Been away forever. Started a new fort- finally has iron. No coal, but it's in a jungle, so that's not too much of a problem, though balancing charcoal on one side and tons of furnaces on the other is a pain. Trying to anger the elves to fast-track the training of my military. Equipped them all with steel now, all of it high level. Lots of masterworks. Just one problem: a vampire came in with the latest migrant wave, and killed off some fisherdwarf of no other skills. After half an hour of searching through my fortress for the one who had not recently had a drink, I found the vampire and rapidly incarcerated her. Now I'm going to make a few more vampires out of otherwise useless Urist McFishers and Urist McNobodies.
My plan for finding the vampire? My partially-cave-adapted dwarves had recently run out of all forms of alcohol, and been reduced to trekking to the stream for a drink. This stream had been polluted with vomit: therefore any dwarf would have the "disgusted when forced to drink vomit" thought. Except the Great Marksdwarf I had gotten with tons of novice skills and a few more "former member of" tags than other dwarves, as well as tons of absurdly high social skills. I swear I thought as I checked that one that she might be an issue sometime. Thing was, she was pretty old and also had no children, which was odd as I have 4-6 babies every spring, lol, and this fort has had no single dwarves come in, all of them have spouses and hordes of 2-year-olds in tow. And since I locked her in a room and set her training .... she's not hungry, thirsty, or biting any Legendary Armorsmiths/Weaponsmiths... which is good as I have just one who is soon to be Legendary in both. Just have to get the steel battle axes, shields, and armor sets deposited to get her and her soon-to-be-roommates equipped properly. Can't wait to see how this goes. I think I'll build a second tavern and experiment to see if bartenders really do serve alcohol to vampires. If so, I'll simply add more vampires to that population to suppress their need for alcohol. One eternal bartender and 10 eternal superdwarvenly supersoldiers? Heck yeah! Next migrant wave has been assigned already, lol. Just need to equip these dwarves before consigning them to vampirism. Now ... wooden spikes, or iron spikes? These are important questions ... mwahahaha - also the elves have brought me a single rattlesnake, and also a gray langur who tore a goblin snatcher apart. Monkeys are useful. So I'm trying to steal from the elves, offer them wood etc. to anger them and get me some swordbait.