While I was carving out my elaborate bridge-and-pressure plate drowning chamber I managed to breach the ceiling of my occupation layer. Water flowed in, threatening to drown everything and everyone.
Fortunately, I had an intervening stairwell down to the caverns beneath, and a channeled hole into the nether deeps which I was using as a waste facility. The water flowed down into the abyss. Unfortunately, this meant that my drowning chamber was rather sub-par - something had to be done. So I built constraining walls on top of the hole and the last series of tiles of my stairwell, blocking the incoming deluge and allowing the drowning chamber to fill successfully. The only major loss in terms of territory was the magnificent tomb I had built for my first fatality (I always build a grand tomb for the first dwarf to die.) It is now thoroughly submerged. In the process of blocking up the holes, another brave dorf had also laid down his life, having slipped on the slick edge of the hole he was trying to damn up and falling about 10 z-levels into the depths. The dwarf have been unable to recover his body thus far, as they are unprepared to brave the wonders and dangers of the dark below just yet.
Just as I had declared victory over this difficult situation, a message arrived from the perimeter: Urist McHunter has been struck down. Looking at the combat logs it became clear that one of the local alligators had nommed poor Urist by the head and yanked it clean off. I was vaguely amused by Urist's body, complete with its smiling, bloody ascii face over here, and a little red z over there - sure enough, Urist's head. In between was a line of ascii gore in what must have been a horrifying scene.
*Chortle.*