Important Dwarf Fortress tip:

Don't keep putting off the construction of that wall to keep your fortress's central stairwell separated from opening up into a subterranean cavern. Things live down there, if you can call it life. First a crystal glass giant humanoid came in, and that was all good fun. Trained attack dogs all but crippled it before my militia was even on the scene, though the last little bit was the hardest and I lost one fighter and two dogs. Even so, I regarded it as little more than good fodder to add to the repertoire of my engravers who are overly concerned with matters of who killed whom when and where, but mostly seem to have human history to draw from since I lacked any such drama in my own fort. All well and good. I constructed a shiny new hospital to treat my poor wounded militiadwarfs. I had no doctor, so I promoted a butcher to be my chief medical adviser. Same thing, right? Well, as a result my militia were still in traction when a skinless twitchy triceratops with three tails and poisonous blood came in through the breach into the subterranean cavern. In 1054 the Geared Earth dwarfs of the Cloisterrim mine learned a harsh lesson about being so industrious and eschewing militarism. The bodies greatly outnumber the glass coffins I constructed for just such an event, and the beast yet lives.

The horrible things that crawl.

Hey, ever run into an Amblypygi? One lives in my garage.