Once I had gathered 15 monster slayers at my fortress I decided to open up access to the caverns and let them explore. This was a fantastic idea until I realized that if anyone died my dwarves would rush right out to collect all of their belongings and probably run out to greet whatever fate the monster slayers had faced (Arkenor did explain to me how to disable this issue so next time they won’t go running after stuff).
Two of the original 15 have died so far – taken down by the spiders, most likely. There’s still a wolf spider roaming around down there but I’m glad to see they’ve taken out the rhinotroll as well as some scarecrow men.
The coral snakes also killed two of my own dwarves, rendering them first unconscious. They were taken to a hospital bed where they just wasted away until death. They had no visible illnesses, I just couldn’t wake them up.
Still, the fortress is 70+ strong and doing fairly well compared to past places. We’re only on year 2 of it being established, so there’s still time for a mythical creature to crawl up from the cavern and destroy us all. It might be time for me to put down some traps or a defense system of some sort…