In other news of rulerships, the Realm of Silver was once ruled by a kobold, of all things, during the early years of Orid Xem.
Well, yes,
Edu has an article since March. He also appointed 2 kobold cabinet members. What led to his rise also led to his downfall, that is rampant rampaging megabeasts during the 1st century (where many megabeasts had 4 destroyed settlements to their name. Each. In the 1st century alone).
Huh, looks like the latest walking genocide to hit Orid Xem also took out Ashro Scufflegrowls the Slick Bends of Ivy and Bolan Quickpainted the Good Uncle (past adventurers, both turned into IntUndead). Wonder what the story behind that is?
Hmm, Elderssins, Zurzolak, it rings bells. If you look at it in Legends Viewer, it has 90 named deaths for a relatively history-less place and the most history happened after the founding of the Museum. There was an insurrection in 706 and another in 754. It seems whenever an adventurer passes through, insurrections happen.
Amusingly enough, one of the two is also a Blighted Thrall spawned from Kosoth's rampage, which has got to make for some hilariously awkward leadership meetings.
My headcanon on the blight is that it can lay dormant for decades or maybe centuries until surfacing. Certainly, blighted individuals travel without tipping off (or infecting) anyone until they run into an adventurer. The blight lay dormant in Treatyseed for literal decades until Bralbaard triggered it by going near the place. An important question is if the blight makes unloaded characters immortal or if they just die of old age, and if the latter, if their bodies can still infect other creatures when an adventurer stumbles in the general vicinity.
I do feel the need to explain my actions regarding immortal animals (and dwarves, but that might come later). My initial idea was to make my fortress' dwarves immortal, if only to track which of them survived the world. I suspected dwarves would leave my fortress from time to time and arrive at others' fortresses and I wondered that if the game lasts for another century or two, there would be overseers who would suspect the immortal dwarves of being night creatures and the misguided actions they'd take to find out. It was then that I would have admitted to my actions. What I had not expected was how many and how fast the dwarves would leave my fort. Also, many of them did not survive the... tender caresses of other overseers. Though I might try to "remedy" that...
This extended to pets for a much more innocent reason: I just didn't want the dwarves to have negative thought when I, so naively, believed that they'd take their pets with them.
In-character, it was a prelude to showing Kikrost was doing necro-adjacent experiments without actually being a necro. I have a bit of a storyline lined up for him and the overseer of Newworld.
Interestingly enough, with the dwarves I made immortal more or less dying in droves, they won't affect population that much (which is still abysmal compared to goblins and even humans), so I'm comfortable in continuing this, if the people have no objections.
The -1 birth date is a Legends Viewer bug, since I'm certain the pets have a date of birth listed in vanilla DF, so don't mind that.
Auto-correct replacing necro with negro. Keep it classy, AC.
it wasn't until i encountered Lurker that i realised maybe they aren't all there
Wait whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?! This is news to me. I was brought to Herograves and raised as undead?! I was planning to assault Thillecit, cleanse it of all goblin (and possibly all life) and reclaim the body. Kikrost would have been apoplectic in not finding it. This might just change some things. Thanks for the heads-up.
its part of the reason im guarding the museum now. I worry that any moment a undead might lose themselves and attack fellow adventurers
This reminds of the joke about the gravekeeper clobbering a zombie over the head and putting him back into the grave with the parting words: "We might joke and laugh, but no leaving the premises."
I leave the fort and search the small island - and immediately I run into a huge draltha, Kawegistri, Wardedwarned! I stealthily dispatch it and butcher its gigantic corpse. I craft some draltha bone trinkets.
What a sad fate for a
forgotten beast slayer.
Loved the rest of the story, now it makes sense why the adventurer in your save got killed... by a former adventurer.
More seriously, though, the fact that immortal birbs are suddenly showing up to found settlements and may survive longer than most adventurers comes off as side-splittingly hilarious to me. Only in DF could this sort of thing happen.
In a living world, it's not that broken. The next time that settlement is sieged, the goose/rooster/wonder-pig/w/e will be on the battlements fighting 1 vs. 1 against creature well above their weight class in all meanings of the term. Also, even with a benevolent overseer, they might just die of lack of grazing, an enemy or just wondering around where they shouldn't.
The real risk I see in this is they'll keep breeding, if that wonder-pig is any example, and will fill the historical figures list with unnamed animals, clogging the world more and more.
Though I look forward to the first former pet-turned noble/Lord/Baron happening. Now that would be both epic and hilarious. And more power to it that it can barely be considered modded, since it's just using inbuilt DFhack commands.