Our travels had been relatively peaceful, but that had to end sooner or later.
That end came in the form of a dingo attack in the deep of night. A single unarmed gremlin is easy prey for a dingo, but the beasts horribly misjudged our numbers. The dingoes mauled one gremlin in their surprise attack, but then all 349 remaining gremlins piled on the dingoes. None of the gremlins were armed as they left their stone axes behind in Mischieflaws, but the dingoes stood no chance.
One gremlin stood out in the battle. He killed three of the four dingoes, which is quite an achievement because all 349 gremlins joined in. That is not all that is noteworthy. I know for a fact that all the gremlins were generated out of thin air at the top floor of the museum, but their bodies do seem to have a physical age. Aye Coloreddoctrine is one of the few that should be considered just a child, I would estimate him at no more than seven.
It was clear that gremlins have the potential to defend themselves in battle. And there is more good news. I found that gremlins will happily bond to other people. As long as these other people take good care of them, they can safely adapt to the world, without me having to take care of them. I started out with leaving small numbers of gremlins behind in Mischieflaws, then travelled back to the museum. I gave away gremlins to a lot of people, including quite a few adventurers of the museum. They all promised to take good care of their new companions as well!
And that is quite a responsibility! A gremlin can live for a thousand years, so it is not a short time commitment.
Now that I know that my gremlins have a future I can rest more easily. I will retire to further educate the 300 or so gremlins that remain with me, and hope they can have a positive influence on the world.
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OOC:
I will play a bit more gremlin-fortress now, with a more sane number of gremlins. I have obviously not been able to give everyone gremlins, but a few of the adventurers I met in the Museum, the Shelter of Adventures and Waterdeeps now have one, or a few companions. Feel free to give them away or whatever if uninterested
Also, while trying to give away the gremlins I ran into a nasty bug, apparently the gremlins I tried to leave behind earlier (the ones that went missing) were still listed and whenever I selected one the game crashed on me. I found that it has likely already been reported on the bug tracker, here. I would not know where to begin fixing this with dfhack, but according to the report it is possible. Anyhow it likely only affects my character, these are the offending gremlins (got the list from fortress mode, where they are still listed as "bonded":