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[Staalo]

I recently expressed my puzzlement over rains of vile filth in my new fortress, founded on a calm forest/mountain biome. After a short speculation I decided to try if I could reproduce it using a backup of the same world. So, I started a new fortress, picked the same spot and embarked.

Here's the starting spot, a 4x4 area spanning over three calm biomes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see, an evil mountain range looms in the next larger map block, but there's still over twenty embark squares between my embark and the nearest evil square.

Onwards!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My expedition arrived in a peaceful woodland location, with some gentle slopes of a mountain range rising to the east. Within few moments of arrival:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The rain is falling on both wooded biome areas of the embark; the mountain area is unaffected. As far as I know the rain doesn't do anything visible, or maybe the trees protected those few "volunteers" I sent to the forest.

So... what's really going on? Could evil weather really get blown this far from its origin or is this a bug?

[PatrikLundell]

I recently had evil rain in a non evil embark. Oddly enough, the rain never reached the ground, but formed (graphically invisible) puddles one and 2 z levels above the ground of the perfectly flat embark, and it did land on my guard dog tower (which was elevated). The explanation I received from the forum is that evil weather can spread 3 embark level tiles from their source to hit surrounding areas. In my case I also received 3 waves of flying undead in the year before abandoning (I was trying to test the new mechanics, not fight undead...). Land based animals were normal.

I'd take a look in the one and two levels above ground by panning around in the 'l'ook mode to see if you've got puddles as well.
There's some speculation that evil weather/terrain might be vertically separated from the ground, i.e. the ground is one alignment and the air a bit over that being evil, but that's pure speculation.

[Staalo]

Yes, looks like exactly the same thing is happening here. I first thought the tree canopy was stopping the rain from hitting the ground; I'll know for certain once my woodcutters have made a suitable clearing.

This is going to be either good or very bad news, depending on what that rain is going to do to keas and other flying creatures.

[Staalo]

Confirmed: I see floating pools of vile filth suspended one level above ground level.

Some of the goo is reaching the ground; I suspect ordinary rain is washing it down from those floating pools. Luckily it seems harmless since most of my animals are already covered with it.

[arbarbonif]

It seems that higher z levels can be different biomes.  According to dfhack I've had a few cases in earlier versions where the ground level is not evil, but the higher z levels are.  They also can have different wind power as well.

[DeKaFu]

I'm wondering if this is related to what happened to me today.

Just started up my first fort in over a year, spent all afternoon carefully choosing the site and preparing my embark... Picked a site straddling a temperate grassland and a temperate savanna, both neutral. Had just managed to get the first few levels designated and the bedrooms/future tavern carved out, when I suddenly got a combat report showing up.

A big group of "eerie murk thrall ravens" had shown up and were attacking each other. Inspecting both the live and dead ravens showed a covering of "eerie murk" on them...

Long story short, they attacked some pastured animals and thralled them, and then those attacked an outside dwarf and thralled them, and then they all killed each other until only one horse thrall remained. Since I hadn't been expecting anything like this I'd been putting off defenses... didn't even have any doors yet. Horse thrall marched down into my tavern and killed everyone, fortress over. Very sad.

The closest evil region was about 3-4 world-map-embark tiles to the east. I didn't see any evidence that an actual evil cloud showed up, though... I think the ravens just flew onto my map as wandering wildlife. I lost my save when the fortress crumbled, but restarted from an initial embark save, and the same raven thralls showed up again a few months later, so it's repeatable, and really not what I was looking for out of my non-evil embark...

Is this something that happens often? Should I put it up on the bug tracker? ...and is there any easy way to selectively disable evil weather after embark? I was really pleased with that location... :/

[gchristopher]

Here's a couple bug reports that might be relevant:

0008781: Raining blood in "good" biome.

0008724: Evil rain in a neutral-savage biome

8784 looks to be incorrectly labelled as a duplicate of a different bug relating to normal weather announcements. (Normal weather, rain, etc, is pretty unrelated to evil weather interaction events, as far as I've ever been able to tell.)

It looks like they could use some save games uploaded to 8781.

The thing where it's happening only above ground and where others have observed evil rain and different biomes above ground level might be related.

[PatrikLundell]

0008781 has been updated with a save. Thanks for notifying that a save was needed.

[DeKaFu]

For an update on mine...
New fortress, same world, same general region. This one is on a Temperate Savanna "Wilderness" biome. Still no evil nearby.
Already had one "Great Horned Owl eerie murk thrall" show up. Unlike the ravens in the previous fort, this one had no trace of eerie murk covering on its body. My doctor wrestled it to death with his bare hands with no ill effects, outside of minor injuries all over his body and some bruised guts.

No longer convinced this is related to evil weather happening on this map, but I still can't explain it. Keeps getting weirder. :/

Really hoping the next out-of-place thrall follows suit and leaves its eerie murk at home, though. I can deal with the abnormally dangerous wildlife, but not with the highly contagious zombie pandemic.

Edit: In retrospect, it's been raining on-and-off on this map. Is it possible the owl had its eerie murk cleaned off by the rain?

[SaD-82]

In case of the owl it could have been a wandering creature.
While playing Adventure Mode sometimes you can see thralls/husks/zombies (all clearly changed by evil rain/clouds inside an evil area) wandering through normal landscape.
As armies will path through your fortress to reach their destination, it could be the same with roaming monsters.

[DeKaFu]

Could that happen even with unnamed, non-historical-figure wildlife though? Because these all seem to be regular, nameless, everyday birds that just happened to catch the eerie murk bug. None of them showed up in legends except for the converted-on-site horse thrall that murdered everyone in my first fortress and gained a title in the process, and the raven thralls appearing obviously preceded that.