First year is complete:
I began with average dwarves and equipment: miner, carpenter/woodcutter, mason, smith and all sorts of useful equipment.
The first thing I notice in the area:
OH GOD BADGERPEOPLE!
Luckily, they steered clear of my dwarves.
I began with digging down, and making some housing for my dwarves. (will add pic later)
Giant badgers made it onto the map, stayed away.
I also made sure to get all the useful nobles set up:
Around these times I noticed I had no means of getting more food/drinks, so I set up some farms and a still. The still was left alone for about 3/4 of the year, until I realized I only had 3 drinks left.
While mining a dining hall, I struck hematite. I got my metal industry up quickly.
Summer arrived slightly before the first group of immigrants, mainly useless ones, but one good miner:
While mining down to find magma, I also found layer after layer of marble.
Autumn arrived soon, and amongst the layers of stone I was digging through, I found gems and galena inside some gneiss. I had soon made a silver warhammer.
Soon, I also struck a cavern. As it turns out, it was huge, 66 z-levels deep, beginning from 15 z-levels below ground and ending 81 z-levels below ground. I sealed it off, for now.
After digging down to z-level 10, I was afraid to dig deeper, even though I could have dug to level -23.
A caravan arrived soon, no trading was done.
During wintertime, things began to happen. I got my first steel-clad soldier, wielding the silver warhammer. I also had an iron-clad wrestler.
The hammerman was trained in a danger room.
They were needed relatively soon, as on the 16th of Obsidian, Dark Stranglers assaulted my fort! I didn't get their exact count, but there were between 10 and 20 of them. After killing four of them, they began to flee. Two were struck down before they made it out. Neither of my soldiers were hurt, and both got three kills.
(Six bodies, two soldiers at the top)
So that was the first year. Will post the second one later.