As I said, the fortress I’m playing is my first, and I assumed it was doomed. I never got farming going the first year, and I was low on food through the winter. I read here about slaughtering mules and horses, so I did that, and that helped. Although when the first horse was slaughtered like 6 dwarves gathered around and then were kind mopey about it having “witnessed death.” Then in early spring, when the farm got running (I never did make a working floodgate, but I just let the river flood my fields) I figured I might just make it. Then the frogmen came and attacked my farm. They struck down one of my peasants but the rest of the dwarves beat the frogmen with their bare hands.

Then a trapper started throwing a tantrum. She was doing it in her sleep, so I look, and she was married to the dead peasant, AND had a miscarriage, so was distraught over that. I was going to put a door on her room and lock her in, but she got better. But then later on when the human caravan showed up (with nothing but food ) she went nuts again and struck down a peasant herself. Then she ran off next to the lake and I figured she’d mope herself to death.

Nope. She eventually came back in and started hitting people. The carpenter smacked her right in the head (yellow!) and she finally went back to her room to lie down. I ordered a door put on her room but she went nuts when the laborer came by to do it and ran out (with a wounded head!) and smacked a jeweler in the head as well. Finally I got a door on her room, and when she went back in, I locked the door. So now she’s in there raging and throwing tantrums, but I am NOT going to let her out. I’ve lost enough dwarves over all her PMS

She eventually calmed down and hadn’t thrown a tantrum for quite a while, so I started feeling bad for her. Who wouldn’t go a little nuts after losing a husband and baby? So I let her out of her room, and she immediately runs down to the dining room and strikes down a peasant. Before I can do anything about it, a dog comes out of nowhere and rips off her arm and tears out her abdomen. She struggles with the dog for a while, rapidly losing strength. She finally slips unconscious. The dog, now tired from the struggle, proceeds to slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) tear her apart limb from limb right there in the entry to the dining room. It took so long, she woke up halfway through and started struggling with the dog, but only having one good limb at this point was kinda detrimental. She finally bled to death.

— Doctor Zero (Aug 21, 2006)

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