So I had a siege - nice, nice, more meat puppets for my arena, and a good test for my spear-trap hall. However, there's a problem.
The first part of my trap gauntlet is cages, followed by stonefalls that I haven't got around to replacing yet, then the spear traps and weapon traps and more cages later on. After a few groups of trolls'n'gobs charged in and set off all the initial cage and stone traps (only to die horribly further in, of course), the last squad stopped in their tracks and is chilling among their caged brethren in the initial cage trap segment. I assume this has something to do with the fact that I have their leader in a cage further in, or that their leader died and now they are helpless to advance or retreat. (Also when their leader died, the bridges were closed behind them so they couldn't path out, and they haven't tried to path again since then maybe, even though the way is clear now?)
I am trying to get them to path again via killing one of them, but I am reluctant to spawn magma on them, as there's an entire trap hall that would get flooded, full of meat puppets in cages and various expensive speartraps and the like I'd rather hold on to. (Also goblinite.) They are all bowgoblins so I'm afraid to send my 4-man team of elite killer dwarves. I don't want to 'slay all goblins' as that sounds like it would kill the caged ones as well, and I'd really rather keep those if I can - I need my army trained up to lords ASAP so as to deal with the stacking 'long patrol duty' thoughts.
To clarify, there is a clear path both further into the main of the fortress and back out to the edge of the map, now that I've lowered the bridges, but they are going in neither direction.
Is there some solution to this, using DFHack or otherwise? I'd cheat those guys to death if I could, and if it would not damage the part of the fort they are in. Also: Will they go away eventually if I leave them there?