☼ The Siege of Tishismedtob on Aug 31 - Sept 1st ☼ - A Siege Report by Bomrek Keskalzeneg - A little backstory: a few years ago, before I became militia commander, we had a Goblin Invasion, which, after breaching our defenses, slaugtered almost all of our dwarves. We had a thriving community of over 100 dwarves before, but we were left with 20 after the invasion, and 10 of those went insane and died, leaving us with 10. This has taught the mayor a lesson about the importance of a military, so I became a militia commander, and Squad Certus was founded, a squad of 5 or so dwarves. We were slowly but surely recovering. However, before we could've even gotten started on our military training, we received a message: "A vile force of darkness has arrived!". Uh-oh, another siege. That is how this siege begun. ACT 1: The Doubtful Beginning ----------------------------------------- Let me start with some numbers. We had 25 something dwarves. and I saw around 20 goblins outside. This may sound like a fair battle we could win, right? Nope. Those goblins obviously had a lot of training, and could easily stomp our civilization of clothiers and farmers and whatnot. I decided we should just wait until they leave, and get some work done inside the fortress, so that's what we did. We did some cleaning up from the previous invasion (the place was full of blood, corpses and dropped items!), we dug out some more storage, that kinda stuff. We also managed to dig a channel that makes one of the lakes outside flow into a corridor inside, so we could drink water while trapped inside. Things were looking fine, we could easily wait until the siegers get bored and leave, we thought. We had a farm and water, so we could survive forever. The only limited resource we had was wood, really. But then, things got a bit more interesting... ACT 2: The Reinforcements -------------------------------------- "A vile force of darkness has arrived!" Well crap. Now there's two sieges. At this point, I knew we have no other choice than killing these guys. Our training program was doing well: we had a Proficent Swordsdwarf, a Competent Marksdwarf, and two skilled Axedwarfs as well, if I remember correctly. So, I started strategizing for a counter-attack. I thought we could create some kinda battlements where we can safely snipe the enemy. We ordered the smithy to create some copper weapons, armour and shields for us. While he was doing his thing, I was looking around to make a plan... Oh, yeah, one thing I didn't mention is that after the goblin invasion that killed most of our dwarves, and before this siege, we made some fortifications outside. http://puu.sh/4gjNI.png We surrounded the area in front of the entrance by three walls, leaving one door for an entrance. We put a weapon trap that is activated when an enemy steps on it, in front of the entrance. Inside the fortress, we put a copper wall barricade behind the inner entrance, in case the doors get broken (they did!). We also put a bunker to shoot out from near the inner entrance. So, when I was looking there, I saw that Trolls are dead (you can see their cyan trail of blood on the picture)! They died from the weapon trap! The weapon trap was stronger than I thought. This gave me an idea... ACT 3: Brains over brawn! -------------------------------------- We got the smithy to make some more weapons to put in weapon traps, and we got the mechanic to create more weapon traps. We have a failed attempt at making water flow from a lake outside into the fortress from earlier. It's blocked up to prevent enemies from entering the fortress by jumping down the lake. I had an idea of turning this into a bait entrance loaded with traps! So, we commenced the construction of the... !!ZIG-ZAGGING CORRIDOR OF DOOM!! http://puu.sh/4gjkG.png (This picture is full of blood (red) and troll blood (cyan) and whatnot, so sorry if it's not clear!) It's exactly what it says on the tin. A corridor full of traps, that's zig-zagging so it's more efficent with space. I couldn't wait, so I started the plan when we only had about 5 traps layed down in the beginning of the corridor. We dug out the blockage, making the corridor free to enter for the enemy. Then, we blocked off the corridor where the traps ended. Soon enough, the enemy started coming. And I was surprised by the results. We killed seven trolls in 5 seconds, and a lot more enemies when the rest arrived. With only 5 traps. After killing and wounding a large portion of the enemy, we were met with good news. They are retreating. And that's how we won our first siege we ever won. We'll have to celebrate this with lots of booze...