Chapter 1: A Bronze Horizon

So as the game goes on, I more and more realize what an awesome settlement site I have. My main fortress entrance is the most defendable site on the map. I only have one problem.

Apparently I moved into Bronze Colossus country.

Bronze Colossuses (colossi?) are megabeasts, which means they are very very hard to kill. The Bronze Colossus especially so because it doesn't bleed and minor wounds heal almost instantly. So you have to do heavy sustained damage to kill them. And they don't get bored and wander off, so you can't just wait them out like goblin sieges. The cool thing is that when you kill them they leave behind a masterwork bronze statue for you to keep.

So a little while ago my first, FIRST, bronze colossus moves in. Oh crap, I think. Panic. Ok, standard operating procedure. Everyone get inside, yank up the bridges. The bronze colossus comes charging through the forest, hits my double-wide trench with retracted bridges and becomes very confused. He stands there, staring across the trench, scratching his big stupid bronze head. Ok, let's see if we can do this the easy way. Boys, get out there and fire the catapults at him. Alright, here we go, smashed bronze coming up.

Hmmmmm. The catapults fire up or to the side, not diagonally where the colossus is standing. Well then. Glad I built those. Ok. Marksdwarves, get up there and start firing arrows at him. Ok, let's see how this goes. Marksdwarves run up and start shooting. 90% of the arrows miss completely. Did I not build an archery range for you idiots to practice at? Good god you guys suck. The 10% of arrows that do hit ping off the bastard, leaving small dents that heal almost instantly. Plus, me being the cheap bastard, I forgot to make quivers for like half my marksdwarves, so they are running up, shooting (and missing) then searching their pockets for more arrows before running aaaaaall the way back downstairs to get another arrow. Ok, this isn't working. Screw it. Melee unit, get your asses up here. Ok, now lock the front door. It's steel, the colossus will have a hard time getting through that. Damnit, there's some clutter in the doorway, the door won't close. Ok, lock the backup doors. Oh for the love of...more clutter, only 2 of the 4 doors close. Screw it. Lower the bridges, let's take this bugger out. Valiant defenders of Gravelscarred away!

Well they tried. The melee unit charges, and immediately 3 of my best warriors get knocked into the trench. This turns out to be fortuitous as it saved them from getting slaughtered. The rest of the unit, most of them fighting with their bare hands, start wrestling with the colossus. Some of them are holding their own. I check the damage on the colossus. We're doing a good job of mangling his lower and upper legs. Well....dwarves, I guess that's to be expected. He dispatches the last of my melee dwarves and turns attention towards the marksdwarves, who are trying to beat the thing to death with their crossbows. They don't last so long. Oh god, he just threw that marksdwarf a hundred feet, over the side of the cliff and impaled on a treetop. This is getting ugly. Bronze colossuses apparently hate dogs, because this guy takes special measure to kill, mutilate and hurl every single chained war dog on the plateau, then starts going towards the main entrance.

There was a human caravan around at the time. Now, the main wagons made their escape, but there are a couple of mules with human riders wandering around still. The colossus starts chasing these guys down, but since his legs are so mangled he can't move fast. So the mules are running around in circles while the colossus chases them. In my head there was circus sideshow music. Doo doo doododododododo do do doooodo. And that's when I notice my tax collector got locked outdoors in the first antechamber. The colossus notices him too.

Huh. I wonder when the new tax collector will arrive.

The colossus starts advancing on the tax collector. The tax collector is looking veeeeeeeeeeeeeery nervous. This is not going to be pretty. The colossus wanders into a small field of stonefall traps. BAMBAMBAMBAM statue.

What? That's IT?! Four stonefall traps and I have a free statue? Screw that, next colossus I get I'm inviting him for dinner. I've got 4 billion stonefall traps set up around here. Ok, haul that badboy in here, and some of you are joining the army.

Now, the second colossus. He shows up when a dwarven caravan is in. Ok, easy enough, let the sucker in, he'll hit four billion stonefall traps before he even gets near the door. Lower the bridges. Oh for christ sake, he's just sitting there at the bottom of the map. Someone go get him. Eventually one of my dwarves gets his attention and races back towards home, colossus in tow. It comes charging across the bridge. RAWR! and hits a field of stonefall traps. I rub my hands greedily together. The caravan defenders see him and attack. He hits the first trap. And then another. And another. And another. He's...he's not going down. Huh. Maybe my melee unit did a better job on the first one than I thought. So the defenders engage the colossus, they're wandering and fighting all over, the colossus is setting off like 50 traps. It's a frenzied fight, but the caravan defenders manage to take the colossus down. At which point I send my dwarves out to abscond with the statue. "Hurry up, damnit, they may want it for themselves. Screw that they did most of the work."

That was the second bronze colossus. Now for the THIRD.

So, I'm sick of all the clutter around my fortress, my stocks screen is almost useless, so I set all my dwarves to picking up crap from all the dead goblins throughout the life of Gravelscarred and dumping in my trash compactor. This effectively stops production of everything but food, while trash is getting toted around. It doesn't make for enticing gameplay but it needed to be done. Like cleaning your apartment. That's when the third colossus shows up. Oh screw it. I raise my far southern bridge, isolating the colossus to a small portion of the map and let my dwarves go about their business. I'm not even going to deal with it until the spring cleaning is done and I have a usable workforce. The dwarves are moving trash around, the colossus is sitting at the bottom of the map, looking fairly content. And then the Elven caravan arrives. Huh, I wonder which side of the map they are on. Oh, they ran straight into the colossus.

Well, I never really liked them anyways.

Plus, when they're dead I'll get to loot everything they brought with no cost to me. I don't really see how this is a bad thing. Act of god and all that. Well, act of colossus anyways. So he murders all the traders and mules and starts chasing the elven diplomat who picked a REALLY bad time to show up. That diplomat is pretty spry. The colossus is chasing him around but not catching him.

And that's when the goblin siege shows up.

Oh come on. Alright, what side of the map are they on. They...are right at the colossus and diplomat. Well, at least the bridge is up. All I have to do is sit and watch. When the siegers get bored and leave I can go out and take care of the colossus. So the colossus is chasing the diplomat, the diplomat is running away, waving his hands in the air and screaming like a little girl (ok, the game didn't say that last part, I'm just assuming that's how it went) when he ran right into a full contingent of goblin crossbowmen.

It was kind of like that scene at the end of Hero. There was an elven diplomat-shaped hole in a field of arrows. Well, that's over. And...wait...OH MY GOD THE GOBLINS ARE ATTACKING THE COLOSSUS. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I can't believe my luck. The goblin army will kill the colossus for me, this is awesome. At that point, I'm thinking the only downside is that I'll have a lot of dead goblins with their resultant clutter to deal with. And that's when the Colossus falls in a pond.

BWAAAAHAHAHA. Oh shit, that might be bad. The colossus can't drown, and my markdwarves can't do the damage needed to kill it, so it'll just sit at the bottom of the lake and scare everything within 5 miles of it. But the goblins are not to be denied. They sit up there, just peppering that sonuvabitch with arrows. Two very brave (and stupid) goblins dive into the water after him. I should note that later I found the lower half of one of those goblins. The goblin crossbowmen are still letting him have it and somehow they manage to kill the bastard! So now there is a bronze statue at the bottom of a pond and the goblins only lost two fighters. All I have to do is wait for the siege to leave (which they do after a while), then go drain the pond, claim the statue, deal with the clutter from two dead goblins which is nothing compared to that of forty dead goblins. I was laughing so hard at this. It was like the best possible outcome. Aside from the dead elves. Which depends on how you look at it.