It took 2 years of digging, but the miners finally finished digging out a roughly 80 Z level tall magma piston. The whole fortress [and the game] stopped in stunned silence when the lever was pulled, and a 21x21x4.5 pool of magma shot up to a more usable height. After the dust and magma mist settled, dirty jokes about the giant stone shaft could be heard right up until the goblins decided to siege a short time later (To be clear: the dirty jokes didn't stop, you just couldn't hear them anymore over the sounds made by 100-ish goblins running head first into the meat grinder that is our 2 squads of iron-clad swordmasters and their accompanying squad of proficient macedwarves)
While body cleanup is going on, the magma smelters and forges have been finished and we can finally get past the fuel bottleneck keeping our metalsmiths frustrated for these last 5 years.
Oh, also we've somehow become the mountainhome. Not sure why, exactly, in spring of 258 we were just a county. By winter the queen arrived. We never even had a dutchess!
Her arrival did reveal something interesting though.. This fortress has been plagued by vampires one was chained beneath the giant stone piston when we pulled the lever, as punishment for eating a child. Another was sentenced to swim. In the magma sea for a similar infraction, and a 3rd was simply exiled (he hadn't done anything wrong, so, we just let him go unharmed.)
As it turns out, though, even our outpost liasion was one of the undead!
We decided to lock him alone in his room to make sure, and, sure enough he went 3 straight seasons with no food or water whatsoever! He seems to have had an accident while he was trapped in there though, as, his body was found lifeless in his bed when the door was finally opened... We still have no idea how he died, but, no matter, at least he won't eat anyone.