I just recently got hooked on this game.  After sitting down and pouring a good 4 hours or so into it, I finally feel like I'm used to the interface and the controls.  I figured I'd share the ongoing saga of my first fortress here and others could do the same.
 
I'll post some pictures later if anyone is interested.  The few seasons of my first foray into the untamed wilds have gone much better than expected.  Knowing nothing but the basics of survival, "Aluddur" (Brotherfist) was founded in a grassy hill at the foot of a mountain, in proximity of a freshwater stream and a couple of murky ponds.  I would later find out that I kind of screwed my little bearded friends right off the bat before they had even left the white cliffs of the Mountainhomes.  Rookies should note that dwarves without the appraisal skill are rather dull and have absolutely no concept of the value of goods whatsoever (the caravans love trading with me).  Also there is no possible way to create an anvil without already having an existing anvil, which probably spawned the old dwarven conundrum of which came first, the anvil or the anvil?  With no way of trading reliably and no way of making any sort of metal goods, everything my dwarves use is made out of fish bones, which apparently make great crossbows.  I've also come to absolutely despise the migrants as they seem to always show up immediately after I've finally gotten things under control.  I had some strange idea of filtering pond water down into the lower levels of my fort for farming which didn't pan out at all:  the pond basically emptied itself into the lower chamber and while no one drowned, the area directly below the main part of my fortress was rendered useless.  As a result of this and some strange urge to build up and into a mountain I've begun relocating the little devils to a whole other part of the map (which also happens to be closer to the nearby river, a plus).  All in all it has been a couple rather uneventful years, aside from a few kobold thief invasions (not my salmon bone crossbow, you swine!).  The population of Brotherfist is now up to 52, which is surprising to know considering not a single dwarf in the fortress can count.
 
I'll keep updating as I forge ahead into new feats of dwarfdom.  Hope to see some more stories in here as well!

Well, I wouldn't call it the story of my fortress... but this is the story of the one dwarf I really felt bad for. 
 
Her name was Rimtar Kivishlorbam, and she was a cheesemaker immigrant -  a High Master Cheesemaker. In the new version, cheesemakers aren't useless anymore, so I was interested in trying to set up a cheese industry. Unfortunately I had no milkable animals, so I thought, "No problem, I'll just wait for the caravan." 
 
While I was waiting, I breached an underground cavern. With nothing better to do, I set Rimtar on web collecting duty. All was going well until the Giant Cave Spider showed up, snatched away Rimtar, and began an epic duel. I immediately walled off that part of my fort, reasoning that Rimtar didn't have much longer left to live, and that I could just dig out another part of the cavern. How wrong I was. 
 
A few (in game) months later, I noticed that I never got the death notification for poor Rimtar. So I zoomed in on her location and learned that, against all odds, she was still alive. In extreme pain, yes; with mangled hands, yes; with severe damage on every single body part, including her organs. But she was still fighting, and had grown from no fighting experience to Legendary Fighter, dodging and kicking and biting to survive. She'd even managed to mangle one of the spider's eight legs. Her tattered pig tail clothing was the only reason why she was still alive. Due to a slight materials bug, the GCS couldn't bite through the clothes.  
 
I immediately deployed the fortress militia, tearing down the wall and sending my finest soldiers to her rescue. In the (rather quick) struggle, one immigrant hammerdwarf was tragically strangled by the spider. As the Militia Commander, a veteran axedwarf, rushed to cut her loose of the webbing that had trapped her for so long, I like to imagine that she smiled. And then: 
 
"Rimtar Kivishlorbam, Cheesemaker, has bled to death." 
 
Naturally she got the best grave possible, with the dead hammerdwarf buried nearby. The fortress ate the spider in revenge.

Time to revive this shit since there's newfound interest. Figure I'll throw my best one out there. Excuse the formatting, wrote it up in notepad for the /vg/ Dwarf Fort generals.

>Fort is going strong, 129 dwarves, self sufficient, setting up nice guard towers and competent military, although no ambushes had shown up yet despite the fort being very well established

>Honestly getting rather bored with the lack of goblin attacks, other forts in this world had much a harder time of it

>Busted into the Underground ages ago, a Forgotten Beast had shown up lately

>Enira Cetha Mithe, Forgotten Beast

>A huge quadruped composed of flame. It has a pair of long antennae and it squirms and fidgets. Beware its hunger for warm blood!

>I had been mining on the top layer of the Underground, because it had just about the only useful metals I'd run into yet

>I carefully sealed all access to the underground at all times, and was training a vampire strike force to deal with it

>Some time later, a warning pops up:

>Mason cancels job: Interrupted by Forgotten Beast

>Mason is caught in flames!

>I freak the fuck out, check what's going on

>One of the doors I'd used to block him was apparently made of wood. He predictably burned right through it. FUCK!

>I immediately order my military to prepare for combat, and all my dwarves to a burrow out past the river

>I then notice that the beast has gotten to my main stairway shaft, and his flame was PROPOGATING UPWARDS THROUGH IT

>My mass evactuation quickly became a bloodbath, as dwarves from all z-levels caught on fire while trying to leave

>They paniced and spread the fire throughout my fort

>EVERYTHING is burning, my stockpiles, my shops

>Give my military the Kill command. They will stop it or die trying

>The battle is joined in spitting distance of my burning food stockpile

>The squads, mostly axedwarves, fight to their last, constantly interrupted by EXPLODING RUM BARRELS

>They kill it, with only a few of my fighters remaining after the flames settle

>My fort is in shambles, almost everything made out of wood is gone

>My hospital beds are all gone, so my wounded dwarves are just lying there

>Parts of my fort still ablaze, some dwarves are still burning to death and others are suffocating from the dense clouds of smoke permeating my fortress

>The flames are spread outside and begin to blaze across the map

>At this point I'm down to 47 dwarves. That's 72 casualties in a matter of moments.

>More die of tantrums, fights, meloncholy, and wounds

>Every bit of wood and cloth in my fortress was destroyed by the fire

>A sizable chunk of my food stockpile was eliminated

>Smoke has subsided, fort is now flooded with the miasma from the dozens of bodies

>No doubt ghosts will be popping up soon

>When all is said and done, I'm down to 40 dwarves. That's 79 casualties from one beast, in an otherwise very prosperous fort.

>More tantrums, bersekrs, and melancholies popping up every minute

>Half the map up to the river is now a frozen field of ash

>An ambush! Curse them!

>Dwarf Fortress

It's been a bit, but last time I played, my dumbass fisherdwarf managed to drown himself in the pond 20 feet away from the fort. His ghost then promptly floated around scaring the other dwarves who strayed too close to the newly haunted koi pond.

@GabeNewell: Good, he was warning off other stupid dwarves. A true Samaritan ghost

At the fort "Twinklingrooms" the excavators were getting anxious: "We're not finding any decent metals! No copper, no bronze, nothing to make any weaponry or equipment! Bookkeeper Gusillerteth only reports of useless gold on roughly 10 levels. Nothing worthwhile except silly trinkets can be made of that yellow junk. "

Wait.... gold on 10 levels?

...

The following autumn, broker Soderl Anrizonol estimates the value of tradeable crafts to be around 200 000.

@veerserif: The monster in that story is not the Giant Spider, it's you for letting poor Rimtar suffer like that.

In my first batch of migrants in my first game, I got a crippled lady. Her foot was missing, and she spent the rest of her life in a bed. She died in the winter when the water froze up. Dehydration.

She had a husband who was a cheese maker. Being that all of my cheese making animals were starving to death (I assume because of the biome), I decided to make him our sole fortress guard. I couldn't make a Metalsmith workshop at that point, so he didn't have a weapon or armor.

One day a kobold thief entered the fortress with a copper dagger. This was like the 5th kobold, so I was sick of the sneaky bastards, but this time I had a guard. I sent the brave cheese maker after the kobold, forgetting at the time that he was unarmed. In the end, he put the kobold in the ground, but suffered injuries to his leg, and mangled his foot badly.

And so the cheese maker died exactly one year after his wife did, in exactly the same manner. Missing foot, bed ridden, dehydration. He now rests in a grave beside her, my first and only deaths I've had until very recently.

@FoolishChaos: Hospital, nurses, buckets. Also you'll need a well.