Part 21: by Bremen

A bookkeeper arrived from the capital, and already our people are begining to horde their precious coins. Of course, some can no longer afford rooms to sleep in, but this helpfully makes room for the most recent wave of immigrants, which I was unable to prepare for due to the goblin and elephant siege.

Disaster struck today when the brewers came to me and told me we were running out of spirits and there was nothing left to brew. Turns out I forgot to order the farms to start in the spring. This ruler stuff sure is complicated.

Disaster has struck! our scouts have reported a herd of elephants is approaching the fortress.

Due to a lack of time and cages, only two of the cage traps have been reloaded. This manages to catch two elephants, but the rest make it through. Meanwhile, all the dwarves assigned to ballista duty think this would be a great opportunity to eat, drink, or sleep.

A ballista operator finally arrives on the scene and we get our second unpleasant surprise, the ballistas are incredibly inaccurate even at short range.

Success at last!

The ballista instantly kills an elephant and hurls the body back a good 20 feet.

Successive ballista shots manage to kill another elephant, but then disaster strikes when a dwarf wanders in and gets killed by an elephant. All the other dwarves, seeing opportunity for new capitalistic riches, begin to rush towards the body to grab his valuable equipment. Remembering the stories I heard about my predecessor, I hurridly order the outer door to be locked.

But the door is stuck open! Sabotage! That Elephant sympathizer! That traitor! That Quisling! That....

... Monarch butterfly?

Aparently, showing incredible coordination, a monarch butterfly flew into the door workings just before the time of the attack and jammed it open. With all the bodies and items left by the elephants, no one is doing such a low priority task as cleaning up bug remains.

Meanwhile, the ballista operators, seeing the riches beyond their carved fortifications, gleefully follow the crowd out the main door and into the elephant choked tunnel. Assigning more dwarves to opperate the ballistas depletes the remaining supply of arrows without effect. My marksdwarves run out of bolts, but there are still two elephants remaining.

There's only one chance left... I activate the entire military and send them in a massed charge at the elephants!

The recruits (minus all those drinking, eating, and sleeping) Let out a mighty shout and charge! For the glory of Boatmurdered! No one can fault their bravery

Only their results.