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[Plautus]

Newb here (first post).  I'm playing my first game, and for some reason I had a caravan just stick around for a long time (i.e., another caravan came and went while they were there).  My Trade Depot stayed active, but using (q) says there is no one to trade with there.  There's a bunch of red stuff I can't use in my Stocks menu (some of which I'm pretty sure belongs to the phantom caravan), and looking with (k) reveals no elves, humans, or outside dwarves in the depot, but a few of my dwarves are just hanging out, including the guy who didn't get his mood components in time and went insane.  He didn't attack anyone, he's just hanging out in the Depot with miscellaneous dwarves (including babies).

Anyone know what's going on?  Mostly I'd just like to keep accurate track of my stocks.

[Jenniretta]

From the wiki
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Trade_depot

Dumping items belonging to the merchants will result in the depot thinking merchants are gone but the merchants hanging around

So that's probably your issue. I don't know of a proper fix, but you could try deconstructing the depot (which should make your dwarves steal everything) and building a new one. This will piss off the civilization that sent the caravan though, and will probably cause a spike in wealth which will bring goblins and kobolds around.

[Plautus]

That's probably it (the dumping thing).  I've tried to make sure I only dump stone, but I don't really know what I'm doing yet.

It's funny; what made this a "problem" in the first place is trying to outfit my military, and not knowing what weapons/armo/armor I actually have.

Was considering getting rid of the depot, but wanted to play fair if possible.  Worst case now is I get a jump start on Fun, as it's been pretty calm: several years in, population 90+, and we've never even been at war with the goblins.  I hadn't bothered to designate some non-archer military or build a hospital, so recent small goblin raids have been wrecking my business (recently did my first burials, which were pretty traumatic).  An arms race following an international incident sounds like it could be fun, hopefully once my stocks are accurate I'll be able to figure out the military stuff a little better.

EDIT: Also, thank you!

[Plautus]

For the record, it was something much simpler: I had put traps in the entry corridor, assuming that the caravans could ignore them.  Before I could disarm them, a revenge wave of humans came, followed quickly by goblins.  They took about 30 of my 90, but then of course the tantrum spiral was in full swing, and the main miasma cloud in the entryway never disappeared (some new ones appeared though!).  When the big wave of goblins with exotic war animals came, it was a slaughter.

So--fun achieved!