I read through the first 7 pages, but didn't feel like trying for all 31 tonight, so please excuse a quick question.
Has anyone stepped forward to do an atmospheric fortress?
I would love to take a stab at something with huge sweeping halls spanning multiple Z levels, tiny quarters for hundreds of dwarfs with the entire place made of smoothed stone.
If i can grab a place with a chasm i can then dump EVERYTHING [including stone] except for weapons, armour and bones, Meaning the place will look like a battlefield [ala mines of moria] rather than an exploded Kmart [clothes, thread and furniture and leather everywhere]
While this doesn't involve the doomsday devices, demon infestations and trapped mazes that most everyone else is working on, i think it would be good to have a few forts that aren't infused with evil [though an Event Horizon fort would be awesome].
If it is built near a chasm and has enough huge spacious areas a few giant spiders should move in, and i think the lack of mechanical death traps will cause more paranoia than relief.
[also, again apologising if this has been said, a great way for everyone to speed progress on their projects is use something like DTIL in addition to RAW modding. Embark with 30 dwarfs all with picks, armouring and weaponsmithing set to legendary. put them at speed one with all the 'no sleep' and 'no food' tags and you should have everything done in a season, and all of your artifacts should be weapons and armour]