Combatshield endures, in a sense.
The second year started off well. Three puppies were born, plans were made for a larger fortress deeper underground (the current hodgepodge of rooms, stockpiles and farms just isn't cutting it anymore) and several new gem clusters were unearthed.
Then came the spring migrant wave.
Guess where it entered the map? That's right, next to the undead mule. Turns out that even with its muscles slowly rotting away, mules are fast. The migrant wave consisted of ten dwarves, a boar piglet and a horse foal, but of those only five dwarves reached my fortress entrance.
It didn't end there, though. The mule (who by then had a name and title) got in with them and killed another dwarf and a dog before finally succumbing to a hammer strike from our militia commander.
That still wasn't the end of the disaster, by the way. That dwarf the mule killed in my fortress? He got back up and severely injured a war dog before the commander killed it too.
The surface, too, saw some reanimations. The horse and one of the dwarves apparently died from suffocation after their spines were crushed, which allowed them to rise as undead.
To properly memorialize the dead, a temple-cemetery to the goddess of death, rebirth, persuasion, poetry and inspiration (the only deity of my civilization with more than one sphere) has been constructed. The mule got a slab too: it was the greatest source of death this fortress has ever seen, after all, with ten kills in the four months of its unlife. Even the notorious camels and the hair-smashing miner didn't get more than three kills.
In the end, my fortress population grew by four dwarves, and while reduced in number my dog breeding stock is in no risk of dying out. Mortality rates for dwarves have increased from 40% to 48%, those for dogs from 0% to 20%, and those for livestock remain perfectly stable at 100%.
Don't bring livestock to