Upon arrival at new outpost named "Workquest" the first seven dwarves met with hot savannah, with brook in south and a little hill in the north-east corner of embark. First industry to start was farming, aided by gathering plants (once or twice to give crops and booze more variety). In few first years our food stockpiles were overflowing, dwarves working on perpetual farming orders with brewing, milling, cooking, plant processing and even beekeeping. Then dwarves got their hands on seeds of cotton, which is now the mainly farmed plant yielding high crop, resulting in huge amounts of thread, cloth and a few legendary clothesmakers. When basics were set up, rich hematite and lignite veins were mined out which made metalsmithing industry kickstart with good supply of material and fuel in next few years. Two fey moods resulted in an amulet with image of dwarf on it, and a reindeer leather dress. Militia was set up from dwarves most proficient in combat - in low number but with high skills and iron armory & weaponry. Due to civ dying the queen was elected from within Workquest's dwarves, so next step was making a royal suite.
Then a medium sized goblin siege attacked the settlement, while losses were big, my low number militia managed to break their siege. After cleaning up the battlefield I ordered a few iron menacing spikes to be forged and then goblin bodies impaled on them atop the hill which holds entrance to fortress. The bodies hanged until they become partial skeletons - it was a moment when I ordered the monument of our victory to be disassembled and spikes used in preparing fortress for another siege, bodies left to rot completely in an outside stockpile.
Over a dozen of years later "Workquest" still holds strong. Still there were some petty annoyance as the same kobold thief showed for years, escaping our militia. This time however they managed to get him just in time. One annoyance less. As stocks of raw lignite and hematite became lower, I ordered more to be dug out then started dig down to caverns. Exploratory mining shown that the fortress bears also rich veins of tetrahedrite, native gold and galena. A huge multi z-level candy vein was also discovered many z-levels above warm stone. There is still a lot of candy to mine out, but our stocks already show almost 700 Urists of raw resource. The military have been strenghtened, additionally two mercenaries joined our military forces. Soon they'll receive candy armor and weaponry, which combined with their skills should give us victory in another siege.