I began by assessing the denizens of this pit...
Chaosmaker, you will be pleased to know that your brothers in beard are so distraught over your death that they are cheerily drinking over your rotting corpse.
Whoever designed this airlock system was apparently either too drunk or too sober. Because...
One of the bridges retracts rather than raising.
I ordered the dwarves to construct a brick wall blocking out the airlock controls from the rest of the fort. (They were quite hard to find, by the way; the hastily scribbled indicator that the controls were "down a ways" failed to convey the fact that the control levers were constructed so deep that I can hear the eldritch whisperings of my cousins from this dimension.) This is a simple, utilitarian dwarfcontrol method: whenever the gateway needs to be controlled, a dwarf is sent to retract the "broken" bridge, locked in, then kept captive as a slave to the airlock lever until such time as it is released.
I began exerting my will over the workforce. Naturally, rather than bothering about with subtlety, this process involved me enthralling every living body not already possessed of one of our Void souls. My mindless slaves will serve well at tasks which can be assigned en masse, ensuring that the most important of labors are attended to with maximum haste and a minimum of fuss.
One of the thralls goes about his labor with a large chunk of skeleton over his shoulder. I'm not quite certain why.
Situation in the fortress is nightmarishly precarious. Goblins and trolls roam freely among the corridors, and I'm not quite certain how long this uneasy truce will last. The halls need washed clean of such filth, but no dwarf in the fortress has the combat prowess to go about it.
Of primary concern is the food situation. While the air around Murdermachines is so well infused with lost, twisted souls that a deep breath will practically sate my own hunger, the dwarves need food of some sort to go on about their lives. While I work to prepare edible meals from our seed stockpiles, my thralls swarm the fields. Their current method of throwing sweet pod seeds at the ground and headbutting them into the mud may be inefficient compared to the careful tending of a master, but at least there should be a crop of some sort.
I declare SanDiego to be our new bookkeeper and order him to start a complete tally of the goods in and around Murdermachines. I estimate this will take him a good part of his lifetime to complete, but it must be done; more closely cataloging these lost goods is the simplest route towards perhaps reclaiming some of them...
I rest for now. One month has passed; it is now 1 Slate.