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[FantasticDorf]

Greetings, i myself am new here but i had a overwhelming desire to share my own concept, in accordance to forum rules i have researched the topics relatable to my idea and put them below for reference. Funnily enough most of my own content came to me in a dream akin to a Strange Mood, and on reading some other forums posts I realise that I've have needed to cut down the scope of my original suggestion a little bit in order to keep the peace on forum policy. Please Enjoy.

Establishing a Dwarven Legacy

During the age of myth, the first dwarves emerge as a new race upon a young world, along with the other three (elves, humans, goblins and kobolds) at one time or another. It is understandable to say that the world is made how Armok envisioned it, filled with animals, trees (mixed blessing) and soil, in essence the stage is set for you to endure its entire history and make use of your surroundings. Already through the persistent world exists in what could be said to be harmony, it is ambitious nature that drives the civilizations forward in conquest, adaptation and co-existance with the natural state.

Each major or should we say, precursor/chosen civilisation has a impact on the world and a 'gimmick' (dwarf craftmenship, etc)

The ideal here is to to create a legacy that celebrates your achievements, failures and ingeniuty, and what better way is there than to create a mythos surrounding yourself upon other people for both status and fame. One such method for both practical and impractical reasons (boosting your ego i suppose) would be to play god and grant unfortunate sapient creatures intelligence on par with your own. (that is presuming they aren't pursuing glory themselves in a bid to take what's yours and the tagged fame and glory for themselves if you pay poor attention to them as a parent civilisation)

Best case scenario: 'Subjects' will adore and potentially worship you as the beings responsible for their 'creation of mental state' offering gifts and integrating themselves into your society.

Worst case: Said subjects become your worst most powerful enemy, and potentially wipe out your civilisation by nurturing more than you can handle through a mixture of neglect or over attentiveness.

Its already confirmed that beastmen will be appearing as visitors and residents upon the development page but this particular forum thread is set to adress just HOW and WHY animal-men and other sapients rise to intelligence to integrate into civil society from relatively humble begginnings in either tribal or nomadic lifestyles

How would this be achieved?

> Through application of a special zone perhaps akin to a school, or a exclusive zoo room setting for sentient capacity animals assigned to one animal per-cage with a labour enabled, a dwarf or multiples can be designated to ensure the captives survival and 'training' for the outside world and sapient life

> Unlike the presumed goblin way of teaching a sapient by inflicting torture based lessons upon it (your dwarves will not stoop to that ethically though you could reasonably set some goblins to the task as long as you kept the deed ambigious to lawful dwarves via forbidden doors and careful placement in low density areas but will get discovered one way or another if the sentient being speaks) dwarves/elves and humans with relevant non evil affiliations will treat the creature well giving it food and water in a three stage process inside its cage until the sapient is placated and safe to let out.

Stage one
Confined to its cage, the creature would be offered raw food and drink while being taught and spoken to by a dwarf (useful for levelling 'teacher' skills and naturally the sapient would pick up or not pick up based on raw tags some student skill experience, making long standing projects faster if the first attempt at a stage fails. once this would be enough to establish a nomadic lifestyle if the training stopped here, goblins or evil races would initially seek to induce and limit to this stage.

Stage two
If the creature is already nomadic or has progressed past stage one in flying colours/difficulty, they can be assigned to a enclosed room where the assigned dwarves will attend to its needs with food and alcohol, the room should ideally be outfitted with a bed, table and a chair with perhaps some room for a chest to which you can designate some meager items to transfer to the creatures possession to build trust. The sapient should be unarmed but reuniting it with some of the objects it was captured with may make it happier. Dwarves besides tutors should be tasked to attend with positive social attributes (benign sapient beings like subterrain gorlak's particularly are good conversationalists and dwarves will attain positive thoughts by conversing with them, typically gorlaks make poor practice due to how fast they can go through the stages with little risk

The main ideal of stage two is to accomodate it with civilised living, once stage two is complete you can either designate it to become a tavern patron, in which it will periodically leave and return given that it has not encountered misfortune, and be up for hire at your fortress a later date. Alternatively there is stage three learning which is the idealized end positional route and extends the process.

Enough animalmen off the map will establish a minor civilisation that will develop over time with given trade value or diplomatic action as a parent race (see stage three)

Stage three
Unlike stage one or two, stage three is largely academic and social based, the creature will be let out of its room and given freedom to wander around the fortress as a citizen (evil aligned creatures require supervision as they may be quick to temper unless it goes on a rampage, high stress levels will be punishable by a dwarf dragging it back to it's room) it will be responsible for its own actions with justice related punishments (as mentioned before minor crimes like stealing would mean the creature is dragged back into its room as punishment) while capital crimes could spell death, making taming animalmen prone to violence harder (adding to the challenge)

The desired end result is to create a learned being that respects dwarven ethics and culture and may even have friends within the fotress, animalpeople children with taught parents are instilled those ethics, so a secure population will for the most part remain lawful. Sending off a embark of animal people as mentioned before will establish a dwarf fortress of animal people with dwarf ethics, unless you lose contact and drift apart.

Reseeding the world with intelligence + Educating animalmen (Legacy Part 2)

Given through what you could say is a life of hardship or extreme circumstance, should your world ever become isolated or dry of intelligent life for whatever reason (as to say a plague syndrome killed of 90% of intelligent life on your small secluded continent, or you have started on a large secluded island/AND OR you have no civ settings up) you can utilise your knowledge to teach beings with the capacity to learn [LEARNS] particularly albeit very slowly (differing levels of success on level of [slow/normal/fast] learners) in attempts to civilize them adequately to a level that they can be released again or integrated into your fortress, this would be the historical world gen proceeded way of creating non goblin afilliated (presuming that babysnatching extends much further to anything sentient) races providing other races didn't have their own education programmes (meaning even more tree hugging pseudo elves bleh or in the middle human taught animalmen).

Because this tag is so widespread it could mean that anything from a swan man to a troglodyte/olm man from subterranean depths can be inferred knowledge and ascend tribal or nomadic living, even if they dont have the capacity to speak (certain very much beast men) they can still be taught to do menial tasks such as dancing for entertainment (see dev log artistic pursuits & Taverns) and certain labours like hauling that compliment their attributes but cannot pass on their skills without being taught/teaching directly through action or observing (creatures that cannot speak or observe can ONLY be taught).

On the contrary the [Learns] [Speak] and [Slowlearner] not to mention observer raw traits already exist, using Trolls as a suitable example of this since despite being sapient 'animals' they can be 'domesticated' by goblins for thier fur in either a livestock/sapient slavery/willing slavery scenario. Trolls can arrive to the fortress via 'Goblin Christmas' with skills already equipped non relevant to fighting abilities. (DFWiki page for Trolls with viewing access to the RAW)

If you were to say capture a troll and then re-educate / elevate its learning and instill dwarven values via hospitality rather than the goblin method of torture (Feeding it, offering it holdings, reading it books and limited freedom) you may be able to change it's ethical standpoint at least temporarily (as compared to released educated independent and intelligent trolls which may hold seperate leanings towards inherent evil ethics if left with little to no contact from a 'greater force') against those who violate dwarven instilled ethics such as goblins, leading to potential warmongering between Dwarf aligned Troll civilisations and goblin forces

Rise and Battle of the Titans (Legacy Part 3)

On that subject, given that there are some of these tags associated with megabeasts and titans, unless it was made unfeasable or absymally hard, due to thier gendered/nongendered nature and humanoid stance, cyclopses ettins and giants would be ideal canditates for a larger megaproject given that they can learn skills but have no observer qualities in order to learn them passively. Slanting them at a level below savage to make it extrememely difficult and probably a cross generational challenge for your dwarves over a span of 50 years approximately

Usual dietary requirements of a resident cyclops/giant/ettin (breaching insanity to keep one around at this point given that they are immortal at least if it takes a long time to civilize it wont die on you) includes probably a entire live Yak/or the equivalent of small produce and about four barrels of alcohol a month individually to keep them maintained in exchange for both military, and limited civilian service. On the outside and on the inside of the cage while being taught, while requiring at least  20 tiles of space and 4x4 gigantic furniture for a 'meager' holding (meaning enough room for a 5x5 dimension space to place furniture with a bed in the middle

Teaching and sending away taught Titans will probably deter them from openly attacking in the future and give them a dwarfy name so that they aren't as uninvited should they return for whatever reason (I shudder to imagine a Titan adventurer or a Titan civilisation/alliance laying siege to your fortress riding grown cave dragons as the only means of seating themselves on mounts)

> Urist McTitan/(Native Civilised non dwarf taught Titan name) the (Titan) diplomat has come to meet your (representative)
> Urist McTitan is fighting
> Urist McTitan has stamped hard on Urist McFancypants's head! it explodes in gore, body explodes in gore, arms legs explode in gore etc
> Titan Civilisation has declared war on Dwarven Civilisation

> A skirmish of armed titan fighters turns up a year or two later hurling stones as ranged with enourmous weapons and armour and certainly expensive other equipment such as giant sized flasks full to be brim with beer etc. suitable to be sold or melted down in addition to having enourmous skeletons once they decompose, in peacetime, carrying a carriage under one arm, certain giant size things can be bought from titans not least particularly giant animals and giant sized furniture in exchange for giant sized profit and goods in return (minus modifier on certain goods, and restrictions on things that are too small unless they are intricately made in which it may interest them to hoard it)

> Titans, particularly cyclops variety wearing  wearing enourmous iron armour to protect thier weak points could be a late game challenge for your armies after or before HFS if you are looking to invoke a challenge.

> A 'cap' on established titan civilisation numbers should be tied to how well the embark site can support the titan population without application of slave labour to do intensive farming work (large hands dont make for effective plump harvesters unless you pick the entire patch at once) And other races may be deemed appropriate for this work (including stout dwarves for thier strength desirably) or livestock to be butchered depending on a mix of (suitably loose) titan ethics. Player embark caps are infinite or preset, restrictions only apply to off screen titan civilizations in order to stop them from self collapsing from overpopulation and food shortages.

As to other sapient 'megabeasts', Minotaur would be definitely a suitable option for a strong (potentially too strong) opponent if they could be rounded up, taught, bred and then summarily released on friendly terms/neutral terms. Though due to thier naturally strong stature and infinite lifespan, it would be exceptionally difficult to fight a 100 men army of them with potentially thousands more minataurs around the map (without a global civ cap for the amount of embark sites similar to cyclops's and higher requirements in food + drink)

Capturing and teaching HFS stuff with adequate tags is bordering on absolute nonsensicality, given the infinite nature of HFS it would be insane to release HFS let alone go to the effort to teach then placate it (probably a ruse) and create a HFS civilization out of a number of released individuals that promptly destroys everything else like a bug including you armed with copper pickaxes (Unthinkable, Armok should trigger Armageddon immediately)

Conclusion

To finally conclude, as a summary go forth in Armoks name, spread the knowledge bestowed by the mountain king, and dwarfkind make your friends close, your enemies closer and reap the rewards of what you sow.

Sorry for creating a wall of text, and thank you for reading, feedback on both the suggestion and improvements on how i can make a more constructive post (  given that the length hasn't left you like this  ) would be immensely appreciated. it is also worth noting, that if there is any discrepancy in content, i have been jumping between areas across the article for the last three hours filling in content, a noted discrepency can be seen between me illustrating the step by step methods of civilising a animal-man compared to a paragraph in the next segment detailing the method again.

Bibliography / Relevant Forum Articles

Links provided to similar articles and wiki pages used to source information for my suggestion, anybody willing to add more information would be appreciated.

> Literature, libraries, and papermakers (Author - Ploder - February 26, 2012)

Comment on the above: Interestingly relevant article if creating a stockpile of knowledge which in turn can be established from the very beginning with imports especially since the literacy and books (though not quite in a readily appicable state) already exist within the current base of the game. Relevant to the comment situated below

> Expansion of the Use of Books (Author - Tenth Speed Writer - March 10, 2012)

Comment on the above: Admittedly i've been beaten to the idea of book learning but i whole heartedly agree with what is contained detailed by the discussion and the OP individually.

> Gracing the "Primitives" with "Civilization (Author - NW_Kohaku - February 03, 2011)

Comment on the above: Another similar discussion going into some depth across the in's and outs of animal people more preferably a point of reference for outside of this suggestions as to more the consequences of 'creating' said animal races and interactions.

Semi-Sapiants (Author - Detoxicated - March 26, 2012)

Comment on the above: a interesting and slightly controversial discussion talking about semi-sapient creatures, applied to this core suggestion, could be suggested to be groups of creatures akin to goblin trained trolls used as 'sentient livestock' achievable by alternative teaching methods by goblins or dwarves (who naturally probably would not be inclined to do so or encur violence/butchery on said beasts), debates about slavery within in relation to animalmen & race speciality also.

> DF2014:Troll
> DF2014:Cyclops
> DF2014:Learns
> DF2014:Gorlak

Comment on the above: In regards to egg laying sapients, a childcare labour could be initiated in order to look after the childs needs, it should also be noted these are editable pages so reliability needs to be taken into account.