I decided to reclaim the site of Wipedboots. Although there's not much of a fortress there to reclaim, there is some raw aluminum, and I'm not one to let good aluminum go unprocessed.
The expedition group, The Courteous Avalanche, consisted of two hammerdwarves, two macedwarves, an armorer, a furnace operator, and a miner-mason. They brought no kitten with them; I don't think I could bear to lose another one ;(. Instead they brought weapons, wood, fuel, and enough provisions to hopefully last them until autumn.
The soldiers barely had a chance to grab their weapons when the first undead ambush came. The wagon stopped on the haunted tundra, so, though the dwarves were victorious, the undead onslaught would be continuous. A macedwarf soon had his left foot broken by one of those pesky undead seals. His companion macedwarf stood beside him in the wagon to help defend whilst the miner dug a new fortress into the frozen ocean. It may seem like a bad idea to construct a home inside of an ocean, but when one's options are probably drowning and definitely being ripped apart by zombie seals, the choice is fairly obvious.
Surprisingly, the macedwarf with the broken foot was not the first to perish. Instead, his sister-in-arms was fatally gored by the animated skeleton of a certain water buffalo. The two-dwarf hammerdwarf squad pursued the dread beast via their own volition (I had ordered them to remain stationed around the poor crippled macedwarf). It easily killed them both, its horns punching straight through their skulls with ease.
Without support, the lone macedwarf was killed by a pack of undead seals. The only remaining survivors were then the miner-mason, still digging out a shelter in the sea of ice, and the furnace operator, separated from his comrade by at least six zombie monsters, including the dread water buffalo skeleton Amusebowels. The furnace operator was sent on a suicide mission to distract the undead while Unib the miner hastily built a wall of ice at the entrance to the ice bunker.
The furnace operator, apparently unaware of what a suicide mission traditionally entails, managed to defeat two zombie dwarves and an undead seal with her bare hands before making it safely into the bunker just as the ice wall was completed. The two dwarves, alone in their icy cell with naught but a barrel of cave fish and a nearly empty barrel of rum, soon began to tantrum and quarrel. It was unwise of the furnace operator to pick a fight with the pickaxe-wielding miner, and she soon earned herself a punctured lung. The furnace operator, whose name was Kib, actually managed to survive after the two calmed down.
There was some preserved fish, rum, and other items left behind in the bunker dug by the previous expedition, so Unib began digging a tunnel from the ice fortress to it. Unless there were more undead hidden inside, the bunker's stone door would allow the dwarves to scavenge safely. Kib kept herself busy by moving all of the ice that Unib dug up into one big pile. Unib began digging with new-found motivation once the rum in the ice bunker ran out.
Unib breached The Bell of Glee's bunker just as summer arrived on the calendar. He and Kib feasted on cave lobster while a pack of undead ice wolves stalked the earth above, along with a horde of undead dwarves and other creatures. Along with food and drink, the two survivors also discovered two highwood logs to make beds with, a ghost, and some bituminous coal. I relocated all of the supplies and workshops to the old bunker for now, and set the dwarves up with private bedrooms there.
These two have more than enough food and drink to last until a migrant wave, although I doubt that any of the migrants would survive the run from the edge of the map to the bunker. Anyway, I doubt two dwarves huddles together in a dirt shelter is particularly interesting, so I'll definitely refrain from writing any more of this crap until something actually notable happens.