Finished a year at Demongate outside the actual thread. It was... eventful.
I had to seal the caverns entirely since a beast with mysterious, actually deadly dust showed up (I don't know what it does - only that it causes all body parts to become yellow on the wounds screen, followed/preceded? by fever). So the cavern layers are now forever sealed to us/sealed until I can build a device to burn the contaminants out and slay the beasts with marksdwarves and bait furniture.
The carverns being sealed though means that an ever greater number of beasts are accumulating in there - especially since I just finished mining out all the adamantine known to be safe on the map. And despite the caverns supposedly being sealed, one got into my main stairwell, where I think it caused a dwarf to burn to death before I could kill it. So there's smoke and miasma all up and down that stairwell now, not to mention a healthy coating of forgotten beast ichor.
Simultaniously, we were attacked by a were-gecko, which managed to infect several dwarves with beast sickness. I had to quarantine them before it spread, which wasn't fun, but remarkably they didn't actually transform for months (I'm just as confused as you are - probably a bug) and starved/bled to death. I was going to try to cage 'em, wait for a good opportunity and lob 'em into the circus. Oh well.
Lack of clothing almost caused a major tantrum spiral all year, which I combated by fixing my predecessor's blatant disregard for morale and actually giving people rooms, smoothing/engraving rooms, and building furniture in rooms. Somehow, I'm the only one of what, 8 players we've had now, that actually does this. Clothing replacements were also constructed, which put a further dint on FPS. FPS approaching critically low levels (reaching 28 fps for a bit) forced me to smash everything I could get my hands on, and butcher faster than I've ever butchered before. I had 8 butchers operating at once to contain the massive amounts of cats and dogs I'd accumulated.
Thinking I was going to die though gave me incentive to fix the emergency bunker (in the dirt layer) one of my predecessors constructed, which was being blocked off by vegetation. Flooring the access tunnels fixed that, but then I noticed that vermin had eaten all the food/drink in there. Thusly I replaced it and pastured a few pet cats in there - they'll be out of danger there, and they'll keep the vermin out of my stockpiles.
In the middle of this, I managed to make peace with the humans (I started a war with them when their diplomat turned out to be a reptile man vampire and hence was purged), who were the only caravan I didn't accidentally partially crush with the airlock bridges (we have an overly complicated everything) and thus were the only caravan I could actually trade with. Which is unfortunate, because the dwarven caravan is a major source of iron for me and I'm trying to reequip the militia. I mentioned that I mined all the adamantine I can safely mine; further mining will require a bucket brigade to obsidianize magma around the adamantine or risking the circus invading. Steel/adamantine equipping is progressing well, and the value creation is baiting hordes of monsters to my caverns and Goblin Santa to my surface at a horrifying/gratifying rate, respectively. The military has reached the point where only goblin weapon masters are a threat during sieges thanks to intensive training regimines (I'm getting quite a few legendaries myself now). If it weren't for an uncapped circus, the ever-looming threat of beast incurisions, a slade fortress with a layer I still can't safely approach which, judging by the other layers, is home to HUNDREDS of zombies I'd probably be bored (ntm this FPS being garbage) and abandon. I'm hungering for a terrifying biome now.