I made me a Goblin Fort mod, with the All Races Playable mod as a starting point. Took me a week or so of tweaking, but I finally got goblins tweaked to how I wanted them, and embarked happily.
It's now first summer, and I'm seeing a very bizzare bug. The goblin caravan has shown up (makes sense, goblins are active all seasons), and brought an outpost liaison with them.
Here is where things get really stange: the liaison will not meet with my leader, not because of conflicting jobs or anything, but because she's frightened of goblins, and goblins are frightened of her. For like two months now, she will head for my leader, see some random hauler or fisher at the fort entrance, and scurry away. Said fisher will spam me with a "task interrupted by liaison" prompt, and run away in the opposite direction. Dwarf Therapist reports that they had a negative thought for combat or some such.
Things of note:
The liason is a goblin, from my civ, as reported by DFHack.
She is not cursed in any way, also as reported by DFHack.
The merchants she came with happily unloaded their goods and traded with me, no funny business.
The leader does not have an office or a bedroom (this is the first summer, they're getting dug out ATM)
I changed the world's raw of the goblin creature to require food and drink AFTER embarking (but before ever unpausing). They eat and drink fine.
I'm a total noob at playing (or modding Dwarf Fortress specifically)
What I changed, in case it's relevant:
the entity for goblins, a lot
- they live in cities
- they have preset noble positions, all the way up to king (which means no more stupid... whatevers were there before)
- their name entity is now not EVIL, but something else (I found this necessary to get rid of the demonlords)
- tweaked their biomes, reactions, allowed clothing, religion, pet use, worldgen adventurers
- changed the civ value for murder from personal matter to severe punishment
changed the goblin creature raw, mostly to have them not get stomped in worldgen
- increased fertility
- gave some innate combat skills
I'm entirely unsure what's going on now. I can kill the hapless liaison through DFHack, and hope that her replacement isn't as scary/cowardly. But I don't want to unless it's absolutely needed.