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Roll back to before Taupe's disastrous turn

Keep going and see what happens

Let it die

[Splint]

So what exactly does the mist do? Do they all have this uniform size (or does it just pretty much make them hulk out,) is the syndrome transmissible by contact or is it inhaled, that sort of thing?

[Mr Frog]

So what exactly does the mist do? Do they all have this uniform size (or does it just pretty much make them hulk out,) is the syndrome transmissible by contact or is it inhaled, that sort of thing?

The mist works by inhalation and basically makes them hulk out, as you say; though their base size doesn't change, the affected get a massive (4x IIRC) strength and toughness boost and it also turns them technically-undead (in that it adds the NOT_LIVING tag, though they retain all mortal weaknesses such as bleeding and brain damage) and opposed to life -- I'd tried just giving them CRAZED but that only resulted in the mutants killing each other before turning their attention on other creatures. One year after infection, their organs give out due to the massive physical strain the transformation puts on them and they suffocate due to their lungs not working. Also, since it doesn't remove the MEANDERER tag, random animals who get turned will leave the map after a time. (If something sapient like a caravan gets turned, we're still basically fucked for a year.)

It's not super-contagious, due to being a gaseous pathogen that thus does not linger on patients' clothing or skin; zombie apocalypses are hilarious, but hard to fight once they start, so I erred on the safe side and made sure that the effects wouldn't get out of control.

[Splint]

Good to know. Once the fall migrants arrive I think it'll be time to deal with any mutants, assuming you went for "basic individual skill" for Splint and other guy.

Speaking of, you really should get those two training so there's at least two competent fighters for next year's inevitables. Wood shields will also go a long way to improving survivability without weighing anyone down.

[Mr Frog]

Good to know. Once the fall migrants arrive I think it'll be time to deal with any mutants, assuming you went for "basic individual skill" for Splint and other guy.

Speaking of, you really should get those two training so there's at least two competent fighters for next year's inevitables. Wood shields will also go a long way to improving survivability without weighing anyone down.

Can't remember what I gave the military dwarves in terms of skills; I think I gave them Competent spear ability and also some points in dodging and fighting.

E: Wait, are wooden shields a thing?

Incidentally, it just occurred to me that I neglected to make the mist add the STERILE tag to affected critters, meaning they can still have (normal, easily-killed, delicious) offspring (hey, I'm a bit rusty)... probably won't be a big deal, although there is a nonzero chance that this will result in some black comedy later.

[Splint]

Wood shields are indeed a thing. Made at the carpenter's workshop.

With some basic skills if that's what you gave them, they should be a match for parrots. Still, I suppose I can tackle the military shit when my turn rolls around.

[Ribbonfree]

Incidentally, it just occurred to me that I neglected to make the mist add the STERILE tag to affected dwarves (hey, I'm a bit rusty)... probably won't be a big deal, although there is a nonzero chance that this will result in some black comedy later.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

ANYWAYS gonna do a character thingy

It's been precisely 127 days since our arrival in Avédonol, give or take a few hours obviously. The livestock we were kindly granted as provisions by the Mountainhome have already starved due our inability to allow them to pasture. The local fauna mutating into beasts of fell horror is already bad enough- I was watching the parrots slaughtering one another over our overseers shoulder and I don't think I'll be seeing much else in my dreams for the next few months- but I don't think any of us could bear to watch poor innocent horses and buffalo turn into such slavering monstrosities. Let alone...

Well, suffice it to say that for now we're trapped in this hole in the mountain. We can always dig our way into comfort and prosperity as is the Dwarven way, of course, but surface access has a number of benefits to any mountainhome as fledgling as ours. Not to mention how cowardly it is for us to not be able to meet our troubles head on! My father was one of the few survivors of the massacre at Ngefelnazush, the infamous siege where all of dwarvenkind first learned how bold the raids of the Spawn could be, and while quite a few things haven't been right in his poor head ever since, he raised me with all the worldly wisdom that any man who has lived through death a hundredfold can impart. And as he told me once, while he was milling flour for our meals with the bare of his gnarled knuckles:

"If you cannot take to the sword for what is rightfully yours, you are merely waiting to die."

Splint seems to agree with my appraisal of the situation and we've both been petitioning Frog for some form of military assignments to be made. Splint's an excellent fighter but he'll need real troops at his side before too long. I'd gladly throw myself into the fray if we wouldn't lose our only brewer! Darling Frog seems to be all over the place and then some, I wouldn't be surprised if he retired from his position as overseer by the end of the year! He doesn't seem to be cut from the cloth of a leader. He'd be much happier with his workshop and his stone, I believe. I do know I admire the simple charm of his designs. I'm not sure who could possibly take over when the inevitable occurs, but in any case I've been keeping a mental checklist of things to be done within the year. Just so I can politely remind whoever ends up taking the reins of what needs to be done! A simple brewer I may be, and I love this job as much as Frog his crafts, but I have a tongue and a brain and Armok forbid I don't use them!

Ribbon,
15th of Malachite

The horses are beginning to rot and foul up, quite close to the food stocks as well, which makes taking a simple drink a rather loathsome process. It just occurred to me that we should have delegated the corpses butchered, even if none of us really have the experience someone could have been drafted with a few sharpened stones to do the dirty work. Squeamish as I am I would have volunteered to do the job for the good of the fortress if I'd remembered. Ah well. A tongue and a brain I may have but that doesn't mean they always see the best of use! Heh.

I'm also putting a note here to remind myself to remind Frog to seal off our new chute into the volcano with a lockable door or a few, I didn't see anything of the sort while touring the area. A precariously dug entry port into the airspace above an active caldera is always welcome, don't get me wrong, but nasty flying things may be able to access our fort through the chute if it remains unguarded, and heaven knows what sort of havoc will be wrought if even one of those twisted monstrosities plumbs the depths of our humble abode. As father as said:

"They can get in anywhere. ANYWHERE."

He was always a bit more frenzied looking whenever that quote came to his mind. At least we always had locked doors when I was growing up! And more locked doors behind them.

Ribbon,
2nd of Galena

[mikethete]

sign me up for a turn, and i'd like a male speardwarf or miner

[Mr Frog]

Spoiler: Urist's Field Handbook for the Wary Wanderer (click to show/hide)

(All information in this article has been reviewed and verified as absolute truth on behalf of His Gaudiness by the Royal Archivist.)

Banshees
These wicked gray-skinned, green-haired female thralls of evil gods dwell in cursed swamps, eschewing civilised society in favour of a loose collection of tribes that constantly squabble over hunting territory and send frequent raids to neighboring communities. Little is known about their heathen culture, as all who venture into their territories are brutally-executed without question, but interviews with banshee prisoners have resulted in some small details being revealed, albeit grudgingly. They appear to have a pantheon-based religion much like our own, although the gods they worship are twisted and false, and are in fact devils in disguise, which is evidenced by the fact that their gods command them to kill and destroy nearby entities simply for the crime of existing, diplomacy being too high a concept for these fiends to grasp. Their society is uncivilised and amoral, with no concept of law save for a flimsy system of tribal loyalties in which betrayal is punished by death. They are a savage, base race, without respect for customs or law and order.
   Banshees are ill-tempered even at the best of times; those that have been assimilated to our culture are uniformly cold, disinterested in helping the community, and hostile to socialisation, and are generally end up as dregs of society feeding upon the labours of decent folk like parasites. Unlike our hardy, beautiful dwarf women, these hags are generally too frail to do hard labour in the gulags, and so are typically kept as petty household slaves such that they may be forced to contribute in some small way to our glorious society.
   There are lingering rumours floating about that he-banshees do in fact exist, and simply look identical to the women, even -- in an atrocious blasphemy against Armok's design -- lacking beards. The Royal Archivist would like to state definitively that these rumours are absolutely, objectively false and that any who continue to spread such blatant falsehoods will be subject to disciplinary measures. Banshees are sexless and have no concept of love or romance, animating their spawn from reeds and swamp muck using strange and evil magic and promptly setting them loose upon the landscape.
   A banshee's most foul trait by far, however, is its scream, a vile, toneless cry that travels through stone and flesh and rends the very soul of those who hear it, potentially causing agonising spasms that wrack the victim's entire body. Though a banshee appears to need time to prepare before unleashing the scream -- likely by invoking fell sorceries -- once ready it can cripple a dwarf in seconds. This makes imprisoning them rather complicated; the current procedure is to surgically-incapacitate their vocal cords, although this requires them to be secured and restrained first.
   As they are generally too much trouble to take prisoner and are not worth the effort of rehabilitating to a civilised society, and are easy enough to meet in combat on account of their frail physiques, the current advisory to security personnel is to simply kill all banshees before their screams become a nuisance to the proper functioning of the settlement.

(Views expressed by the Royal Archivist and her scribes do not in any way reflect my own)


E:

@Ribbonfree:

Woo! Characterisation! Also, noted; I will put a door on the chute (although part of me was hoping nobody would notice and we'd get pretty much exactly the disaster you're alluding to)

Although... I think you might have cut off a bit by accident? Your post ends with "2nd Galena" but doesn't continue after that...

E2: Wait nvm I read it wrong :V  Got so used to my own format I didn't even notice you were putting your dates after your posts.


@mikethete:

Acknowledged

[pisskop]

I have a custom CDI that goes through walls.  And targets everyone ever.  do these banshies target a set number of dwarves per scream, or can they effectively scream so much/fast as to target all within range?

[Mr Frog]

I have a custom CDI that goes through walls.  And targets everyone ever.  do these banshies target a set number of dwarves per scream, or can they effectively scream so much/fast as to target all within range?

They only target one dwarf per scream. A bit weird and unintuitive, but it beats having half of a 200-strong fortress collapse into a screaming heap because 100 banshees showed up and started caterwauling simultaneously.

I kind of conceptualise their scream as being a sort of supernatural thing that functions more like a curse than an actual vibration propagating through matter. If you "hear" it -- it feels like a sort of thrumming in your ears, like a tiny insect flying around your head -- it means you've already fallen under its power (although it may or may not take effect).

[Splint]

I'd say it's fair. Because any random dorf could be the target, it's still a priority to eliminate the banshee. Plus I think the scream in mythology heralded the death of someone in particular, not just any shlub who hears it.

[Mr Frog]

Their screams did in fact cause instadeath by catastrophic bleeding (1% chance per scream) in the original concept, if I recall correctly (the version linked in my mod thread that I uploaded ages ago may still use this), but I decided that was a bit too harsh, hahaha. Now they just cripple dwarves for a good month or so (10%* chance per scream, I think, and they can scream roughly twice a month) if the scream is successful.

*Corrected, I got it wrong the first time

E: It occurs to me that they might end up targeting livestock with their screams as well, so if you have like 200 cats milling around it should absorb a bit of the blow, so to speak.

[Splint]

I remember those ones. I never tried them out because I didn't want my soldiers suffering from bitched-to-death-itis.

But yeah, I think the version you're using here more closely fits with the mythology of them, since banshees aren't the ones who slay, merely the messenger that someone will be slain, and in a battle, a crippling effect pretty much guarantees that.

[Mr Frog]

I remember those ones. I never tried them out because I didn't want my soldiers suffering from bitched-to-death-itis.

But yeah, I think the version you're using here more closely fits with the mythology of them, since banshees aren't the ones who slay, merely the messenger that someone will be slain, and in a battle, a crippling effect pretty much guarantees that.

And let's not forgot how having a bunch of critical workers become incapacitated can screw a fort.

Yeah, I decided that temporarily crippling the victim would be better, as it'd still be enough of an irritant (and legit danger once banshees start turning up in the hundreds and can knock out a good 12 dwarves with one wave of screams) to drive the player to get rid of them quickly while not being so frustrating if a random banshee thief happens to pick off a dwarf by sheer bad luck in passing.

E: Now beginning the autumn leg of my playthrough.

[cherry-hearts]

@Mr. Frog: Wow. Jeff is NAWT a hippy.