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[JerDGold]

A forgotten beast is ruining the flow of my fortress, but he's not even inside! Nor can he get inside! He's in a cavern, many levels below my fort, but very close to my up/down stairway.  Maybe five or six tiles away.  However, I haven't dug into any caverns yet.  I don't mind killing him, but I can't even get my dwarves to dig into the cavern because of the interuption spam.  Advice?

EDIT:  Appears somehow the beast has been injured, with all four of its legs cut open and fractured,  which is why it clearly isn't moving anywhere.

EDIT 2:  Solved with DFHack...but I don't feel good about it.

[Ravendarksky]

I'm guessing here but it sounds like your staircase is not as well sealed off as you think and that dwarfs are seeing the FB.

You will know for sure when flying eyeballs/bats/FBS enter your stairwell.

Beware the diagonal z level gaps!

[Dirst]

I'm with Ravendarksky that there was some inobvious line-of-sight causing the issue.  To your other point, FBs can and do run into other beasties in the caverns which can get them wounded.

[JerDGold]

So assuming there is a line of sight issue, how would you have gone about solving it?  I couldn't get a single dwarf in my fort to do anything, and if I didn't kill the FB, my entire fort would have starved.

[EvilBob22]

The first time I built a prisoner pit it was near my central stair and had no ceiling.  I lost that fort to "Urist cancels eat, interrupted by goblin maceman!"

[thegoatgod_pan]

So assuming there is a line of sight issue, how would you have gone about solving it?  I couldn't get a single dwarf in my fort to do anything, and if I didn't kill the FB, my entire fort would have starved.

I'd have handled it the way you handled it: likely using Marksdwarves. Build a bunch on the surface, arm them and send them to shoot at the F.B., since they can't path to it, the line of sighty will be an advantage. Then build a floor to seal the gap.

[Loci]

So assuming there is a line of sight issue, how would you have gone about solving it?  I couldn't get a single dwarf in my fort to do anything, and if I didn't kill the FB, my entire fort would have starved.

Build a secondary staircase? Assuming you can find a miner who is willing to work, start on his z-level and designate a new stairway up or down one z-level at a time to the food and alcohol. Once you have a secondary stairway, restrict or wall off the central stairs until you can deal with the threat below.

Options for removing the threat include marksdwarves, a cave-in, or an artifact-lined tunnel down to the floor of the cavern (to provide the forgotten beast with a path to your fortress, and artifacts to distract him on the way).

In the category of prevention, i think installing floor hatches on your central stairway would block line-of-sight, distract building destroyers, and limit falls. In an emergency, floor hatches can be locked to keep enemies below from climbing any higher into your fort.

[Button]

The most common causes of accidental cavern-openings are up-down stairs. An up-down stair in the level above a cavern can be an opening for flying creatures, even though it wouldn't be an opening for a dwarf.

Construct an 'up' stair over that up-down stair and you'll be fine.

[MDFification]

Even if the beast can't path to you, if dwarves can see it (i.e. through fortifications) they'll still cancel their jobs.
If it's the fortifications, an easily solution is to just pepper the beast with bolts until it goes away. This solution can be applied basically any time you're getting this issue, actually, if you carve new fortifications. The beasts don't fight back despite having ranged attacks unless they have a way to path to your dwarves, although the type that fire syndromes and random could still hurt you. They generally run away when getting shot at if they can't hit your though.

[AbanShakehandles]

Beware the diagonal z level gaps!

...and I thought I had been so careful with my central up down stairwell.
Now everyone is on fire! Yeah, it's that kind of party.


Edit:
For clarity, here's the diagonal z level gap I overlooked:
#: natural wall
X: up/down stair
O: constructed wall
Z:                         Z-1:
# # # # #            # # # ## # # #
# X X X  #            # X X  # [  ]<--- Access from up/left of here
# X X X  #            # X X  O ## # # # #
# X X X  #            # X X  X #
# # # # #            # # # # #

[Max™]

Yup, in the above example, putting an up-stair over the top right, middle right, and top middle up/down stairs on z+0 would guarantee you can prevent access from z-1.

[TheHossofMoss]

If you have an "X" up down stair, they can see the tile (or cavern, rather) below it. AND things can fly up that. It may as well just be a hole.