Wait a second, what's with the sudden lack of progress? I was reading this and I was like "Epic, keep reading, lets see if someone's got a dragon army or something yet" and you've got like a dozen posts a day, reach May 7th and give up on dwarf-kind *tuts*
Well thank Armok this necro has given you all the opportunity to grow your beards back to a full length
I'm still alive! The fort fell due to an experiment in determining whether clowns are vulnerable to dragonfire - they're not. I know the wiki
said they are immune to heat, but I had to check, dammit! I'm currently debating on whether to savescum or move on to a new project.
As a side note, shields are stupidly powerful against dragonfire. I actually had a goblin mace-lord shield-block his way all the way through the main gate while taking fire from four dragons simultaneously. Everything around him died, but he wasn't touched. Maybe dragonfire from multiple directions would work?
As for the dragon army, I've actually made pretty good progress. The only hitch is that I can't figure out a way to unleash them on invaders without mass friendly-fire casualties. As my legendary miner expedition leader found out the hard way. I can pasture them in pillboxes, no problem. The one time they got loose and got into close combat, they were monsters - right up until they incinerated each other.