Just finished my extensive surface-castle entrance to my fort proper, replete with entry courtyard of death, stables and protected pasture, courtyard proper, and a gatehouse all leading down into a labyrinthean defensive tunnel, where my trade depot, militia barracks, and main stairwell lie. The coup-de-grace on the castle was filling the large moat with magma tapped straight from the precipitious volcanic peak that makes up the back wall of my castle. I even had to reroute the river in order to make room for the moat, and now viscous molten rock flows side-by-side with a deep pool against the castle fundaments, in which the salmon can be seen spawning, seperated only by a thin wall of stone laid down in the river bed in the heart of winter.
I was congratulating my dwarves on a job well done, when the elven caravan finished up their trade business (man are those guys poor) and went on their merry way.
I watched in bemusement as one of the merchants seemed to get lost in my expansive courtyard. Perchance he was just appreciating the magnificent architecture? The spritual way in which dwarven stone and industry were combined with nature, preserving several ponds with large, brooding trees on their banks, vigilant over the replete meadows left preserved within my walls? Surely even an elf could find satisfaction in that kind of construction.
But no. He went back into the gatehouse... and up the steps to the first flight.. and out onto a seperation wall that cuts through the courtyards like a knife, sectioning off the kill-zone entry way from the idealic pastures. There the elf tip-toed merrily with his horse and cart, along the top of that dizzying wall, all the way down its length, to the point were it adjoined with the outer wall... And here he tripped merrily up onto the mountainside, and made his way home.
A single, elven footstep, from the wilderness, directly into the heart of my home. I realized in horror that the staircase he used to gain purchase on that wall was within the gatehouse. Behind the first three of only four drawbridges seperating Urist McPotteryismylife from the goblin hordes. The entire mountainside needed to be built up, in my haste to accomplish a beautiful and magnificent work of art, I had neglected the very seat of my home into which it was built. It would take some time, and blocks! And I had just depleted my stockpiles finishing the construction! Time was of the essence! I hurriedly checked my last censor report: 75 dwarves. And with that, an announcement.
"Some immigrants have arrived."