Nutsmountain is rolling along well. Got about 30 goblins outside, 8 more in cages; they seem too scared to come farther along the main hallway. I can't blame them; that's ten total goblins in cages.
In other news, the magma smeltery room is up and running, I just need to issue the orders to A. smelt millions of iron and B. smelt millions of pig iron. C., smelt steel, waits awhile. But there's a good reserve of steel already for the mail shirts I need to produce. And I'm working for high-quality armor only. Once this armorsmith levels a little more, it ought to result in a good proportion of Exceptional and maybe even some Masterwork pieces, which will save some dwarves from bad injuries from the lucky goblin Lashers.... xD.
Anyways, it only took me 6 savescums to do it: three to fix one !!manager!! issue that I failed to resolve three times in a row, and the other three to not melt much of the lower reaches of my fortress. Also the burning dwarves weren't helpful, I had a bad arrangement that resulted in !!dwarves!! running up a staircase that I had no means to lock down and deny to them... oops.
But it's okay, because the manual pump section (9 total, snaking around to avoid caverns, I didn't think it was worth fiddling with machinery) is below the rest of the fort, which would have meant, had I been inclined to do so, the militia could have been left to their own devices to burn, and the rest of the fort could have survived. Except for the FPS, doomed to magma flowing through large amounts of open space and staircases.
Waiting for the goblins to make up their minds out there - will they advance, or will they stay back? I'm not sending an unarmored militia after them; they're not THAT skilled, not yet, though if I quick-rig the Heroes squad I'm gonna make to train Greats up to Legendary by continuous work, I could probably end the fighting with a minimum of casualties: issue the order, unpause, wait a second, issue orders to the other squads. That will result in a wall of flashing weapons and sturdy shields, backed up by slower and less skillful dwarves, but who will face far less opposition from wounded and surrounded opponents.
Militias are fun to watch. Last siege, they hit the 10 goblins, and suddenly the place was full of flying body pieces and blood spatters.
None from the dwarves, all from the goblins.