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I think I'll make this a weekly thing - it's easier to motivate myself to update it if I have a deadline. Updates may also get more substantial as a result.

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Thob woke before dawn when he felt something cold and wet strike his face. In fact, it was striking all over his body, and the patter of it on the grass and leaves around him made a terrific din. He looked up. Water was actually falling from the sky:
He shuddered. This was the kind of thing that could make a dwarf go mad.
   Then he saw, across the stream, a pack of those “hyena” creatures. They didn’t approach him—they just stood there in the falling droplets, as if… waiting for something. It seemed too strange a coincidence that this pack should appear not a day after he killed the big one, Ïngiz. Could Ïngiz have been important, Thob wondered, a leader or patriarch? Could these hyenas have… followed him?

The creatures didn’t seem to pursue him when he left—but perhaps they were just hiding. Thob ventured eastward over the plains. At last he arrived at the mouth of the valley in which Scarredpaddles lay.
   Nearby was one of those abandoned monasteries, and he decided to stop there for a while before moving on. There wasn’t usually much of interest in them, but they seemed good places to rest. But as he entered the ruined temple Thob found something he’d never expected to see:
The temple was absolutely full of books! A veritable storehouse of ancient knowledge! Thob began leafing through some of the more interesting titles.
   Most of the books seemed to be written by two dwarves: Inod Atticbreached and Deduk Pleatedpage. They were curious figures: first, to judge by the dates in their works, they had apparently lived for centuries—
But more disturbing was some of the content—books about raising the dead that, er, “indulged the author’s fancies”:
These, Thob reasoned, were probably just fiction - whoever heard of "raising the dead"?
   Other books were more banal, such as Deduk’s “Genius” trilogy—books about Deduk writing books:
Many books referenced “Steelpoint,” which, Thob gathered, was the name of the monastery. They must have been centers of scholarship in the old world.

Thob finished his reading and set off to the south—he should reach Scarredpaddles by dusk. But he hadn’t left the monastery far behind when a rushing noise made him turn around:
It looked sort of like a hyena, differently colored, and it moved incredibly fast. Thob barely had time to ready himself before the beast was upon him—without time to think he swung his pick…
…and ripped the creature in half. The disgusting spectacle of the two halves of the once-animal flying apart stunned and almost sickened him—but, at the same time, it bolstered his confidence in the power of the pick he wielded. He’d heard some dwarves swear by the axe or sword, but the tool of his trade was all the weapon he needed.

His destination lay before him as the sun began to go down. Scarredpaddles lay beside the old dwarven road, between two ranks of mountains; and, as he approached, Thob saw the valley opening up to the south:
The far-off mountains cradled a large marshland, and at the utter end he thought he made out the dry wastes of a desert. A few ruins stood in the interior and along the rim of the valley. It was the clearest view he’d yet had—everywhere else hills and mountains stood in the way of one’s vision.
   Scarredpaddles was, like almost everywhere else, long abandoned. The hillocks stood empty. Only in one did Thob find any trace of former inhabitation: a lone book lying in the dirt.
Thob wondered how an “unabridged” story contained only one episode and twenty-seven pages—but to judge by Fikod’s “wild ranting” he wasn’t the sanest dwarf in history.
   Unfortunately, the book was all Thob found of interest in Scarredpaddles. He looked around the mounds and bunkers of the village, in the roads and fields, but couldn’t find any of the supposed artifacts. Hardly a wonder: they had been lost three hundred years ago, and surely in that time someone could have found and taken them. There’d be no way to know now where they were. King Urvad would be disappointed, but that wasn’t Thob’s fault. As night drew on Thob called off his search, and went back into one of the hillocks to sleep.

When he awoke he was surrounded by hyenas.
This was no coincidence. He saw it clearly now. They must have followed him, stalked him through the fields until they could strike. He saw it in their shining eyes: they wanted vengeance for their fallen chief, Ïngiz. They wanted Thob’s blood.
   The foremost charged him; he sidestepped and swung, and the beast’s leg crumpled up and it fell. He struck again and shattered it skull. But the rest of the pack was alert—yipping horribly they rushed to the attack. They were too many, Thob thought; they would surround him and drag him down. As they came nearer his mind raced…
   …and, suddenly, everything went… blank.
He saw, heard, smelled everything more clearly, but as if at a great distance, like he wasn’t really there. His body moved, but he didn’t seem to be moving it. He felt nothing, he thought nothing: there was only the pick in his hand, and the enemies to be destroyed.
   He saw one hyena’s head sheared off—then another—a third was pierced to the brain—one had its guts ripped out by the swinging pick—one’s torso was nearly cleft in two—the pick struck and tore flesh and bone—the hyenas quavered, then bolted, dashing away in all directions, but the pick sought them out and brought them low—blood and hyena bits were tossed into the air like some grisly fountain—
   Then it was over, and Thob was back.
Early dawn sunlight filtered through the doorway, and dead hyenas littered the ground. Thob looked in amazement at the destruction he had wreaked. His enemies had fallen before him; they had come to avenge their lord, but had only met his fate.

Hard to tell without details - posting the raws in question would help with diagnosis.

From what you've described, I wonder if it's a raw duplication problem. When you copy raws, you should be sure to change the internal names of everything you copy: so, for instance, don't have two materials named PLANT_EXTRACT. Duplicate raws cause the game to do extremely weird buggy/crashy stuff.

On the other hand, it may be a problem with making changes to save file raws - but I have no experience with that, so I dunno.

Ouch, has it been a week since the last update? Sorry, got sidetracked a bit.

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In the morning, just before dawn, Thob left Mythtin. But he hadn’t gone far from the fort when he found something odd:
An old, half-rotten wooden hatch covered a part of the ground here, almost lost amid the undergrowth. Curious, Thob pulled on the iron handle and lifted the hatch up, revealing a tunnel crudely dug into the earth. A secret entrance to the fort, maybe, or a hidden cache of treasure or—hope against hope—alcohol?
   He climbed down the tunnel. In the muddy cave below were no treasures, but a few rusty bits of armor, some tarnished coins, scraps of ragged clothes—and one glaring scarlet eye shining out of the darkness:
With a screech the awful creature lunged at Thob, running on its backward legs, its long tail dragging the ground. “Another dwarf,” it howled, “after so long! I’d almost forgotten the taste!”
   Thob didn’t stick around to hear more: he scurried like a mole up the earthen bank and out the hatch, letting it slam back down over the hole. Then he was away, running headlong to the south, not stopping until he could barely breathe. He stood behind a tree and listened, but there were no sounds of pursuit.
   He took back what he had thought about “tall tales”—it seemed the surface was a place of supernatural horrors.

On his way south he was more cautious. He followed an ancient dirt road for most of the way, avoiding the wilderness—not that the roads were really less wild, but they felt so, and you knew if you followed one you would wind up somewhere there was a roof over your head. But even the roads were not free of danger:
Just after crossing a narrow bridge, two humanoid creatures, gray-feathered and wiggling their branching antennae, shambled out of the brush along the path. They made for Thob, but he was wary; quickly he dashed back across the bridge and lost sight of the things amid the trees. They, too, soon gave up searching for him, and he was able to sneak off, further downstream, and cross.

Not far off the path was, according to the Eyes he’d spoken to, the lair of the supposed “hyena,” the one they called Ïngiz. Thob had learned not to discount these stories of monsters, but the hyena piqued his curiosity: he wanted to know if it had even half the weird features they attributed to it. Soon he found the den—ominously named “the Hole of Catching”—and, sneaking as best he could in his steel armor, crept down the rocky slope.
   The den wasn’t large, and at the other end Thob saw the creature:
He wouldn’t have said it looked like a mole rat, with or without hair, but it was close enough, he guessed. It was nearly as big as he was. He crept closer. The hyena pricked up its ears, sniffed—and suddenly leapt for him!
   Instinctively Thob threw out the iron pick, raising his buckler at the same time to ward off the beast’s jaws. This proved unnecessary, because his first strike with the pick tore into its underbelly and spattered hyena guts all over the floor. The thing collapsed in a heap; in another moment, Thob brought the pick down into its chest, bursting the heart.
   So much for the dreaded hyena, he thought. It was just a wild animal, no different from dralthas or cave crocodiles.

With the rest of the day, Thob made his way east across the valley. He was nearing his destination, Scarredpaddles. When night came down he made camp by a little stream.

If the designation is blue, that means it's "Marker Only" - you've planned a designation but haven't given the order to actually dig it. Use 'd' > 'M' and select the area to change Marker designation to Standard designation (the brown "actually-dig-this" mode).

It is possible, but unlikely, for civs not to have copper. Copper ores seem to be more prevalent than iron ores, in my experience, so in normal-scarcity worlds civs will almost always have copper, even if they lack iron; but it's not guaranteed.

Children need more to do in general, so they aren't just booze-parasites for the first twelve years. A simple suggestion would be to let them do most of the non-work "idle" tasks adults can do: reading, socializing (singing/dancing/storytelling), praying (they might do that already, not sure), etc. Children also help with harvests, so it's not impossible they could do some other light work. That would give them something to do other than "play."

People have suggested schools and/or apprenticeships before, which seem like good ideas to me. Various sports could also be used to train physical attributes or some military skills.

(I actually think there could be more granularity in the "child" stage, something like: pre-school age (1-6) for just play/games; training age (6-12) which would include schooling or apprenticeship, to gain skill before growing up; then perhaps "adolescence" for a few years, during which they'd be able to work normally but couldn't do some adult stuff, like get married, hold positions, or join the military (though they could do military training). All of which would depend on creature and culture, of course. Just my thoughts.)

I must try adventure mode some day, though the ASCII would kill me.

You have to make your own stories with it, although that goes for all of DF. But if you've got a decent imagination (and a high tolerance for buggy behavior) you can have some really memorable adventures.

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On the Road Again

The next morning Thob set out on his journey. To get around the mountains he would first have to return to Scarredpaddles, across the desert. It was a trek, but a familiar one; and when night began to fall he was safely at the old fortress. He took another look around the place, to see if he could turn up anything else—last time he had only been looking for booze, and stumbled upon the swords. Sure enough, searching the main hall he found a magnificent mug, clearly an artifact of value:

In the morning Thob crossed over the mountains to the east, and after several hours found himself facing another desert. The rough dirt track that led through the peaks ended at another dwarven fortress, while in the distance he could see another strange tower.
The fortress, as the ancient roadsigns told him, was called Postrelieved, and it was laid out much like Dawngloves or Stoneclasped. There was a small chapel in the upper cavern, dedicated to a certain “Sizet the Sugary Dessert”—not a deity Thob was familiar with, but he sounded enticing nonetheless.
There was, unfortunately, no sweet cinnamon in the church, but there were some books. Thob picked up a bit of mathematics before moving on.
The lower floors of the fortress were in serious disrepair: stairs that led nowhere, piles of junk left in the hallways and (somehow) stuck into the walls… but among the rubble Thob found a shiny pair of steel boots to replace his iron ones.

He considered where to go next:
Brightplums was only a short ways to the east: although the king had warned him about the place, his curiosity was piqued, and anyways this “Chieftess Onget” was supposed to have many treasures in her keep. Scarredpaddles was much further to the south. Still, Thob thought it prudent to go after the relics there, then perhaps pass by Brightplums on his way back, just to scope it out.
He decided to head south overland to a nearby fortress; then by tunnels to another on the other side of the mountains, and from there make his way south to Scarredpaddles. He wanted to go from fortress to fortress to check on their beer supplies—if they had any. There was none in Postrelieved.

It took him longer to reach the first fort, called Basementfree, than he had thought. The country was divided into little valleys with impassable mountain walls between them, which he had to go around—journeys sometimes of several miles. Basementfree was at the end of one such valley, situated in a desert of black sand.
There was another chapel here: the “Chapel of Radiance,” built by the Light Sect, as he read on the signs. Engravings on the walls depicted ancient dwarves fighting many battles. Losing many battles, actually:
Thob noted grimly that most of these conquests were the work of the Plates of Scouring—the old enemy of the Sandaled Key, as King Urvad claimed, of which Onget of Brightplums was chieftess. But these battles took place six or seven centuries ago! Had they really been fighting the Plates for so long? And if the Plates had been so unstoppable then, how had they been finally driven back, as they evidently had?

Thob slept at the fortress; when day came he descended the long spiral stair to the caverns, and set off through the tunnels beneath the mountains. It was refreshing to be back in the close, damp, faintly rot-scented air of the caverns, in the darkness under a roof of good, solid stone. The fungi and great mushroom trees, variously colored, seemed to greet him like old friends.
He traveled south through the mazy tunnels for many hours, until he stumbled at last upon the most homely of sights: a field of stubby plump helmets stretching before him and vanishing into the gloom.
Nearby was the entrance to a deep hall, a place just liked Lawmined. It made Thob feel positively nostalgic.
That is, until he took a closer look around.
Hovering in the air over the road was one of those eyeless creatures, like he had seen on the surface. This one, however, wore clothes of dwarven fashion. Was it civilized, then? He knew the things could talk: warily, Thob hailed the creature.
   “Hello, there. My name’s Thob.”
   “Greetings,” replied the thing civilly. “I’m Zaneg the glassmaker.”
   There was a pause. “I’m a dwarf,” ventured Thob.
   “Yes, I know,” said Zaneg slowly, as though Thob had said something obvious.
   Another pause. “Ah,” said Thob, “could I ask, maybe… what are you?”
   “The dwarves call us ‘Èzum’s Eyes’,” it said. It chuckled. “I guess Èzum had a sense of humor.”
   “Dwarves? There are dwarves around here?”
   “Used to be. Mistress Vabôk and some others went off to Mythtin a few weeks ago—an old fort east of here they wanted to rebuild. Personally it’s not a journey I’d want to make. There’s talk of dangerous folk about, brigands and the like.”
   “Brigands? In the caverns?”
   “Yes,” said Zaneg. “Hiding out in some mountain hall up north—”
   “—by the way,” it asked, “where did you come from?”
   “I, uh, should be going,” said Thob hastily.