So I'm busy chugging away at my latest, three-year-old fort, using the job manager to queue up some jobs since my newly-elected mayor is cheesed off that he doesn't have a proper room. Close the job manager window. Jaunt around the fort a bit to see what's going on. Open the job manager window again and nothing happens. My manager has abdicated his role. As he was also my bookkeeper and broker, this means that a whole bunch of positions just opened up. So I assign some new dorfs and all goes back to the way it should.
There were no ambushes present on the map. No stealthed thieves or snatchers. I've looked in the sleeping area and see no bodies, so it wasn't a vampire. I've had no invaders breach the fort, so there's no dust or extract or anything like that lying around. I don't remember the name of the dorf I assigned, so I can't find out if he's actually still alive, but I've let the fort run for a while after I noticed he had buggered off and still have gotten no missing or death notices. The unit list doesn't show anyone who's not already dead, which is only a couple of dorfs so far.
I have had a necromancer siege, but a minotaur showed up and slaughtered him along with all of his zombies. Since then there have been no further outbreaks of the undead.
Where the heck did my manager/broker/bookkeeper go? Can dorfs abdicate their positions once assigned? I've never seen nor heard of that happening before. Is he gone missing or died himself somewhere and nobody has noticed so there was no announcement of his gone missing? If he had no friends (which is unlikely since he was one of my founding seven) will there still be announcements?