That's a hardcore woodburner.

Yeah, he instantly polymorphed into an elite wrestler after that killstreak. But wait...


THEY'RE STILL COMING! TO ARMS, MEN!
...
OMG BLIZZARD MAN! RUN FOR THE HILLS!

Okay, I've found my current project. A "♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ UP" Lever. When pulled, floodgates will close off the entrance to my fortress AND courtyard, and open floodgates in a big water take directly above the courtyard.
Fun!

Well, good thing you have TIME to make such a project. I barely have enough breathing room to carry the wounded back inside between each ice wolf wave.

On the brighter side of news, I've killed the blizzard man. First, the wrestlers ripped both it's arms off, then I called the miner to give the finishing blow. Little did I know that the blizzard man was gonna bite him in the head so hard that some teeth got stuck on his skull. The dwarf then got angry, and cut the beast's head clean off with a strike of his pick. He then proceeded to spill his guts on top of it. THe head is now part of his room's decoration, needless to say. :3

Damn military not doing anything.
A cyclops appeared on the edge of the map, so I told the military to go kill it. Figuring they would take a while I unpaused and let it run amok. For some reason it likes killing puppies, and dogs if they get in the way. After a while of waiting, I wondered where my dwarves were, and when I found them, they're sitting around doing nothing with "cannot follow orders" as a job subtitle. This angers me. In the meantime, Ms. cyclops has killed all but three of my puppies, and all of my dogs, and got mild wounds all over from blundering into stonefall traps.

Kill orders are buggy. Use Move orders near the enemies' position.

Well one of my wrestlers finally figured it out (though I think he just bumbled into it) and kicked it's ass.

I'll keep that in mind for other invaders. I'm making lots of traps though. FEEL THE GLINT OF OUR SILVER!
We don't have any iron...

Quick note for anyone trying to build ANYTHING. EVER.
Dwarves always build First in, Last out. Which means that the FIRST thing that you designate to be made will be constructed LAST. So designate the walls you want done LAST, FIRST. Also important: Dwarves build from the bottom right. They build Up, then when they can't build any further up, they go right a space and keep building.

SO. A 5x5 wall in mid construction will look like this.

X= Built wall
O= Unbuilt wall
D= Dwarf building a wall

OOOXX
OODXX
OOXXX
OOXXX
OOXXX

This is very important to keep in mind when making a one layer thick water tank, otherwise it will be at a minimum frustrating, and at a maximum enraging.

I've never had issues with kill orders, are you sure there was a path out of your fortress available? from the post that ninja'd me, looks like you do

If you've only got silver, make maces and war hammers, it's the best fortress-usable material for it currently.

One OTHER OTHER Thing to keep in mind.
When build a one layer wall above the ground with multiple Dwarves, they can get trapped behind head others walls.
4 at once.
God. Damnit.

why do you want >1 tile thick walls?

Yeah, we're a society of hammerers. Sadly they have no armor other than the clothes they're wearing, as again I have no armorable metals. Zinc, silver, and lead. I really need to find a vein of something iron-containing.

Protip: severed heads are terrible for decorating dining rooms. Now everyone's choking.

trade for instruments and whatever other cheap iron ♥♥♥♥ you can haggle off them and melt them

Well I told the last caravan I wanted magnetite, as I have plenty of smelting capacity (I have 1000 some blocks of lead, silver, and zinc!). I also have lots of fine meals to trade with, I was lucky and got a crazy awesome cook to immigrate and she churns out fine meals of legendary quality with reckless abandon.

Edit: Oh wow. Silver hammerers are where it's at.
So there was a forgotten beast whatever the heck chilling around in an underground lake for about half an hour (realtime, it was maybe a dwarven year), and then it decided to fly down my water pipe for the obsidian generator and surprise buttsecks some of my dwarves. That didn't work out so well for it. Again my kill order failed so I told them to move down next to it, and about three seconds after the first recruit got there it was already dead. It took less time for them to take down elephants than it did this thing.