Another Dwarf Fortress part 6: Traps active

I am playing Dwarf Fortress again and here I am, writing about what befalls my fortress. Check out the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part, before reading this one.

Sure as winter, the next goblin attacks came. I had readied the fortress as well as I could, reinforcing the militia with immigrants arriving "despite the danger" and building a corridor of traps where my old kill-corridor had been before. When my dwarves spotted a goblin ambush, I told everyone to hide inside and got the militia in position. Let them come through the traps first, each of them loaded with five weapons of different size and making, each of them capable of cutting an intruder apart.

The first fight that included the traps sadly also included an elven caravan that was in the process of unloading their goods at the trade depot and also a rather ballsy speardwarf charging into the trap-tunnel to fight the goblins there. That was not a very smart move because, although the dwarves normally don't activate the traps, he got stabbed in his leg, fell over and into one of the traps, only to explode in gore and vomit. The goblins quickly gave up on their ambushing though, albeit only after I was even quicker to lower the alarm-status of the fortress, which cost me five more dwarves before the hitherto hidden other goblin strikeforces were fought off.



I decided to redesign parts of the outer wall to include the large stone stone storage area to the south and secure it against intrusions from beyond the wall. In the future, only hunters and foragers would be threatened by goblin ambushes. To my surprise, a dwarven caravan made it to my fortress and back out again without being harrassed. They even brought a new liaison, which according to the DF wiki shouldn't happen but I was happy for it. I bought all their wood and all their alcohol in exchange for lots of used goblin- human- and trollclothing.

Times were good. Migrants arrived and babies were born, the population rose to a little over 200 dwarves. Every adult dwarf had private quarters in the living-area of the fortress, that now stretched over two floors underground. I had the miners dig exploratory shafts in hopes of finding a cave-system, as of yet to no avail.

I kept enlargening the trap-corridor, whilst also starting to build a new defense-tower-structure that would eventually allow marksdwarves to fire into the trap-corridor from a level higher. My defense started to look like something that could actually hold off an attack, when the next ambushers came. This time, I told all my militiadwarves to stand waaay back behind two corners, lest anyone was stupid again and tried to rush the goblins alone.

The plan worked well enough, after two goblins had been sliced to bits by the traps and the third was bleeding to death whilst trying to crawl away, the remaining goblins ran into an elven caravan but only wounded one of the elves before trying to get away. Naive as I was, I once again sent out my militia too early, which led to four of the close-combat-dwarves being on the wrong side of the trap corridor when sixteen more goblins were discovered. A chasing back-and-forth with lots of violence interspersed started, one of the dwarves even got away but I lost three militiadwarves and two babies in the process.

When the goblins ran, Mebzuth was the one leading the chase, running down one of them before it could get away. When the militia was securing the outer gate again, I decided to end the alarm for the civilians so burials and lootings could happen at once. Strip the dead goblins and bury the dwarves. Dump the goblins into the garbage-pit. Make new traps out of their weaponry. The fortress Sazirèrith must go on. And, apparently, it does.