I decided to start up a fortress centered around growing sliver barb (It can be milled into black dye, but only grows in evil biomes. No caravans will sell it). Mostly because I find there's a morbid appeal to the idea of dwarven migrants enduring hellish working and living conditions in the ass-end of nowhere just to produce a luxury commodity that can't grow anywhere else. I named it Thornweavers, and their symbol is an image of a glumprong tree surrounded by sliver barbs, with a dwarf hanging from the glumprong.
Funny thing though: it's been more than a year, and it seems like this site isn't actually that bad. No zombifying clouds or sickening filth, no walking corpses wandering onto the map, nary a drop of blood falling from the sky. I haven't done much butchering yet, but early signs suggest that dead things stay dead. Hell, it doesn't even rain all that much.
And on top of that, this place has all the resources necessary for producing brass, clear glass, and steel. And that's just scratching the surface. Granted, most of the trees are dead, so I don't think they'll grow back once felled. Fuel may become a problem, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Just got the first artifact of the fortress. I wasn't expecting much when a peasant claimed a carpenter's shop, but the artifact's actually pretty cool, albeit relatively cheap. It's a glumprong wood statue of the dwarf necromancer who became king of our civilization after overthrowing the old monarch in 156. It also has the obligatory image of the founding of Thornweavers, as well as an image of a goblin who (after some digging in legends mode) is actually an ex-priestess and countess-in-exile from our civilization.