Umomngalak has been founded! A 16x2 embark with an insanely steep mountain, a brook that carves off a corner of it, three total biomes, no aquifers to be found, and layers upon layers of glorious marble. I've never seen so much flux... now if only I could find some Iron.
Things are going well here -- we haven't even seen our second spring, but food and booze production is on-line and we're mining out housing for the masses. We even have a legendary miner and (unrelated to that) our first artifact -- a perfect gem! normally, I'd be upset, but once I figure out how to move that exact gem somewhere, I have plans for it, and up to six others like it. Sadly, I don't think you can dump artifacts, or it would be a piece of cake.
The long walk between critical sections of the fortress IS an issue, but since housing is being built off the middle of the otherwise problematic road, these walks will start to get a lot less annoying In fact, once the stockpiles over by the farms are cleared of stone, the masses should no longer need to commute quite so often. Bed production could stand to be sped up -- lazy carpenters would rather dump stone rather than make bed/r.
Unfortunately, work on the artificial lake(s), the Great Chasm, the Grand Hall, the Tower, and the Throneroom haven't even remotely begun, nor have the mines breached our cavern, much less Magma for a metal industry, and most of the z-levels on which we mean to build the fortress proper have nothing but a stairwell and landing. Similarly, no progress has been made towards the west, leaving us with our eastern gate as the only entrance. On the plus side, that means we don't have to deal with two fronts if an early ambush comes.
Meanwhile, Ironbear has tickets to the Circus... it's time to see some clowns.