Okay, so I was doing this awesome fort with an awesomely long name. Ushilas Katthir Sirab, "Icecaves the Nourishment of Warmth".
So I had this neat little base here, and then I had a water problem.
See, it's pretty cold down here. And the river is only flowing (and some pools are only liquid) in mid-summer. And when my brewers stopped brewing, I started digging for an aquifier layer.
I didn't find it.
I did find a cavern. With no water. And bad stuff. Then, after I had brewers working again, another one which did have water (not one, but TWO underground seas).
Trouble was, these were both separate from my actual base.
Fast forward to the present.
An ambush of six goblins arrive.
I send some people at them.
They get murdered.
I send EVERYONE at them.
They get murdered. Separately.
Only three survive because they didn't heed the order. One was busy fighting (or endlessly running away from) cave swallows, the other two were doing...something or other down in the second cavern.
I'm now working with these caverns and three dwarves: two miners and a fisher (all of them female, so no kids to increase our population). The gobbos will almost certainly murder them if they come out of the doors.
I'd like to repopulate my base with any migrants I get. Trouble is, I never got underground farms working there, due to people not digging and the lack of water. There's no food source inside the door. Now, if I get any, ANY safe tunnel that links my caverns to my base, it would be a godsend.
Fortunately, the second cavern is a good source of food. There are trees, plants, and some farms, but not many fish from what I gather. I was also able to set up a couple of beds. If I can ever get a trade depot (unlikely), there's a ton of native gold in the second cavern, and native silver in the first. The first cavern is unsafe, though: the cave swallow people are not particularly friendly. The only one who is apparently became so due to killing a dwarf.
Yeah, it didn't make sense to me either.
WHAT I DO?