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[stickadtroja]

This the first time i post here, and even though i have had my fair share of ideas that i think would improve the game, they all have been suggested by someone else, in way better words and in greater depths than i could ever manage. english is not my first language and im not very good at express myself with words, so... try to pretend that this is all written in some super elegant, poetic way.

alright here goes:

Picture for yourself, a tall, hunched figure that slowly comes walking towards your fortress. Clad in simple clothing, it would be mistaken for a beggar or vagabond, but there is something different about this creature. There is a majestic presence surronding it and all who comes close is filled with awe.

So, the creature "Mystic wanderer" arives at your fortress. It is announced in the same way as a caravan or megabeast, and it immidiatly goes to see your expedition leader for a strange proposal.

It wants some kind of boon, a bunch of items that is hard to get, but not very valuable, like 50 turtles shells or rare gems or something. This is suppose to be a gesture of welcoming, a gift from the dwarves to the mystic wanderer.

after this request is granted , it will give you a proposal; "I will take one of your young ones, to wander with me, and learn the ways of old. The young will return here before when its grown and know things no other can."
So you then are able to choose one of the dwarfen children, not babies, and the mystic wanderer goes to fetch the child. It travels  to the edge of the map and disapears.

So one you have lost one of the dwarven children, it seems. To some weird stranger. The parents of the child react as if it died and get a bad thought and greif or drink or whatever they do.

BUT!
One day, after some time, always enough so the missing child would be a grown dwarf, it returns!!! HURRAH!
Two things are different though.
1. the former child, now dwarf, is legendary in at least one skill.
2. the dwarf has a mark, which is discibed in the thoughts tab.

the mark is of a certain type, elements if you will, and has its corresponding skill.

the idea was that the wanderer is somekind of deity, mage or elemental or something and has great influence over certain elements in the world. and this is what it teaches the child in some manner.

the elements should be something that has a useful skill corresponding to it, and i have thought of these ones so far.

mechanics
animals
farming/growing
stoneworking
metallurgy
clothing?

so say for example that the wanderer that arrives, is some long lost mechano god. the child which is chosen then returns with the mark of mechanics and is a legendery mechanic.

or the wanderer is some kind of wood watcher, entlike creature and teaches the child the way of animal training.

so, so far this is basically like fey moods for children (maybe they can have them already?), but this is not all.
the mystic wanderer is not some softhearted pansy like armok, the wanderer can cast curses. and it will do so in these cases;
you for some reason lure it into your traps
you deny it the welcoming gift
the chosen dwarf with the mark dies a unnatural death.

since chosen dwarf bears the mark of the mystic wanderer, it will not appriciate you putting the dwarf in the front of a suicide squad during a seige, or as a magma exploring miner.

now, the curses also is of the same nature as the mark and the skill. it belongs to the element of the wanderer. so if you killed the dwarf with the mark of mechanics, all the levers in the fortress are pulled by some unseen force, all at once, possibly flooding the dining hall with magma or removes the drawbridge under the caravan. if the mark was that of animals, maybe your tamed dragon is not so tame anymore, or all your cats gets hostile. here things could get really fun, like the curse of stone, which makes all your miners to break their hands or turn all your precious metalls into slate.

so maybe its not worth it? after all, you might as well train a regular dwarf to legendary, without the threat of magma flood or broken miners hands...
but heres the thing;
the dwarf with the mark isnt just any legendary dwarf. he can do stuff others cant. like planting longland grass underground with the mark of farming, or make stone beds with the mark of stone. nothing super amazing that you cant live without, just some neat thing that sets him apart.
just make sure he lives hes whole life and dies happy, or the mystic wanderer will punish you and make you taste the CURSES!!

i think this my whole idea. i kind of wanted something in the world that is not super dangerous, to give it more depth, and i thought it could be neat if something came to the fortress that wasnt useless caravans or blodthisty goblins.

one last thing; there should be a desciption when the wanderer arrives, or you press k and look at it, from which you should beable to figure out what element it belongs to. so the mechanic wanderer "moves with jerking movements, to the sounds of ticking and gears turning". birds could flock around the head of the animal wanderer and so on.

[Glitch(TMG)]

so, so far this is basically like fey moods for children (maybe they can have them already?)

Yes, this can happen (at least, last I saw in .31, don't know if it changed in .34). In one such fort, one of my dwarven children went into a strange mood and ended up creating an artifact bone warhammer, and when he grew up he immediately was labeled properly as a legendary carver.

[nanomage]

I guess for this proposal to fit into DF one would need a frameword to pocedually generate such wanderers, complete with traits and descriptions, and track their lives through the worldgen. Apprentice children and the wanderer himself should have their lives out of fortress tracked too and be prone to all matter of strange happenings. Some backgound for them would also be great, like them being lesser godlike creatures (kind of LotR Istari, dunno) or avatars of gods or disguised demons or traveling magicians or members of some histoical cult.
Finally, some genealization would be welcome, like "why always ask for items" or "why always take children" or "why always return them", and then we'd have a complete and thorough framework for interaction of dwarf fortresses with a class of supernatural creatures.

And at this point I'm sure we'll realize it's already planned

[Naryar]

So it's basically Odin ?

It's a neat idea.

[Di]

This one seems way to detalized but framework that would allow this would be really nice.

[Escapism]

This one seems way to detalized but framework that would allow this would be really nice.

I suspect, and hope, that the tavern overhaul will feature moddable or randomly generated travellers.

[Whatsifsowhatsit]

This one seems way to detalized but framework that would allow this would be really nice.

I suspect, and hope, that the tavern overhaul will feature moddable or randomly generated travellers.

I agree with both Di and Escapism. I would like such things to be able to happen, but not in such a scripted way as the original post implies. If something like this could be an emergent behavior of underlying systems, I would be extremely happy. If it were scripted, I wouldn't like it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, you might want to look at this thread on contract magic, which does have a more flexible framework for which an idea like this would be just a specific instance.