Cuddlehorrors is turning into the most interesting fort I've done yet.
Embarked on a metal/flux rich 2x2 spot with sand and soil, a stream, too many damn trees, tried to use the "highlight a biome during embark to land there" method to give myself a bit of breathing room.
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[-- Serene--][- Serene---]
[-----------W][--------------][- Terrifying ][- Serene---][--------------][--------------]Well ok then. Just gotta make sure the military doesn't have too much fun in that corner of the map, set up some walls to funnel stuff around to the front of the fort (I like to build my first walls around the wagon and then build up/down/around it) and started working.
Two or three squares down I discover that there is an aquifer RIGHT NEXT to the spot where I want to sink my central staircase... and it ends after four or five levels, amazing.
Naturally once I embark with a bunch of petrified wood blocks for the first wall/preparation for pump making to use for my Dorfwash and if necessary to punch an aquifer, I find that I can avoid having to punch it entirely and just use it for something I wanted to try.
Dug out a big oval-ish chamber under it on either side of the staircase, put a floodgate at the pinch point with an upstair at the far end, have another half oval the same size/shape which is cut off by fortifications I built with one suspended and ready to finish. Link up the gates to my first masterwork mechanism lever in the large room one z below the cistern level, made sure everything was smoothed and stones cleared, got two fast miners to run in and dig a downstair into the bottom of the aquifer after I channeled a pressure building tunnel above the cistern level, it starts to fill as they run out, get the gates shut, finish the fortifications and seal up the last two bits of wall surrounding the channel I dug out so I can pull the lever and get a solid sheet waterfall dropping through the happyroom into drainage that has been flooding the first cavern because screw those damn crundle jerks!
Set up more fortifications in the happy room, statues, engravings, plus masterwork coffins as I'm sure I'll end up having deaths before long. Got all of this done by the first migrant wave, managed to avoid having too much fun too early by making sure hunting wasn't taking out the normal wildlife too fast.
Did lose two woodcutters to peach faced lovebird corpses though, which has to be one of the most embarrassing ways to die ever.
No wait, having your overseer forget to make sure the refuse pile wasn't on a terrifying square and being strangled by yak hair might take the cake... least I got that taken care of, and by the time I got a visit from elves I already had the cage trap lined entrance paths walled off and was able to make use of forbidding and unforbidding the doors to get them to path onto terrifying squares and get slaughtered, waited for them to get back up and unforbid the doors to make them charge into the cages, then added a couple of "airlock" cages, one before you reach the door going in, and one about 4 squares away towards the exit so I can try to lure the next group of elves into range of the elf corpses before pulling the levers and letting them loose.
I've got goblins pretty close so I'm expecting fun from them sooner or later, and I had to set a war dog loose on a kobold thief really early on.
I'm not worried about the caverns yet, not until I get the accessible candy dug out and have my military geared up, because I discovered that caverns in a terrifying biome also reanimate... meaning I've got troll arms with titles, reacher heads rolling around chewing on crundles, and the corpse of an eyeless tarantula forgotten beast (which doesn't spit webs, T.T) roaming around making a mess of the place.
Ooh, there is a tower that I'm supposed to be in range of as well, fun fun fun!