So after my king moved in and I felt my fort was in a good place, I decided to retire it and start a new one. The new embark was on a savannah in untamed wilds, as I want to experiment with catching and training giant animals. The first year and a half passed pretty uneventfully. Migrants began to flow in, including a few faces from the old fort. Lots of iron ore + shallow coal and lignite meant a metalmaking industry could get off the ground fairly quickly. By the time the second august had rolled around, things were looking pretty good. I was halfway through the construction of the main gate when an Ettin attacked the fort. I had luckily made some iron armor, but was too caught up in developing everything else to train a proper military. In another bit of luck, one of the migrants from the old fort was a legendary fighter, and was immediately made militia commander with a handful of dwarfs that had some minor combat training joining him. The Ettin was thankfully distracted by most of the livestock on the surface to attack the fort directly, but my manager who was on her way back from fishing was unlucky enough to get caught at just the wrong moment. The squad was able to face the Ettin just in time, but not before the poor dwarf had both her arms smashed into her upper body. The squad, despite it's average inexperience was able to act quickly, knocking the Ettin down to the ground before spilling its guts.
With the Ettin down, work had to be done fast. Now that outside invaders were more than a vague threat, the main gate had to be fully linked up in order to protect the fort, a hospital had to be constructed (and fast, the manager was still alive and in dire shape) and proper training areas for the army had to get set up. I had just finished linking the drawbridge and had the manager start treatment when another alert happened. A Werecreature was bearing down on the fort.
The order to shut the drawbridge was ordered, but we had spotted the creature too late. it was unnaturally fast, managing to make it into the fort in an instant and attacking a poor farmer that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I ordered my squad to fight for the second time, all I could do was watch the combat logs. It was strange, the sense of apprehension upon watching a dwarf get bitten was followed by a twisted sense of relief as they then suffered a fatal blow. They would die, but the fortress wouldn't go with them. Despite their armor, most of the squad couldn't stand up against the beast. Even as it was hacked at and lost the ability to stand or grasp, it still managed to grapple with it's arms and legs, twisting joints, dislocating shoulders, collapsing wrists before finishing off with brutal bites to the neck that could collapse the spine through solid armor. Their sacrifices were not hollow, as they kept the beast at the front gate, preventing it from delving into the fortress itself. Eventually, it was just the Captain of the Guard left, the veteran of the previous fort. The beast did not let up, but the captain had experience backing him. He was able to dodge every attack the beast threw at him, not letting it get a single scratch in. Despite delivering an onslaught of axe hits, he couldn't seem to land a killing blow. He was slowing down, and the beast in it's warped nature seemed to be inexhaustible. At last, the beast was able to bite his leg. The armor prevented any damage to skin and the transition of it's terrible curse, but from this position the beast could easily rip off the whole leg, rendering the poor captain helpless. And then...
The moon shifted. In an instant, the beast was no more than a helpless dwarven peasant, and in another, the axe was brought cleanly down on their neck, severing it in one clean motion. In total 7 dwarfs died in the rampage, with our manager looking stable but in bad shape and with some bad infections. Our commander miraculously walked away without a scratch, able to defend the fort another day.