After much dithering I picked my spot. A saltwater lakeside embark, 11 high, 7 across, with sandy desert in the north, a rather cold temperate grassland in the middle where I'll likely build, and some swamp in the south. It is terribly flat, so I'm not going to be able to do my usual tactic of building into a hill or mountain.
Stonesense's colours don't seem to work terribly well with Masterwork, but the stuff on the right is the lake, the pink stuff at the top is the sand, and the brown at the botton is the marsh. A profoundly flat land. I'll have to make sure I don't set it on fire. The other stream is under snow right now.
Two rivers flow into the lake, so I shall build between those, giving me some protection. Except when they're frozen, which may be a lot of the time. I'll be needing to do some serious castle building.
My starting seven are distinctly uninspiring with a craftsdwarf who hates crafting, and a healer who essentially hates everybody. The great exception is Soshosh Laluthmugshith of the Farming Guild, who is actually very well suited for farming. She'll get me the necessary head start I'll need with harder farming set. No standout leader or broker, so I'm not going to buy any skills and will let them elect their own leader until someone a bit less feeble turns up.
It's likely that flux will be plentiful in such an area, and hopefully fuel as well. Fishing will be an obvious source of food. I don't think I've ever done a lake or sea embark before, so I'm not too sure what sort of horrors will be lurking in there. All biomes are wild savagery, so I would imagine that fishmen will be a bit of a problem.
I'm bringing pairs of Drakes, Wooly Badgerdogs, Leatherwing Bats, Moleweasels, Cragtooth Boars, Changelings, and an Armok's Ward. The Cult of the Carp God will almost certainly be drawn to our seaside paradise, so that ward will be vital. A couple of extra picks, and a little emergency coal.
Turns out there's no dwarven word for "port" or "harbour". There is one for "mouth" though, which is appropriate as we have two rivers flowing in to the lake, and as I'm sure we'll have a most splendid tavern, I'm going to go with Stetnindum, Innmouth. It will be a fine home for the Emerald Scholars to make their new home. No Carp God worshippers allowed!
The only other folks on the map right now are a band of nymphs you can see on the map. I imagine they'll be coming this way to nick all my stuff. Problem with nymphs is that your dwarves and beasts won't usually attack them, so I'll need to move everyone into a military squad to give them a proper welcome.
My seven dwarves spent about 5 minutes punching a single nymph to death. Not exactly a good use of time before we've even finished digging the first chamber to move the equipment into. It was good training though.
Edit:
Spring passed otherwise uneventfully. Some Ogres wandered around the south, and Giant peachfaced lovebirds and Giant Hamsters frolicked in the desert, but we were too busy getting the basics up and running. Some bedrooms, a crypt with adjacent butchershops, the underground farming area, and a mason/stonecrafting area are up and running.
Unlike my usual mountain embarks, I am blessed with many soil layers in the grassland biome. Clay, Fire Clay, Peat, and Sand. Maybe I should actually bother with pottery or glassmaking for once. I may need to, as my stone and metal situation is fairly dire.
Rubble. Many layers of rubble. Nasty useless disintegrating stuff. The chalk layers will come in useful eventually. Some some layers of jet. Jet is the lightest stone, and will make very nice pots. It is not magma safe though, and I rather like my walls to be able to handle magma. I'm going to need a LOT of walls. Eventually I found some orthoclase. Looks like yellow is going to be the upstairs colourscheme this time around.
Utterly defenceless right now, apart from the wooden hatches on the stairs in. No weapons or armour to speak of. That's not too bad at this point as the Dark Stranglers, generally the first invaders, won't be making their first visit until this Winter at the earliest. Still, in wild environs something nasty is liable to show up sooner rather than later.
The first wave of migrants arrives. A fairly average bunch. Apart from the Lich.
Oh dear. What am I going to do with him? He's going to start raising the dead into bone golems, and I don't see that ending at all well. Hmm, they've arrived on the other side of the stream anyway, so I've got some time to figure out what to do while I get a bridge built.
