Speaking of intelligent undead, I just got hit by a full-scale undead siege. My minecart trap only managed to take out one of them before it derailed. I toggled some drawbridges to keep the rest out so I could reset the cart, but there was one intelligent one left in the area I needed to access. So I decided to unlock the doors and let it blunder into the cage traps at the end of the trap hall.
This was a mistake.
Somehow, it just ignored the cage trap. I double checked, the trap was loaded. But it just waltzed right past it. So I figured, alright it's just one revenant. I've got three squads. What they lack in skill, they can make up for in numbers.
They could not.
It was a massacre. Damned thing was crushing dwarves left and right with just a copper mace, all the while launching icicles at the errant stray cat or chicken. The dwarves couldn't lay a finger on it.
Now, this fortress was never in any danger of crumbling per se; I've got a were-tortoise Cask-of-Amontillado'd down in the living quarters. But so help me, if that thing had gotten into my unicorn ranch... I don't know what I'd do. Luckily (insofar as anything in this situation can be considered 'lucky'), the cage traps in the entrance to the unicorn ranch did work. So the immediate threat has passed.
But now the number of dead to be buried outnumber the living left to bury them by 2:1. The ghost of a child who went berserk when the siege interrupted her artifact has already decapitated a dwarf. I just hope the dwarves can retain their sanity long enough to bury them.
So, yeah. Needless to say, this is going to put the minecart canyon jump project on hold for a bit.