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A massive hoard of undead just attacked my fort. As usual I always set up a functioning military one year later than I should, so I just resigned myself to closing the floodgate. But I realized that there were three necromancers running ahead of the 50+ zombies, so I just let them get captured in the cage traps before closing up. Unfortunately this meant that I had to let two zombies in as well.

I thought I could just throw them in a pit with some troglodytes and watch the chaos, but the game apparently doesn't work like that. It turns out that zombies, unlike ettins, minotaurs, and all other more dangerous creatures, cannot simply be dragged from cage to cage. They attack as soon as they have freedom, and impale your expedition leader because you forgot to disarm the undead. Dang it.

Guess I'm gonna play with three necromancers.

I pulled my jacket over myself. A cold, biting wind chilled me to the bone as a I looked upon the countryside. It was winter. It wasn't usually this cold near on the surface in Flamehorses because of the volcano. Turns out that volcanoes are really, really hot. But the temperature would have to be ignored.
I examined a bush with a large quantity golden berries on its branches. Sun berries were supposedly one of the most delicious fruits known to dwarves. Checking the surroundings to make sure nobody was looking, I popped one into my mouth. It wasn't bad. But it would make a fine wine. I would have loved to gather them myself, but I had more alcohol
to brew and chores to manage. Plus, I couldn't trust myself not to eat more berries.

After entering the fortress again and escaping the horrid sun and fresh air, I set to work. All of the baby grazing animals we had been collecting had fully grown and I decided to have them butchered, for many reasons. For one thing, I couldn't afford to have any livestock turn undead because of a necromancer. Also, we need the meat.

Now, because of my own error, the lava in the volcano is quite a ways away from the meeting hall. A long hallway must be traversed to go from their to the volcano.
It goes up a few levels after that, and then another road goes in a straight line to the volcano, but hopefully we will be able to manage.

So I guess it is time for me to mention a couple of embarrassing ramp fails I have made.
Let's just say that I'm not good at this game at the best of times. But remember that there is another one I'm just not mentioning because it's hard to show a picture of and tell what you are looking at.

Well, the time has come. The first year of Flamehorses has ended. I wasn't quite able to watch this be completed in my time as ruler, but here is a platform made of schist suspended over a volcano.
Be warned that there is no ceiling to this at the moment, so that has to be completed in the next turn. But for now, I must leave. My successor will hopefully do a better job maintaining this place than I did.

Real talk now. I'm sorry if the first couple of months were a bit dry. I tried to make the final month of this year a bit more interesting by writing in a more in universe fashion.

Here you go zazq. Your turn begins now.

The wiki indicates that close combat dwarves want Agility, Spatial Sense, Strength, Toughness and Willpower.  Practicing close combat skills will train all of these, and so anyone can become a soldier with enough training. 

If we have no dwarves with any combat skills, than just pick one.  Therapist can sort dwarves by affinity for a particular skill, so you could pick the highest hammerdwarf affinity cheesemaker or whatever.  Create a squad and put him in first position within the squad.  Make a barracks for the squad and make sure it is set for them to train there.  That should be about it.  Even if he sucks just like all the other recruits, he'll train up evenly with them.  Then we transfer out all but him into a new squad and send them to their doom, and bring in a new batch of cheesemakers.  NOW he totally has the highest combat skills and will lead all the training and get all of the teaching, and mass produce soldiers to die for the god of blood.

This sounds morbid... I love it.

I won't be able to play or post today past now, but I will start trying to train some soldiers tomorrow. Or at the very least build a magma forge.

First, there is no way to run Masterwork without dfhack. Almost all of the functionality of Masterwork relies on dfhack. Second, while Masterwork does add some things, in it's vanilla form it removes even more things. Most people notice at least a modest increase in FPS in Masterwork over vanilla DF.

What operating system do you use?

Windows 10.

*worst case scenario, the siege never comes because nobody is playing this game.

That is indeed the worst case scenario.

Anyway, here's fall:

Last time, we began to hollow out a large chamber for the beds. This autumn, we are going to be building beds.
First off, I may have neglected to mention an important detail. You see these three logs at the entrance?
They are forbidden and there for a reason. In case of emergency, we can unforbid them and then build a wall out of them. This will be important if undead come before we are prepared, and I am 100% certain that they will.
Also, a whole load of animals have given birth. We now have a bunch of poults, puppies and kittens.
Merchants have arrived! I decided to request some steel so that we can more easily get the weapons and armor we need to defend ourselves.
Purchase wise, I bought a bunch of axes, two breastplates and a bronze mace. Maces are good for pulping undead.
New migrants! The only notable ones are a talented weaponsmith and a suturer, who is now the chief medical dwarf. They did bring a water buffalo calf and a bull calf two, so that's nice.
We finally started building the bedrooms! The two chairs are the offices of two innocent dwarves that have to manage the work orders and organize the records.
As well as giving the main meeting area an expansion, I have made the it a temple as well. This will help to improve morale.
Now this is the time in which I would typically connect the fort to the first cavern layer, because putting cage traps there gives you plenty of animals to butcher. But that would be pointless because cage traps are banned. So I am out of ideas. What I am doing for now is building a load of schist blocks for the construction of a platform over the volcano for magma smelters, and start smoothing the bedroom area's floors and walls.
And winter has come. I'll be leaving town tomorrow, but I should be back the day after unless something goes terribly wrong. But I will be able to complete winter before monday and pass it on to zazq.

Yeah, if a goblin is attacking another person, demanding they yield, and drop all their valuables, it's a good bet you should slice their head off.
Or any race for that matter, all races with ethics can be criminals too.

As a general tip, people will react in a similar manner to you beating people up and demanding their stuff. So don't do that.

Granted, the entirety of the human race becomes too peaceful to ever want to hurt anything. Even animals and plants, which puts and end to the food industry. As everyone becomes an extreme vegan overnight and is repulsed by the consumption of plants, they starve to death. The end.

But I'm not too peaceful to wish for a giant ham sandwich as big as a pig.