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[PatrikLundell]

I've embarked in an evil reanimating biome with a non evil corner. My refuse stockpile is in the non evil biome, but apparently some wool was reanimated while being carried to the stockpile (butchery and farmer's workshop are both in the "safe" area), and three pieces of wool was dropped on the ground together with some cartilage. The militia was sent to kill it, and that wasn't much of an issue. The second piece of wool was reanimated and quickly dispatched. The third one, however, turns out to be near indestructible. My 10 hammerlords are dying of dehydration and hunger while passed out exhausted, and my woodcutter who I quickly drafted (after disabling woodcutting) is also at it with an artifact bone battle axe. The wool doesn't seem to cause any damage on its own, but the fortress is brought to a standstill with the wool interrupting everyone who come with water for the fighters.
Given past experience of DF militia, retreat and sealing is not possible, and I'm not too keen on losing a quarter or more of my fortress by sealing off the conflict area with everyone in there (total pop 64).

Any ideas on how to win this 'epic' battle?

[Bouchart]

There's a bug with blunt attacks not working properly with very small creatures, and with tiny reanimated undead in general.  Try some more edged and piercing weapons.

A cage trap can contain it, if you can build one nearby and lure it in.  If your dwarves are passing out from combat it'll probably just trap one of them though.

[PatrikLundell]

I'd read about the small creature blunt attack, which is why I added a battle axe (or probably two; the guy who should hold the second embark axe was sent in as well) to the mix.
A cage trap is a good thought. I might get the militia to move by dismissing them. It's worth a try. Thanks!

A bit ironic that the general advice is to use blunt attacks against undead, and there being a certain class of undead for which it's totally unsuitable...

Edit: Looks like the fortress is saved. The dang wool is now alone hogging a mine cart repeater and a cage trap guards the only exit. The whole fortress' stress level took a hike upwards, however, with at least one dorf yelling at the mayor. It seems the artifact axe didn't do anything against the wool either.

Edit 2: And the dang wool crawled into the cage trap. Thanks for the good thinking Bouchart! Now I hope it isn't immune to atom smashing, 'cause that's where I intend to send it.

[Sirbug]

In my experience no attack work properly on small animated parts. My legendary soldiers died of thirst unable to kill it.

[PatrikLundell]

Oddly enough, I had no problem disengaging. I just cancelled the attack order and they filed away to eat, drink, and sleep (some had to recover from exhaustion first). Before that I cleared out the civilians by removing that part from my burrows. The evil thing is now properly atom smashed...
I've been able to deal with hands and the like using war hammers, and the two first hairs were easily dispatched.

It also seems undead do not behave like their living counterparts: neither undead FBs nor undead cave ogres have attempted to smash doors, for instance, but an undead polar bear guzzled booze.

[Sirbug]

I did have problem disengaging, although against sculls not hair. Even as civilians they kept fighting.

[PatrikLundell]

I suspect skulls would bite, and I think the reason I could disengage was that the wool didn't really attack, and thus was probably considered scary, but not dangerous, although civilians joined the existing fight when coming with water and food. I didn't really expect either burrows or militia disengagement to work, but if the burrows worked, it ought to have been possible to remove the militia from their squad.

[Sirbug]

I suspect skulls would bite

I suspect it lost its teeth, but I'm not sure. I seemed to try to push people around, but was mostly harmless.

Pretty funny stuff, but as long as proper shattering is not implemented, I'm not going to try reanimating biome again.

[BadLeo]

Somebody should engrave a picture of that epic battle.

*On the wall there's a picture of a piece of zombie wool. The zombie wool is surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are hammering the zombie wool. The hits are glancing off of it. The zombie wool is laughing.*

[PatrikLundell]

The difference between this dangerous piece of wool and the rather harmless ones is that this is a Reanimated Ram HEAD Wool, whereas one of the others was a Reanimated Ram LEG Wool. The HEAD wool might have gained the skull invulnerability of small skulls by combining the skull property with the small size of wool. After all, it was described as having lost ears, eyes, brain,...

[kingsableye]

I've ran into this problem in Adventure mode, except it was against reanimated head-skin
The problem is that it is just the skin (or wool in this case). You can hit it with slashing and piercing (and if you're legendary, as I quickly become from fighting it, you can hit it with blunt attacks). The thing is invincible, it cannot be slashed or stabbed apart, nor can you grab it with teeth and shake it apart (it escapes in a few ticks, faster than the ability to shake it about occurs even with superdwarven agility).
The best way to deal with this in Fortress mode is by building cage traps and trapping it, then you can safely throw the cage somewhere away from your dwarves. Alternatively you could cause a collapse on it, which make kill it or at least knock it down into a deep pit.
In Adventure mode it makes an excellent training partner. It will forever be alive to practice your fighting skills but it can never hurt you, even if you become so exhausted you pass out.

[PatrikLundell]

I ended up catching it in a cage, hook the cage up to a lever, and atom smash it in my captive atom smasher.