(So after fighting with the aquifer for way too long, I resorted to a bit of DFHack liquid magma to get a caisson wall up that could be pumped out.)

21st Granite - Minkot Ikthagmorul has been injured in a deconstruction accident.  The right hand and wrist were severely damaged.  A hospital was quickly tossed together and he was carted there on a stretcher.

12th Slate - 'Doc' Geshudbetan finally stopped partying in the dining room and attended to Minkot's wounds.

27th Slate - Migrants have arrived.  The miners are busy digging past the rock salt layer and into the gabbro layer.  The doctor and nurse are looking for thread so that Minkot's hand can be sewn up properly, but there is none to be had.

11th Felsite - Started making gabbro blocks and swapping out some wooden ramps and walls for gabbro block walls instead.

1st Hematite - Start of summer.  Second minor injury due to fighting off a buzzard.  The hunters still refuse to pick up ammo and hunt.

14th Malachite - More migrants arrived.  The initial storehouses and trade depot location is partially completed underground.  The main stairs to the magma levels is being dug.  Making plans for a large underground quarry as well as a 5-wide ramp to take the trade caravan wagons even deeper underground.

The focus at the moment is getting those initial tunnels dug and figuring out what stone will work best for the above ground fortifications (to replace all of the wooden logs).  According to DFHack's prospect command, I have the most of either granite or diorite.  I will have to see which turns up in larger quantities first.

17th Limestone - Dwarven caravan arrives.  We traded away about 40k of goods in exchange for 25k of goods.  The main things I was looking for was 2 more mining picks, plus some metal bars, cloth, ropes and whatever else I could buy.  Two new dwarves have been drafted as miners.

21st Timber - Tentative plans for noble's quarters at Z+17, which is 2-3 levels above the very top of the caverns layer.  Surface is Z+100, lower diorite layer seems to stretch from Z+17 to Z+49, then picks up again at Z+72 up through Z+76.  So that means putting the top of the residences at Z+49 and going downward will give me a lot of diorite to use for surface construction.

Not sure if I'll try to build a vampire-proof fort or not.  With 32 layers of Diorite to play with and plenty of sand for glass, creating rooms with windows that can see rooms on the other side of a large chamber will work very well.

With no "historical" migrants - all of the migrants are being magick'd out of thin-air for this fort - I'm not sure that it is possible to get vampire migrants.  So it may be a non-issue in this fort.

13th Obsidian - Start of the residential gallery style apartments.

The way this works is that there are 12 rooms per level.  The area between the rooms will be channeled (not yet designated) so that big area between the 12 rooms will be open space.  In the 3 tiles next to the open space, glass windows will be installed so residents can look out across the open space to the residences on the opposite side.

This is one way to prevent vampire feedings in older versions.  Because there are always witnesses who can see the sleeping dwarf across the way, the vampire can't find an unguarded dwarf.  Often I would put the dining room at the bottom of the open area, which gives even more potential witnesses milling around who can spot a feeding.

Each apartment will have 2x3 floor space and a shared door leading into the outer hallway.  In cases like nobles where I need larger rooms, I can knock out walls and create 5x3 rooms quickly.

I will also knock out the walls on the north and south side of the 3x3 staircase and put in glass windows.  That way any dwarves going up down the main stairs can look out into the open area.

Once I have dug out the north side of the residential complex, I will replicate it to the south side.  A fully constructed level gives me 24 bedrooms per level, so 10 levels will support 240 dwarves.  Toss in a few extra levels and a 12-story complex supports 240 dwarves + nobles.