Part 47: YOTC: Update 3
The battle lasted 10 days...
10th Limestone
We prepare ourselfs for the coming spawn. The men have fear deep inside, but they wont show it.
I understand why they won't, the whole fortress is on edge, I've ordered the bridge in front of the trade depot raised, we have more warriors this time, a stand off on the bridge would just lead to us having to fight them three at time. I have a plan, and I hope I can pull it off.
I look around, taking stock of the warriors in the gatehouse, most of them polishing their hammers, save for Royal W, Syntax!, and Male Man, who polishing their axes.
"Where is Alius, we need his crossbow in the rear to help prevent the spawn from flanking around besides us.
"I think he said something about getting a drink before they showed up," shouted one of the merchants standing in the hallway behind me. I couldn't believe it at first but after a little thinking a drink did sound mighty fine right about now. I snapped to my senses a moment later and quickly ordered Screaming Idiot, Tiny Turtle, and pumpinglema to go get crossbows to arm themself's with and gave them orders to stay at the back and try not to get killed.
There were a lot of them coming up the road that I could see, and I knew from the initial reports that there were some coming from the northwest too, though they would have to arrive later due to having to get over the mountains and the chasm between us.
There was some waiting here, I'm not exactly sure how long it was, we were all on edge, I had hoped that the weapon traps I had set up would do us some good and injure a few of them as they spread out to climb the hills around the gatehouse. I won't say they're my worst fears, but it sure didn't help my mood to see the spawn step onto the trap and rip the weapons that sprung out directly out of it and tear the mechanism apart. It seems like they still have some semblance of dwarfish intelligence in them. I immediately ordered bridge #3 raised, we would have to take them on a single front, forcing them to come across that small bridge one or two at a time if we wanted any hope of survival.
Imketh damned these thigns are fast. No sooner had they crested the hill and I gave the order to charge and they were already on the bridge, a cursiary glance at the long bridges and I could see the second and third waves were already on their way. An idea struck me as I looked over the drawbridge to the depot. I grabbed the nearest dwarf, a mechanic, Tag Plastic I think his name was, and ordered him to raise drawbridge #2, we could trap the first wave in the gatehouse and slowly destroy them one wave at a time, only letting a few in each time. It was the best plan I could come up with on short notice. I hoped it would work.
The dwarf charged, so did the spawn, they met on the wood stockpile right in front of the bridge and I could see the rage in the spawn's eyes from where I was giving orders. As I watch our men charge forward someone taps me on the shoulder, I turn to see Green Intern standing besides me.
"Well sir I just wanted to inform you that... well we seem to be out of copper bars to make more barrels with."
I stand slack-jawed for a moment that he would come to tell me this when the spawn are charging into the gatehouse as we speak, no less than 100 feet away, but I hold my temper. Making crafts of metal is his life and I understand why he would feel this is so important, I quickly tell him to start using our nickle reserves and that if any of the other smiths run out of copper to tell them to do the same, as I imagined I'd be hearing that we were out of it for bin making soon anyways.
The bridge wasn't up yet, the mechanism to raise it hadn't even started to move yet, I looked down the corridor to see Tag Plastic just entering the door to the lever room. It would be soon now I hoped.
I looked back just in time to see dwarven hammers crushing down on the skulls of the spawn, Sirocco in perticular I saw bringing her hammer up from the skull of one of the spawn she had just crushed to the ground and crashing it into the gullet of a second. The spawn went air born, flying past the drawbridge and out of my view, I was sure it couldn't survive that. Well, I hoped.
My plan started to break down at about this point, well, I'm not really sure where it broke down. I only have the details of the warriors that survived, I wasn't there myself, as I am not warrior enough to fight them myself. Here is what I know, as told by the dwarfs that were there in their reports to me. I have pieced them together in the most chronological order I can.
Firos: She was busy tending to little Kaveman when I showed up to ask her questions. She replied very sternly to any question I asked her. The following is a slightly elongated version of what she told me, filled in by some of the other dwarfs I've had to question.
"tehsid had just dodged out of the way of an overhead slash by one of the monsters and had rolled out onto the bridge before bringing his hammer into the beast's spine and tossing him across the the gatehouse into the southern wall with a delicious splat. I would have loved to have viewed the site a bit longer but there were other spawn to deal with. We had laid down about four of them by that time and had only five or six more to deal with, against the 12 of us it wasn't really even a threat at the moment. I remember looking past one of the spawn as I slammed my hammer into its skull, you see they make an odd sound when you crush their skulls downwards, must be all their teeth impacting into their internal organs, anyways, I looked past the haze of blood squirting out of the beast to see tehsid charging out of the gatehouse after this really big looking spawn. We basically cleaned up the rest of the spawn in the gatehouse and then got ready to go help him."
Spermy Smurf: Spermy was usualy a very cheerful dwarf, always drinking and sparring and doing very dwarfy things. She was eager to regale me with her story when she started, "Firos is pretty close on that. She's completely right up to the part about tehsid going out there to fight that really big one, she was at the east side of the bridge and didn't see how awesome the next thing that happened was. Ya see, that big spawn that went after him, well that was Stasost Stasoststosbub, one of the head guards and leader of the particular squad we were mopping up. That thing charged right at tehsid and boy was that a mistake. He just stood there till almost the last second and then swung his shield full force into the spawn's face. That big monstrosity fell right over, blood gushing from all the holes in his face. I think he planted that shield into its face 3 or 4 more times before he stopped and looked up and behind him, up the hill. He saw them before the rest of us did.
Most nonchalant thing I've ever seen by the way, he just turned back to the spawn as it was trying to crawl away and rammed his hammer so hard up its backside that it actually got an arc on it as it flew off that cliff. The problem there was that I saw this WHILE the bridge was going up, we were gonna go help him but the delay on someone pulling the lever all the way at the back of the fort was just to long to be tactically advantageous." I think she was just happy to have the whole event over, I'm not sure if she could deal with the loss of close friends like that again.
My interview with tehsid left a bad taste in my mouth, I'm pretty sure he thinks I was a tactical nightmare trying to lead them on the battlefield but by god is he a machine made for slaying these things.
tehsid: A frown crossed his face as I asked him questions about the events, he knew it was for the records but he wasn't happy about what happened out there and he was damn well gonna let me know about it. "Of course I noticed the second wave coming down from the mountain. You were off on their timing, they were much faster than you thought they would be. Worse off, their timing almost perfectly coincided with the spawn coming up the bridges from down below. Hell we should really make lever to those bridges, we could launch the hell out of some spawn if they're standing on it when the fast acting mechanism goes off. But yea, by the time you guys got the bridge back down I had killed off most of the threat. Ya see when that bridge went back up I was just finished getting the teeth of this giant ass spawn off my shield while waiting for the spawn to come down from the hill, but as you said, the gate went up while I was out there dealing with that huge spawn. The horde of them charged down the hill at me and I just kinda.. blanked out for a bit.
I remember swinging my hammer a lot and being pretty tired when I started to remember what happened, but that was quite a time later. "
Syntax!: "Yea, that question mark on your map there, that was me right when the bridge went back down, I remember you being all frantic, running down the gold path yelling to lower bridge two again. It was pretty funny. I had just managed to pull my axe out of the skull of one of those slimy little shites when the bridge fell back down. Fell down quick too, I think the mechanism had something wrong with it, I remember hearing a sickening KRUNCH from the other side of the 'moat' when it went down. Ya managed to catch one of them under it. Great sound it made I would say thinking back on it.
Anyways we all charged out across the bridge as fast as we could but we ran directly into a crowd of spawn."
"There were at least 20 of them surrounding tehsid. We didn't think we woudl be able to wade through them to even try and save him when we saw what was happening. Hell a few of us stopped in our tracks to stare for at least a second before we had to deal with the spawn on the outside of the crowd that had noticed us come out and were charging right for us. Spawn were jumping directly at him, trying to swipe for that spot on our necks where the helmet meets the chestplate, that's how they're ripping our heads off, they get their claws in there and just twist until the helmet or our head comes off, and our neck bones aren't as tough as our dwarven steel."
I definitely took note of that, as we learn to battle these things we might have to perfect new technology to stop them, maybe even technology to hunt them down and eliminate them someday.
"Anyways, so the spawn jumped at him and every time they did they just met with his hammer, flying off into the cliff to the northwest or crashing to the ground amongst the other spawn, it was a wonderful sight. Well they got smart real fast and four of them jumped at him at once. Out of nowhere tehsid just spun in a circle , hammer out in one hand and shield out in the other and all four of them just flew off like it was some sort of magic or something. I'm sure I saw that hammer connect with at least one of them but crap man, how do you keep up that kind of momentum. Crazier, he just kept going. A few seconds later and there were NINE dead spawn littering the ground in every direction. Hell, that's just the ones I saw land, more flew off the hill to the east. It wasn't like he just crushed their skulls or something, he swung that hammer and they literally smacked into other things with such force that their bones crushed. You could hear them hit the ground or eachother with every swing.
This was amazing to watch, the other dwarf got NOWHERE near him the entire fight and all the deaths in the 2nd picture are his. Though its from slightly later. Some of them were just laying there with broken spines and he had to go finish them off :metal:
"It was like a dwarfish whirlwind of death."
"Then what happened," I asked trying to find out the real question of my inquire.
"I don't know," he responded with a shrug, "Most of us jumped off the drawbridge as it was going back up, I know Royal W and SWATjester were still on it holding off 5 or 6 spawn when it started to go up. We went off to the east, chasing after tehsid who just started sprinting down the hill and too the south. We could see some of the spawn fileing up the south hill when we started to follow him, but we didn't know why they were going there at the time."
Screaming Idiot: Needless to say I wasn't looking forward to this one. It amounted to nothing but a 2 hour lecture on how to properly use pumps and why they were important to the dwarfish economy and the fortress and such. I learned nothing of the battle, in fact I'm pretty sure he was off getting drunk with Alius at the time.
He was.
Tiny Turtle: "So how did it feel to put a bolt right between the eyes of one of the spawn?" I asked immediately as she entered my office.
"Good Sir!" she replied enthusiastically, "but sir... I beleive I know what your looking for, and I believe I can tell you what happened to Royal W and SWATJester," she finished her statement more sheepish than any dwarf I've ever seen.
Her story unfolded, and I was at a loss, I had either saved the fortress or killed two of its greatest heroes. "You see sir," she started her story as she sat down, I had a feeling it might take a while. "When the gate went up it went up really fast, in fact it threw them a good 10 feet into the gatehouse and the crashed pretty hard into the lumber piles. there were a good 8 of the spawn that came in with them, and though I got a lucky shot off on one of them, the two of us, pumpinglemma and I, weren't helping that much. If I could have just reloaded the thing faster maybe we could have... No, it was their decision."
"You see, most of the spawn had taken a lot of damage from their fight with the two champions. It takes a lot to bring them down if you don't get a good headshot right off the start sir. Hell I saw Royal W take both of the arms off of one and it just kept trying to bite his throat out. Firos hadn't gotten across the bridge during the spawns 2nd push and was still inside with us and was helping Royal and Jester push them back towards the bridge, but three on seven was just too much for them, even if they were champions. A spawn had dodged around behind her and just as it reached its claw out to rip poor little Kaveman off her back Royal hurled his axe at it, the spawns claws dug out the childs eye before the axe dug into its throat. It wasn't a pretty sight but it didn't seem to phase Firos at all. She was focused on getting her hammer into the skull of two of the spawn that had flanked around to the east of the gatehouse."
I thought I caught a glimpse of tears forming in her eyes as she kept going, but I must have been mistaken...
"I tried to get a shot off on some of the spawn but I don't have a lot of training with a crossbow, it wasn't that much of a help until pumpinglemma got one off into one of the spawn that SWATjester was fighting. Of course that was just a bad thing in the end, it threw the spawn off balance and as jester corrected his swing to hit the spawn right in the chest and send him flying backwards another of the vile creatures dug its claws deep into his left arm and ripped it right out, shield and all. It was the most vile scream of pain I've ever heard sir. I can still hear it in my dreams sometimes. Jester and Royal were back to back at this point, royal blocked an attack from another spawn but couldn't stop all three of the ones attacking him and one of them managed to get its claws under his helmet and into his throat. There was a gurgling before Royal just reached out and grabbed the monsters arm. He brought his shield down and ... and... he severed the monsters arm with it. Then he threw his shield at one of the ones trying to flank Firos again, I think it managed to hit the child again, and he grabbed two of the spawn by the insides of their mouths."
"He and jester just looked over to us as we tried to load our crossbows and nodded, we heard the bridge mechanism begin to move and then royal grabbed the head of jesters hammer and they just bull rushed five of the spawn towards the bridge. Firos Saw what was happening too, she couldn't do anything to stop them... They charged those spawn direcly into the bridge mechanism. There was a horrible sound, bone crushing and flesh rending, as the spawn grabbed and clawed at them as they went into it. That was the last we saw of those two champions..."
They really did hold 5 spawn on the drawbridge when it went up, all of them were crushed out of existence somehow but it was a giant cluster fuck of micromanagement between the battle inside the gatehouse and chasing tehsid around trying to stop him springing headlong into crowds of 10-20 spawn. I came back to the gatehouse fight to find firos with a few grey wounds, Jester missing an arm, and Royal's throat torn out.
Male Man: "Well, after we got up on the southern hill we found tehsid charging into a group of ten more spawn, we tried to help but by the time we got there he was already bashing them a good 20 to 50 feet from where he was standing with each hammer swing."
"I mean Hell man, look at where those corpses landed. They flew over the trade depot bridge, and over the ENTIRE norther hill. What the hell man thats over 45 meters! We were mostly just cleaning up after him at that point...."
If you thought that hit was impressive, then look at the landing. What you don't see is that there are actually 2 corpses flying through the air.
20th Limestone
The whole investigation was pointless, I have no Idea if the my orders to raise and lower things caused their deaths or if the others are just trying to make their deaths seem heroic to me so I'll stop trying to find out... And WHY THE HELL IS THE FARM FLOODED.
Not show, me playing for a month before save scumming back to before the fight and not noticing this till I got a hazardous terrain message and the whole thing was 4 deep in water. I tried to save scum back to the save right after the fight but it was already 3 deep 3/4 of the way across.
It turns out that someone attached the floodgates to the lever to control the bridge between the depot and the golden archway. Idiots, I've ordered the switch destroyed and a new mechanism attached to a different switch.
For book keeping records I've tallied the kills of the dwarfs involved as best I can.
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And the suns not even up yet. Alright now I'm gonna go to bed while you all slam f5 when you wake up and break my image hosting server. I still have the entire picture archive of my first fight with the spawn that went A LOT worse, but had to be scrapped due to flooding the entire farm. The lack of pictures on this one is due to me trying to stop the flooding 1/3 of the fight and tehsid just being generally WTF 27 KILLS AWESOME.
I here by promise that when my turn is done I shall post an alternate history post.
Also, want to try the fight yourself? CLICK HERE and drop this save folder in a previous syrupleaf data file Back yoru shit up first of course.
Jazzimus Prime wrote :-
So I looked through the most recent save file to see the various dwarves' thoughts. Through Deki's relationships screen, I was able to find this on the dwarf that was kidnapped by the sand raiders:
"Happy to be free?" Anyone ever seen anything like that before?
I did some Googling on this. There wasn't much out there, but I did find that someone else has seen this thought before, also in a kidnapped dwarf. I also found a spoiler that said that this thought gives +1000 to happiness, which makes it tied with having recently constructed an artifact for the best possible thought a dwarf can have. The next best thought gives only +30 (yes, it drops from one thousand to thirty). An "ecstatic" happiness level requires a +50 or greater net happiness value after all positive and negative thoughts have been calculated together.
Anyway, I thought I'd just throw this out there.
The Deadly Hume wrote :-
Dearest mother and father,
Today was a bit of a drag.
Well, for the past fortnight we've been assaulted by what we've come to call the Spawn. It's no big deal, I mean they're harder than rocks and ordinarily a single one would be able to tear through a settlement like silk, but of course out here we're Prepared. There's obviously something in the ale and wine that's proving to be very beneficial to the military as they train, so when our old pals turn up for a party, the champions are more than capable of telling them "your name's not on the list, you're not coming in", in the only language they can understand, that is, HAMMER.
As it was today, it was a fairly large mob of the Spawn turned up to... kill us, I suppose, who knows what they want, really... but in any case, our champions were able to dispatch them without too much bother. One in particular, tehsid, practically went beserk like the warriors of the dawn and felled twenty-five of the monsters. An ace of aces! However, it was not completely without casualty, and guess who had to fill out the incident report.
Perhaps I should explain. A while back I got appointed as the chairdwarf of the Occupational Health and Safety committee, perhaps they saw me as being fairly canny about the hazards around the fortress and in my days off from mining I would be able to identify hazards and consult with the committee and the general population on how to rectify them.
So it came to be that a couple of the champions got utterly pulverised by the drawbridge - they were in the wrong place in the wrong time - leaving no trace AT ALL. Not even a smear of blood. With no evidence it made it a little hard to file a full report with the overseer, but nevertheless I was able to get a decent account after listening to various witnesses.
Also, there has been a serious problem with the labelling of levers, in one case the "wrong" one was pulled in the chaos of the fight when the drawbridge was ordered to be lowered, and a subsequent review found that the labelling was pretty piss-poor, pardon my Elvish. Part of the fortress got flooded as well when another contraption was triggered open, and it may or may not have been the drawbridge lever.
I have recommended that:
1. The zone where the drawbridge is lowered is to be marked in yellow, and the bridge itself be painted in black and yellow stripes. ISO 3864-compliant signage is also to be placed in these areas.
2. That all levers be checked, and if need be, dismantled, rebuilt and labelled so we know which cursed lever is operating which dooverlacky the next time some peasant needs to pull it. Levers that are only intended for the use of nobles should be labelled as such to prevent untimely death to any common dwarf.
The fortress mechanics are already working on the latter, the overseer having made an executive decision to do so before I even filed my report, but at least the paper trail is covered should word of this get back to the King. Wherever he is...
Aside from that, I have little to tell you, even though I have been busy with routine work. Even though the scale of attacks is happening more and more often, I feel that we have established enough of a bulwark against any catastrophe from outside. I was certainly heartened to receive your reply to my previous correspondence with the elven caravan, it made feel far less isolated even out here on this frosty mountain.
With love and respect,
The Deadly Hume.
Sirocco wrote :-
The Journal of Sirocco: EIGHTH ENTRY
Hey, diary! I got to fight the spawn monsters to day! It was fun, actually! I tried to tell YOTC all about it but he said he didn't care about anything I said even when I offered to act it out for him. Then he said I was a sissy even if I was a champion and he was going to refer to me as a 'she' in all the official records.
I don't know where he got that idea!!! I plaited my beard especially for the battle and everything! My BEARD, diary! Girls don't have beards. Except my mum, she had a beard.
So I guess I've got no one left to tell but you, diary!!!
---
As we entered the gatehouse we could already hear the damned cries of the monsters as they sprinted across the mountain towards the fortress.
'Ready yourselves, champions of Syrupleaf,' said Royal W addressing us from atop the woodpile. 'Be brave and we will live to fight again.' He glanced behind him over the wall. 'They're coming.'
We all raised our weapons and not a second later they were on the bridge and entering the gatehouse.
'For Syrupleeeeeeeaf!' I screamed and met the first spawn coming through with a hammer blow to its face and he went down like a sack of quarry leaves! But I couldn't celebrate my first kill just yet as another of the fearsome beasts launched itself straight at me!
'Wow, these guys are really scary!' I noted to my fellow dwarves before hammering the creature right back across the drawbridge.
THEN I celebrated! I ran a lap of glory around the gatehouse a few times waving my hammer and shouting 'YEAH!' and 'I did it! I did it!' and other rousing battlecries. Then I saw an interesting cloud. Then as I was passing the main drawbridge for the seventh time I noticed something really weird.
I stopped and bent down to look at one of the logs and - I swear this is true, diary - if you looked at the knots in the bark at an angle, it kinda looked like there was a FACE there. Eyes, nose, beard and everything.
'Hey, tehsid, you've gotta come see this!' I shouted across the drawbridge. He was completely surrounded by the spawn at this point, I couldn't even see him, but I think he could hear me.
'I could use some help, guys!' he shouted as limps and guts exploded in mists of spawn blood left and right around him. The poor guy was drenched in the stuff, ha ha ha!
'No, seriously, it's really weird!' I called back.
tehsid then said something rather shocking and... unengraveable. I don't really want to record that for prosperity so I'll just leave that out if that's alright with you, diary!
We had two casualties in the battle I'm afraid. Royal W and SWATJester. When I finally get round to finishing my latest project (snow arranging - not as fun as flower arranging, but has a few amusing quirks, ha ha ha!) I will name it after them as a memorial.
After the fighting was over I tried to show tehsid the log but he wasn't interested so I showed someone else instead.
'What do you think?' I asked.
'LOOKS LIKE A PUMP!'
Skullbuggy wrote :-
Entry - 24th of Galena, the Sixth Year
Where has my mind been? It seems that it's been absorbed in my work, for once.
I am, as many know, prone to stress. That's a fact. Also, as many know, I am prone to tippling. Many weeks ago, I emptied a barrel of wine in my sorrows... Armok knows what had set me off, but I was depressed the whole day and I decided to upend the whole damn keg. The next night, I awoke in a puddle of what I believe was spittle, on the floor of the pump room. Screaming Idiot was screaming at me (unsurprisingly), explaining in excruciating detail the importance of the pumps and why I shouldn't contaminate his workplace. He's very committed to his job, let me tell you.
So that got me thinking... I need to commit to my job more than I have in the past. While some would argue that, as a noble, my job (if a job at all) is nothing more than relaxing in an office, it is so much more than that. Take the Mayor's job, for one; Bobthethurd has the task of establishing peace and prosperity in our village, and Armok knows that's an awful hard job to do in its own right. Then again, he's not been feeling well at all recently--and I don't mean he's sick in the stomach. He's been tippling on the job, as well, and I've caught the poor bastard crying in his ale quite literally while in his office. Armok knows the current state of affairs is hard on us all, but it seems Bobthethurd has been hit hardest.
The workers have also been in a bit of a dreary mood. Each day, when inspecting their work, I find that the craftsdwarves and smithies alike have been disinterested in their work, usually half-assing their way to finishing their quota. Perhaps it is the darkness of our Mountainhome, but I feel it can be attributed to something much worse than that. Granted, some workers have been in better moods... Green Intern, for one, was caught happily banging away at some metal making who knows what, whistling as he went. His whistling was dreadful, but I'll be damned if he wasn't the happiest dwarf in there.
Yes, the situation in Udibgovos is rather bleak, and I can't be the first to admit that. I am, however, going to try and stay rather upbeat about the whole thing, starting by cleaning my office and fixing the awful wobble my table's got. I'm going to go see if anybody's got a big enough hunk of rock to keep this damned thing stable.
- S. Mengigam, Manager
Entry - 9th of Limestone, the Sixth Year
I'm grabbing the nearest pickaxe and holing myself in my office. I smell brimstone again and by Moldath's hairy teat I am not letting THEM take me alive.
- S
tehsid wrote :-
30th Granite
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Me? I'm a quiet dwarf. I rather like my space, my room. I could spend all day in here with a nice ale and some halfling pipe weed and just look at the stars (roof) all day. I keep it in my shoes when I have it, because you never know what the other dwarfs might think if you have it around. I'm surprised nobody could smell it.
Lately, I've been training. I even got issued a hammer! I never considered myself as a fighter, I'm a loverdwarf not a fighterdwarf. But its been going well I'd say, and I'm feeling better then ever. Sirocco and I even had a quick dual the other day. Shame I missed that swing at her head...
All in all things are going well. We haven't heard of the spawn coming, so that's a good sign. They make me so paranoid. Anyway, back too the stars...
10th Limestone
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They came. I knew I was scared for a reason. It could only be quiet for so long. I remember YOTC yelling out to us all.
"They are here, get ready, get to the draw bridges!"
I watched as the great Royal W scrambled for his weapons. Sirocco followed, but seamed to be skipping around like and idiot. As for Alius, somebody said he was going for a pre-battle drink. Wish I could have joined him.
I took a quick draw of my pipe, a swig of my ale and grabbed my gear. As I approached the front of the fortress, it was quiet. The only noise was YOTC barking orders to everybody. That was quickly broken by the hellish scream of the spawn.
Never in my life have been in an arm wrestle, let alone a full blown battle. In all my years I was the peace keeper. Today it was time for a change. I swore on my life, that I would protect this fortress and everybody in it... even Sirocco.
My last memory is running over the drawbridge and towards the spawn. Fear filled my heart. I lifted my hammer, and that was it.
Apparently it had been 10 whole day and nights before I came too. Its hard to tell here. I awoke standing over a bloodied up body of a spawn, with my shield embedded in its face. I looked back over my shoulder to see the front wall of the fortress, covered blood and guts. The draw bridges were up, which was a good sign. I was followed by Spermy Smurf and Firos who where cleaning up any spawn left alive... or anything that so much as twitched.
I found out later on that Royal W had been killed, as had SWATJester by a drawbridge incident. Such a sad way to die, yet sadly not that rare. I wish them the best, where ever they are.
This battle was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, yet I don't remember it. I can't sleep, and when I do its only for a short time.
One thing I remember fondly- I was walking back into the dining hall, where a few dwarfs where watching me as I walked in. I was covered head to toe in blood, so you could understand.
I turned to the group. "Hey Sirocco? Wanna spar?"