A feathered serpent... How didn't I realise it before? Or maybe I did and forgot afterwards. It was certainly the end of an era for the fort.
And it's not a necro if it's still going, he he
So this took a while. I really have no excuse this time: I had time and I wasn't tired or busy with much except for a month of exams. I can only beg your forgiveness and aim for making steady progress.
I was going to update only after something significant happened, not wanting to bother anyone with what's essentially "more wall was built, also some dwarves died". I preferred to wait until some sort of a milestone. What happened, then? Well, there was a birth. First one in eight years. It was a girl, born to Momuz the mechanic and Zasit the miner. Agile and strong. Likes steel, gauntlets and voracious cave crawlers for their scary mouths. She's got a bright future ahead of herself, unless demons punch her head in or she deconstructs the wrong wall.
There is quite a lot of wall now, though - the western side is almost completed, and I'm more than halfway through the northern part and making good progress.
Hell construction attempts have been hindered in the past by obsidian shortages - basically building faster than I can provide resources. I'm trying to up the production hard and assemble massive stockpiles whenever I can't go and build because of demons running around. I feel I'm getting better at this. Things are progressing faster. The easternmost spire is still blocked by a few Forgotten Beasts I was trying to trap, and a bait bear. They all got stuck in webs instead and I can only wait for the bear to die of old age. I don't want to simply collapse the ceiling on their heads - one is a giant steel cockroach that will provide endless practice for all marksdwarves.
The new birth set the population at 169 dwarves. A miner died in the cooled magma pool in unknown circumstances, and his body was only dug out later. A couple of other dwarves was lost because they decided to spend breaks in random spots in the underworld. Risen Matchedpage had his legs and a hand broken by a kobold thief with a power dagger, years after another kobold made him a partial paraplegic. Poor bastard. The thief was killed by Kogsak Counselledgold, who acquired the nickname of the Lauded Clasp of Elevating. A minotaur arrived and was quickly killed with a hammer. I brewed away all the plants, going from ~10 000 to 0 and putting the drink stockpile at over 20 000. I'll let that drop down to about half that number and then try to keep each type of beverage at 500 with ad-hoc farming. For now I can dump the surplus pots on the elves.
The current goal is to wall off hell before Wirejade hits one hundred years. 14 years left; I believe I can manage that if I keep up the pace. Then the tedium will end and the real fun can begin.