right about...

Oh wait...

<facepalm>

[Fahgo]

the Queen has arrived! huzzah!

so i make her some nice rooms with ensuite suicide booth relaxation chamber. put in a magma bubble bath proof door and designate a hole in the side of the volcanoe jacuzzi. apparently legendary miners cant outrun hot magma water if there is a door in the way. luckily i've got 5 more.

[darthbob88]

Yet another instance of worlds without vital items, my current world does not have cave wheat. At all, I've scoured the underground, begged traders, everybody, it does not exist at all in this world. I can do without, of course, but the fact remains, WTF?

[panicDog]

cyclops eventually taken down by war polar bears.

is your fortress on the island from LOST?

I have too many to remember, but my first embark ever was in the middle of a rocky wasteland! What's that? Bring wood? You think I "prepared carefully" for my first embark? OF COURSE NOT!

[TheDeathMind]

On the plus side, he spotted a adamantine vein before he melted completely.

Urist: Noooooooooo! It buuuuuuuuuuuuuurns! ... Waitasecond! HEY GUYS! THERE'S ADAMANTINE OVER THERE! PRAISE BE THE MINERS! *sizzle*

sigged.

[MythagoWoods]

I just learned when replacing/swapping military squads... that when you're forcing encouraging dwarves to join a squad if you look at their name you also see if they are already in a military squad and which one.  Man... that saves me a lotta trouble with replacing my replacements when I accidently placed them in a squad thus taking them from their original.

Only took me since 31.25, and 3 forts within, to figure it out!  I'm an idjit. :\

[Samuel]

My fortress may be destroyed by the small hole in the caverns. It's apparently inescapable, what with the water flowing into it, but I swear the dwarves are running straight at it and jumping in. At least my new chief medical dwarf has lots of patients to practice on.

[TanSerrai]

30+ year old fortress, getting big and....well....complicated. lots of different walkways, overly ambitiously large central cavern, main hallways, power-transmission tunnels, magma tunnels, water tunnels, military-only-access tunnels, water drainage tunnels, magma drainage tunnels....you get the idea.

The result being that every now and then a goblin thief shows up, managing to find another hole into my fortress. So far so good. Now my military is pretty tough by now but I never realized just _how_ callus they got while being....rather good with blades.

So - while not exactly a facepalm, I still learned something: while a squad was happily rushing towards the outside to confront a goblin ambush, they stumble upon a goblin thief within the fortress. The dwarf who spotted the thief dispatched him before any other dwarf (being right next to her) even got a hit in. Not to mention the thief. Now the beauty is in _how_ the thief got killed: Five moves: 1) hit at left ear (cartilage torn, imagine left hand to move to left ear, right hand out to balance) 2) right lower arm lopped off. 3) Right ear hit (cartilage torn, once again distracted, left hand out for balance) 4) left lower arm lopped off. 5) I now imagine a short pause, her fixing the thiefs eyes while grinning - head lopped off.

Done while running past the thief. The whole squad was practically past the dead goblin before his arms fell on the floor. I think I'll be rather nice to my military from now on, wouldn't want to meet them even while in good mood.

[Frelock]

I've got a volcano on my map, which is flat save for the volcano's sudden peak.  So I'm leveling that peak.  Unfortunately, I was in need of metal, and I went for some of the tetrahydrate veins sticking out the side.  I completely forgot to account for this two years later when I reach that level.  Cave-in, miner into the volcano.  He was also a very promising recruit in the militia.  RIP, Jenkins.  !!SCIENCE!! reveals to me that falling objects/creatures are not effected by magma until they reach a floor somewhere.  Also, it was definitely the magma that killed him(death by bleeding), not the ~100z-level fall(15 of those above the magma). On the plus side,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magma sea discovered.

Another fun fact discovered while reading the logs, between the point of the cave in and Jenkins' death, a dog was slaughtered, the above announcement was made, and a full 62 people canceled their job of feeding their pets because their animals were inaccessible.  Next time, atom-smasher in the pasture, not starvation.

[Garbles]

Obviously we need to figure out a consistent means of throwing migrant High Master Animal Caretakers into volcanoes so we can get a bead on the adamantine under there.