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[Shelegelah]

Hello all, just embarked on a freshwater lake for the first time. I've never had a standing body of water this big before, and am unfortunately not very architecturally creative. I'd like to create an underwater complex... I don't know why.

How could I go about this?

Also, any other neato ideas would be appreciated.

[LordBistian]

Dig a shaft from below the lake upward, link to hell or carve a fortification on the mapborder, drain the fricken lake, refill with river.
Or pumps.
Pumps that go down to the Magmasea.
Filling a whole lake with magma, building a castle on top, getting your nobles into said castle, then dropping the castle into the lake sure sounds dwarfy.

[darkflagrance]

Simple goals are to recreate Atlantis or Rapture from Bioshock.

There are ways of parting the waters and building the city underneath, then letting the waters reclaim what was formerly theirs. If your map freezes over, it is easy to dig into the ice. You can also drop magma into the lake, which will make obsidian walls that stack on top of each other, or construct layered rings of pumps that keep the water out of your construction area. I have done none of these, so I don't know how they work.

Another idea would be to dig out a typical dwarven city under the lake, in such a way that when you pierce the lake from the bottom, many corridors of the city will flood so that they are filled with channels of water like an underground dwarven Venice, with a  layer of water separating the top of the city from the sky.

If your lake touches the edge of the map and is thus infinite, all of these get easier.

[FrisianDude]

To me it sounds more fun to build a city over the lake with many an amusing pitfall for any kobold or goblin to enjoy themselves with.

And a way of boiling the water would be awesome. 

[Shelegelah]

All of these are fantastic ideas. The lake is large enough that it encompasses more than eight embark zones side-by-side (It's basically a great lake), so it is most assuredly infinite. I think I'm going to go with the magma idea, that sounds like it could be great FUN. Like any self-respecting dwarf fortress player, I greatly enjoy messing with the red stuff. The only thing I'm confused about is the manner in which magma turns into obsidian on contact with water. Does it drop to the lowest z-level of the lake and THEN harden? Does it just create a 'shell' over the top of the water? Interesting questions.

[Keldane]

Does it drop to the lowest z-level of the lake and THEN harden? Does it just create a 'shell' over the top of the water? Interesting questions.

There's a simple answer to this: Is the site where the obsidian is forming directly in contact with a wall/floor/other object that would provide support to a construction? In my experience, garnered by dumping water into a volcano, any unsupported obsidian will collapse (generating the pause and center effect of a typical collapse), whereas any obsidian adjacent to a support will stay put. I have also had it happen that obsidian formed and spread outwards faster than it could collapse, thus reaching a point where it was supported despite the tile where the water first landed on the magma not being adjacent to any sort of support.