[Safe-Keeper]

It comes.

Edit: I have just decided that the feature I want the most from Dwarf Fortress 2010 is burrows, the ability to designate specific areas for specific dwarves and tell them to stay there. I just came back from a Dig Deeper* fortress that I had gotten to 45 dwarves through several oversized migrant waves. I have four soldiers, who have only leather armour as I don't expect any large-scale attacks and haven't been able to get my hands on better armour anyhow. I'm new to Dig Deeper and don't expect large-scale attacks until I have 60-80 dwarves or so.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere come orcs. I'm relieved to find it's only a single squad, comprised of only ten of the monsters, but having heard horrific tales of orcs from other DD players, I'm still anxious. I get my four soldiers prepared for battle and draft a couple more, namely my miners (who have gained plenty strength from mining with picks) and my axe-wielding woodcutters, and order everyone but civilians inside. I mass my military just inside the front doors, so that the orcs will have to come at my combined force with a limited number of units at a time. I also order the catapult at the end of the hallway to be manned.

My makeshift army is butchered. I don't know if a single orc is slain. Ahead of them lie a three tiles wide hallway and a deadly catapult, probably more than capable of ripping them all to shreds. Occupying the hallway... is a small army of civilians and animals, milling about and refusing to stay in the safety of the depths. First the catapult can't fire because it'd hit friendlies*, then when the civilians are all dead, no one dares go near it because of fast approaching orcs. Result:

Inline note: yes, the oversized two-legged cows with the huge boobs and glowing laser eyes -- or perhaps it's red sunglasses -- are the orcs. I'm using an... otherwise more than decent custom tileset.

Fortress population went first from 45 or so to 15, as the orcs cleared the entrance floor. Then about half a dozen, as I tried to arm and rally the few survivors downstairs and get a "last-ditch" catapult at the end of another "catapult hallway" manned. Then, after a very brief last battle (no one got around to man the catapult until it was too late -- a single orc came running down the hallway ahead of the others and caused the civvie manning the weapon to flee in fear), one; a bedridden hunter with a wounded leg, who lay in his chambers with a crossbow, awaiting the inevitable as a horse ran around in the hallways outside, maiming two orcs and breaking the leg of another before finally succumbing when about a dozen orcs joined the three that had gone down first.

As a side note (and speck of light in the tragedy), I love how the persistent world you generate keeps going after you're killed, so that you can do things like explore the ruins of your fortress in adventure mode or even do a "Reclaim", which to you outsiders means showing up at the gates of the fortress with an army and trying to kick the invaders out and start anew.

*For those who don't know, Dig Deeper is a kind of "GWX for DF", a mod that adds lots of stuff and even some features I didn't know were already in DF, such as enemies emptying cages and pulling levers. It also adds plenty to difficulty -- no regular enemy in DF can kill its own weight in dwarves.

**I don't know how this inconsistency came about, but catapults currently can't hurt friendlies, and as such the rock would just have stopped and been shattered when it hit the first dwarf or animal. Had it been a ballista, I think I would've fired it out of desperation. Stupid civilians were gonna die anyway.

Also of interest is the Dig Deeper mod that sometimes makes whole squads unable to arm themselves. They'll walk over to their desired weapon, try to pick it up, decide that they for some reason cannot, walk two tiles away, and repeat endlessly until the weapon is forbidden. Especially Fun when coupled with the fact that DD is chock-full of mean hostiles.