9 of my super elite melee squad drowned after charging a 1-tile bridge over a canyon to close against the goblin archers on the other side.
The tenth was pulled out alive by a medical dorf and is in hospital, but he was the Competent recruit.
Seen this happen often enough that I always put walls beside my bridges. Now if only I could manage to remember that bridges don't support walls, and put the walls in one at a time from the edges, I'd get fewer cave in related deaths...
It does present an excellent opportunity to build what is essentially a buffed stone fall trap though.
The Plague of Serpents is finally ended. I quickly discovered that my soldiers had no interest in attacking the snakes before they had struck themselves, so rather than putting out wide patrols designed to put them into harm's way I opted to just burn them out. Bonfires were lit just after the Fall harvest, and the entirety of the lightly forested plain north of the city wall was engulfed in flames. By chance, the death of the snakes currently on the map marked the end of the plague, and a herd of buffalo are grazing happily on the grassland left behind after the burn.
I checked my list of deities too, and found that the most popularly worshiped one was Datan, the god of death and fortresses. Clearly my aboveground human style town angered Datan, and he sent the snakes to punish us for abandoning our traditional way of life. I'm not willing to abandon the aboveground town, so to win back the favor of the gods I've started construction of a megaproject. Some village layabouts, picks and chisels in hand, are heading down underground to build a proper fortress - with massive multi z-level halls, expensive art and furniture, tasteful engravings, and room for hundreds of dwarves. Nobody will live down there, instead it will be a city for the dead. My own dwarves, visitors, caravan guards, even invaders (if any actually show up) will be interred in the city's prisons and military quarters. This has the added benefit of giving all my craftsmen something to do, some of them are starting to get distracted by being unable to learn and practice their trades, as well as giving us a source of stone to build proper walls and streets rather than dirt roads and a wooden palisade.
I also noticed a lot of my dwarves were distracted due to being unable to practice a martial art, so I've instituted a part-time militia service. Everyone is getting put into a squad and doing a two-month rotation, half with crossbows and half with spears. The town's only smith is busy cranking out chainmail shirts, caps, spears, and ammunition, while the carpenter puts together shields and the woodcutter tries his hand at bowyery. Hopefully everyone's happy with the new arrangement.