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[Magnus]

I just lost my first real fortress, due in no small part to having TWO nasty vampires skulking around the halls (the rest of my dwarves succumbed to werebeasts.)

This gave me an idea: Setting up a clan of elite warrior vampires that do nothing but spar all day and night, feeding them a peasant now and then to keep them happy. The vampires I had were both amazing fighters, so I think this would make for a very effective military. I would keep them in a locked "tomb" separate from the fortress proper, but with access to the outside in case of sieges and beasts, and a one-way tunnel for dropping down "food" to them.

I have some questions in that regard:

What determines a dwarf's chances of surviving a vampire feeding? I would assume toughness or mightyness? Preferably I want to be able to recycle the vampire food.

Related to this, what attributes are excercised by pumping screw pumps? I plan on making "cattle" for the vampires that do nothing but run on screw pumps to beef up their physical stats, or possibly haul boulders around. Does this help make them "meatier" so they may survive a feeding?

Incidentally, how do vampires act when they're low on blood? Do they become much weaker, go berserk or both? Can any eventual bad thoughts from going without blood be offset by giving them really nice surroundings?

And finally, how do I reliably make a vampire bleed without dying? I want to set up a normally inaccessible well that draws from a finite water source, and "poison" this source with vampire blood. Then I can let a dwarf drink from it whenever I want a new vampire. Is it feasible to do something like the following:

1. Have a retracting drawbridge 2 floors above an empty water cistern, with doors immediately before the bridge.
3. Line the cistern with upright spikes.
4. Have a vampire walk out on the drawbridge and lock the door.
5. Retract the bridge and watch the vampire fall, hopefully to injury but not to his death.
6. Fill the bottom level of the cistern with water.
7. Remove the bridge, build a floor with a well above the bloodstain.

Will this work? Is there an easier way to give someone vampirism, or to make a vampire bleed?

[PatrikLundell]

I'll answer as best I can:
- Vampires get very sluggish for lack of alcohol, which they don't drink, which might be unappealing.
- Vampires will survive indefinitely without blood, but I assume they get happier if given someone to much on. If you were to somehow acquire a syndrome generator that induced sleep, you could feed them animals instead of dorfs. Don't know if you can feed them prisoners, but it might be worth a try (depends on if prisoners sleep).

Why care if your source vampire dies when creating the seeding well? It probably won't, though. You could get it to drop into your cistern while there is water already in it, line the bottom with hand cranked menacing spike traps (single spike, I guess), crank the lever, examine the amount of bleeding, and then repeat until you get a satisfactory result. (Your cistern should be made of smoothed natural rock to prevent climbing). When done, open a drawbridge to a staircase to let it walk out (they don't drown, after all).

[AMTiger]

 Last time I tried a vampire well with lever operated spikes, he ended up a legendary dodger and I didn't get any other vamps out of it, so it can be trickier than it sounds, that was the old version though.

[PatrikLundell]

In that case, make it 10 spike traps. You can also dump stuff from above to hit the vampire (a single tile pit and a dump zone at the edge), but in that case you may want to make the pit deeper.

[Niddhoger]

Wooden spikes? You don't need to deal much damage, just make him bleed.