Many good dwarves died at the hands of the goblins, but after a protracted battle I managed to fend them off with only about a quarter of my fort going insane and trying to kill the remaining population - the first time, in fact, that this has happened. I'm rather proud of the fact. Although the goblins were deadly enough to destroy almost all of my army and most of my important workers, the mayor, pillar of the community, miraculously survived.
God I hate the mayor.
I have put up with his whining long enough to know that when half of my fortress is wiped out only for him to come out unscathed to prance around whining and throwing tantrums, he has to die. How do I propose to do this? I will build him his bedroom. And then I will divert a river through it.
I think that if I build the following arrangement:
^^^^^^
(CORRIDOR)
(OPEN FLOODGATE)
(CLOSED FLOODGATE)(CHANNEL)(CLOSED FLOODGATE)(BEDROOM)(CLOSED FLOODGATE)(CHANNEL LEADING BACK TO RIVER)
(RIVER)<
(OPEN FLOODGATE)(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ORIGINAL COURSE OF RIVER~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
and then link all of the floodgates to the same lever, build the mayor's beloved bedroom and then assign it to him, I can create the titular Self-Flushing Murder Room - the room will seal whilst he sleeps, and he will then be flushed into oblivion by the fury of nature. However, I am still relatively new to Dwarf Fortress and still don't know the following things:
Will the mayor be flushed away by the river?
Will the furniture go with him?
Is there a reliable method of draining rivers on a map without much natural open space?
Will the mechanism fail spectacularly and flood the whole fortress?
I'll give more details if necessary.