I embarked in a nice little hilly area, with a good amount of trees and fruits to support my fort.
Things were going swimmingly for the first few migrant waves, when suddenly I notice 'Urist McMason has been interrupted by Giant Gray Langur'
Confused, and not knowing what a Langur was at the time (
http://www.discoverlife.org/IM/I_TS/0004/320/Trachypithecus_geei,_golden_langur,I_TS478.jpg), I looked over at what was now the deceased corpse of my mason, laying on top of the body of an already slaughtered child of mine. I drafted my woodcutter and my hunter who begin to beat them back, but in the chaos a Langur ripped the arms off of the other dwarven child in the fort then tackled him to death. My expedition commander dealt with that one to a pickaxe to the face, but received a crippled leg in the process. My hunter drove most of the rest off, after pumping 30-ish crossbow bolts into a now named Giant Langur, who ended up falling in and out of consciousness outside my fort for a few months before someone dispatched it.
This, and rampant kobold thievery made me realize that I needed weapons and armor, and fast. My current fighters were all armed with copper daggers taken from dead kobolds (FUN FACT: all the kobolds died via their skulls being punched through by my militia commander), so I set to attempting to make charcoal, not having found any coal yet. I stacked up a queue of charcoal, and set myself to other matters.
A dwarf month or so later, I come back to add more to the queue, which somehow was still full. Puzzled, I changed several labor jobs to include furnace operating, thinking that was the problem.
Apparently not, as it was still not being worked. I built another one, making sure there was nothing blocking it and I had a full wood stockpile. 3 dwarf months later, neither furnace has been touched since they were built. So yeah, bit of a frustration facepalm on my part.