In proper Nutscaves fashion, a cave crocodile escaped a cavern construction area unnoticed on this otherwise-fine autumn day. The cave crocodile silently raced up a vacant part of the stairwell and prowled around the fort's quietest beer stockpile, where a miner soon came along to enjoy a drink.
The cave crocodile charged into the oblivious miner. It knocked the miner over, and bit his foot right off and ate it. Then it got to work gnawing on the remaining intact portion of the miner's leg. Once he overcame his surprise, the miner managed to hit the cave crocodile in the leg once with his pick and chip the bone. The cave crocodile would become unsteady from bone pain within seconds, but it was already too late. The miner's open femoral artery was a serious obstacle to remaining alive, and he bled to death on the spot.
A soldier with an iron whip arrived seconds after the attack started, and brained the crocodile on his first swing, right after the miner died.
The miner's family is now tantrumming. Of course he was married with children. The wife is currently standing in the magma shaft (a relatively unsafe, non-OSHA-compliant 40-story air shaft which sometimes has magma at the bottom...or the top...or both). She is holding her infant and making threats.
How did they get so unhappy so quickly? Normally the dwarves don't tantrum at just one death, of one family member. Well, I'll tell you why! Because, right before the rogue cave crocodile attack, we had the plague. Again. Not any of the nice plagues. The blood plague. The one where people step in something bad and ten steps later, they die from gushing blood out their feet. None of them even make it to the hospital with that one. They go ten steps, faint if they're lucky, and die. Have lots of coffins at the ready at all times if you have that shit in your fort!
Preventing the blood plague is easy. Everyone has to wear shoes. That is all. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes! You'd think it would be easy, but no. Ordering them to put on shoes is an exercise in frustration as it usually results in dwarves-already-wearing-shoes taking them off, and walking through the contaminants and dying of the blood plague. Damn it! It also involves lots of otherwise-shoeless dwarves deciding to put on exactly one shoe, and then giving up, and walking through the contaminants in one shoe. One shoe is just as good as no shoes when it comes to blood plague. ARRGGHH! These dwarves! Don't they want to live?
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