Having a successful seven year fortress under my belt, I decided to take on a bit of a challenge and settle in an evil biome. Only sinister (evil/calm), nothing too wild. I selected an area with no aquifer and good mineral composition, but no trees, or any plant life whatsoever. I also didn't customize my embark settings at all, assuming my dwarves would learn quickly. Knowing it was dangerous, I had my dwarves immediately put doors up to lock out any potential dangers while I was still getting set up. However, since I had no trees, I knew I was also going to have to plan for trading. I also got a militia set up training, but noticed I didn't have any actual armor.
The fort gets up and going pretty smoothly, no attacks yet. I build three beds from the wagon wood, set up a little dormitory attached to a tavern, as well as a couple workshop rooms, a couple offices, and stairs down to the first cavern. I start carving out a place for the trading post to go near the entrance, as well as barracks next to it and a parallel hallway. I schedule bridges to be built too, and this is when disaster strikes.
My first migrant wave appears, but the number is smaller than you'd expect, and I notice a fight has broken out.
Among the migrants were two zombies, a married couple. They are listed as abominable mist zombies, but I don't know what that means so I just keep trying to sort out what just happened. In the time it took to pause the game they already killed two other migrants. I lock the door to the fortress and wait for this to play out. The two zombies take out all the other migrants, and then turn on each other. The husband kills his wife and then wanders the desert area killing any stray dwarves that happened to be outside building or fishing, and any poor animals that happened to be wandering the desert. He looks pretty strong, but I have a small militia and they've been training. I send my three poorly-armed soldiers to try to kill him, and they are immediately slaughtered.
My four remaining dwarves get to work on that parallel hallway, filling it with traps. I finally open it to the outside world and... he walks through unharmed. I lock the door, he walks back past the traps, again, fully unharmed. Hmmm. He gets distracted by some animals, and I get to work on the trading outpost and the bridges, because it's already early autumn. Soon enough, the traders arrive, only to be slaughtered. The zombie kills the dwarves with the caravan and then runs around chasing their animals for a while. I check on my dwarves - a couple have slipped outside for some fucking reason, and a couple are inside working on construction projects. I know I can't hold off this zombie forever and I don't really want to keep going with like two dwarves forever, so I just kind of let this play out.
Pretty soon, I'm down to one dwarf, because one of the underground ones went outside??? For some reason??? And I go to see what the final dwarf is doing, and it says he's... holding a meeting?
The diplomat snuck in somehow, past the zombie. While all of the others have been getting murdered up there, these two have been having a meeting in the tavern, as if everything is ok. The diplomacy tab pops up and I have the option to request items for next year. Heh, not much point in that, but I select a few things for the hell of it. The meeting finishes, and the diplomat leaves and immediately gets murdered. The zombie then comes for the final dwarf, and that's the end of that.
So, I figure, I want to try again, but customize the starting caravan. I select a location close by in the same world and set up my new dwarves with useful skills. Most of them can fight decently well. I get them some armor and shields and decent weapons, and a few turkeys and dogs too.
I go to check their group name, assuming I'm gonna have to change it to something better, and I shit you not, it's The Paddles of Loving. Welp, can't beat that. I check the fortress name. Grasporbs. Grasp orbs. Oh my god. I immediately take photos and text them to my partner because I'm fucking losing it. And then I embark, determined to do better this time and live up to this great name the rng gave me.
I do worse, actually.
I keep this fortress layout even simpler, even faster to build. With a fully flat site, I dig stairs straight down, and figure I'll find a way to set up a door later. Bad idea. I set up two squads and have them start training right away, starting with the stronger one. I set up their training barracks just on the ground outside the fort. Bad idea.
Before long, I see a notification about zombies. Abominable mist zombies once again. I center on it and it takes me to the surface, which is coated in mist. This is when I finally decide to look up what abominable mist zombies are. The only useful result I find is the wiki page for weather, in the section for evil biome weather. It doesn't say much, but now I get what's going on.
My three best fighters, fully armed and armored, have instantly become hostile zombies, and can freely enter my fortress with no door or anything to stop them. Naturally, they just massacre the rest of the Paddles of Loving. I check my texts to see what time I sent that photo of the group name - only just over half an hour earlier. Oof. Pride sufficiently wounded, that's when I decide it's been enough dwarf fortress for the day.