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Author Topic: Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants  (Read 629 times)

Bakaridjan

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Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants
« on: October 22, 2015, 10:40:27 am »

I'm trying to figure out what's going on in my fortress/world. I became the Mountain Home but I never appointed a single noble for my own fort before that. I have one baron from another settlement and then my mayor. I've also never appointed a Captain of the Guard. So when I got the message that I had become the mountain home I expected the queen (listed on my civ screen) to show up, but only the outpost liaison appeared and moved in. It's been a year now since then and queeny has yet to come take her comfy adamantine throne that I made just for her.

Just recently, the first dwarf caravan came after we became the MH. They came, we traded and I pawned all my starting tables and chairs off on them. I ended up having to call my military dwarves into the fort to deal with a little SNAFU in the arena. Their route took them by the Depot and all the sudden I start getting these message "X hammerdwarf found dead, X merchant found dead." I'm not really sure what happened, but my military killed all the escorts and all of the merchants who were escorting wagons. Oddly enough they left the foot/pack animal merchants alone. I'm not sure what to make of that, or whether it's related to the queen or not.

The only other piece of the puzzle is that a look in the Legends says that pretty much all of my nobles, including the current queen were all appointed late winter 251 (started in early spring 250). I don't know if that's normal or not. I couldn't track down other significant happenings at the same time. I'm envisioning a dwarven civilization-wide civil war or fight for the throne. It's only 255 now. Maybe the last Mountain Home didn't allow the queen to leave. Now when they send merchants we treat them like enemies. I'm sure none of that is coded in though.
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Bakaridjan

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Re: Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2015, 05:47:36 pm »

Double posting, but I've got more info. So after the dwarf caravan the elves came in the spring and everything went well until one of their merchants pathed by my trained dragon. The dragon nuked it, which was a little surprising since it's -trained- and all, but then it's not like anyone really has to justify burninating an elf to me. Then the humans came, and before everybody even makes it to the depot, a few of their crossbowmen start taking pot-shots at a few of my civilian dwarves. The military was not far away and it turned into a bloody mess, but the odd thing is that certain merchants and their escorts didn't seem interested in fighting. They did pack up and leave immediately and a few wagons imploded but I can't explain why some of their people attacked me and the others are all cool. Fortunately my one miner who took a silver bolt in the neck was protected by a sheep leather cloak or something. There were other minor injuries, but no deaths.

Anyways this make three caravans in row now with incidents, just at the time I'm trying to unload a bunch of crap from my fortress the easy way. Instead I end up with massive haul jobs dumping all their crap into my magma chute and then some of mine as well.

No word still from my queen.
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Vilkku92

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Re: Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2015, 05:48:27 am »

I have no idea about the queen, but do the caravans by any chance path through mountains of corpses on their way to the depot? They sometimes seem to get spooked by those and do weird stuff such as leave without trading or attacking your folks without apparent reason. I had something like that happen once, though it might have had something to do with a nasty wereskink infestation as well.
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Bakaridjan

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Re: Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2015, 03:35:54 pm »

Hmmm, interesting. I just had the dwarves come again and everything when without incident. I basically had them escorted the whole way by military and nothing ever started.

In the history of this fort, I only ever had one caravan arrive to big piles of bodies, because it couldn't be helped. They were humans and one of their wagons scuttled and they left, but there was no fighting.

What got me thinking though. Between the last human caravan that started fighting and the dwarf caravan that just went peacefully, I killed off my remaining cloistered weredwarf (coati I believe) and vampire. So they weren't there when the dwarfs came and things worked fine.

There's been seemingly weird stuff going on with loyalty and creatures. In the first dwarf caravan that started fighting, one of their hammerdwarves got caged and he was listed as a "merchant" in the unit screen. At some point, he changed to "friendly" and I released him and he wandered off the map, back to wherever he came from (Naked and missing both lower arms, I might add. That'll teach him to get rowdy in Presentgold!). The only thing that I can think of happening before I noticed he was listed as "friendly" was that my arena troll died. The odd thing about that was that this troll had seemingly been one of those "friendly" trolls that are getting more and more reported around here. But the original fight with the first dwarf caravan happened when one of my dwarfs wandered into the arena (my error there) when that troll was fighting a goblin. The dwarf started fighting the goblin along with the troll and that's when my military, that I had called to the arena, passed by the caravan and the original caravan fighting started. Did that troll somehow cause weird loyalty stuff?

With that troll, I could open the door to the arena after a fight and the dwarves would just come in and clean up while the troll wandered out the same door and got re-trapped. She would never fight with my dwarfs.
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Inevitability

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Re: Missing Monarch and Slaughtered Dwarf Merchants
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2015, 03:59:39 pm »

Actually, as far as I've seen caravan guards always change to friendly after the rest of the caravan has left the map. About the other stuff, I have no idea. Though I've had fortress dwarves start killing each other, most notably after I've executed a dwarf who was a part of an invading goblin army. So I guess there's a lot of weird loyalty stuff going on in this version.
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