Update.
Migrants finally arrive again, for the first time in years. And they don't stop coming. Caravans arrive too, and they don't always die every time. The sacrifices those dwarves made before paid off for itself. There truly was no way to succeed in this land without purging it first, and now I consider it conquered. The marksdwarf squad is stationed above 90% of the time and picks off everything. But it wasn't easy. There were still walls and bridges to be made and between the goblins and zombies it left little time for securing the fort. Dwarves would go out carrying a block and die to some lurker. The hauler dwarf would drag his body to the disposal while the next mason in line would take his try at laying the brick before dying.
But regardless, industry explodes as the population rises and rises. Dwarves continue to die to any imaginable thing, of course, but the migrant waves always replenish and the population has finally reached an important threshold. Perhaps we can expect seige...
Don't let the population number fool you; I lost more than twice that amount of dwarves in the in-between years!
And don't let their job titles fool you either. This fort has no trappings or fluff. No one is crafting. No one is jeweling. No one is weaving or coin making. No one specializes except the smithies.
Miners strip the layers for the minerals and masons make blocks and slabs. Loggers clearcut the underground forests and we burn the logs faster than they can supply it. A good 25% of the dwarves have farming, brewing, and cooking set to make sure that stuff doesn't stop. And mechanics and metalsmiths make preparations for the breaching. Everyone else is military.
We don't need to waste any labor on profitmaking because the hundreds of dead left their treasures behind. Clothes, goblinite, caravan goods, even animals to butcher (or train) from the elves. Here are our trade stores. We send away maybe 10 bins a year to buy iron, steel, and ammo.
The land is mine.
And soon the sea.