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[callisto8413]

If my fortress gets a Necromancer how do I use them to safely bring back the dead?  Any blueprints on how to set up the chamber and what to do if the dead come back as just mindless zombies?

[Bumber]

For safely bringing back the dead, you just need 3 rooms (corpses, necro, and hostile mob) separated by fortifications and raising drawbridges (to block sight.) Opening the bridges causes the necro to panic and raise the corpses, then you can shut them again.

For the mindless zombies, I'm pretty sure the only guaranteed way to kill them without damaging the corpse is to freeze or obsidianize them. Since corpses still rot while encased, that makes obsidianization the only viable option. (Probably most practical to raise one corpse at a time than set up several corpse cells with an obsidian farm each, but that needn't stop a determined overseer.)

[delphonso]

Bumber's suggestion is correct, visually here is the one we made in Smallhands.



The left cell contains a puppy. This did not work, it was too adorable, and was later replaced by a cyclops.
The middle cell has our captive necromancer (note, he's not a citizen, just an invader we captured.)
The right cell has a dead dwarf.

The bridge can be hard to keep track of if it is only one tile wide, so we kept track of it with the position of the lever. The necromancer might take a while to notice the cyclops or the dead body - their vision is apparently not great, thus the one-tile-wide bridge rather than 2. You'll also notice a drawbridge at the bottom of the dead dwarf cell. That's to deal with mindless undead. A cage-trap behind the door also allows you to capture them, if you want, by unlocking the door.

Burying a dwarf will make it impossible to raise again. If they become a mindless zombie, it is likely not worth the effort to kill them and try to raise them again. If this is a character you really care about, make an adventurer, find a slab or book, and raise them as an intelligent undead yourself. It's maybe a 50/50 split on being raised as intelligent or not.

Potentially you could save scum it - I tried to raise Phonso in Smallhands about 5 times, and each time he was mindlessly undead - so I'm unsure if there's some mechanism that I'm unaware of with how necromancers raise dead bodies.

[callisto8413]

So the idea is to scare Necromancer with something dangerous but not able to reach them and making sure the corpse you wish to bring back is in sight but also contained in some way in case it goes wrong.  Like maybe holding the corpse in a room with two exits.  One for intelligent undead and one that goes to a storage area for weaponized zombies to be released when enemies show up?  Sounds like I need to experiment on my own.  I have weaponized weres so zombies should not be that much of a problem.  Cage traps would be useful....

Thanks!!!

[Hans Lemurson]

Can cave-ins cause the necromancer to enter combat?

[Mobbstar]

Can cave-ins cause the necromancer to enter combat?

I conducted a quick test in Arena mode:

• spawn angelshark, wait until it air-drowns
• spawn human necromancer on a tile next to it
• go two tiles farther and spawn a banana tree in the air, then unpause and let Fun happen

Result: The cave-in flung the necromancer and the corpse around, and knocked out the necromancer at some point, but no resurrection happened.

I repeated the experiment twice and got the same result, for a total of three test runs.  The necromancer can resurrect the corpse when manually controlled.  In conclusion, cave-ins do not trigger necromancy per se, but it is not clear if the problem is the knock-out or the lack of combat targets.

[Bumber]

it is not clear if the problem is the knock-out or the lack of combat targets.

You could add NOSTUN to the necro (using dfhack's gm-editor, set curse->add_tags1.NO_STUN to true) to test the former, but I suspect the issue is the latter.

Edit: Apparently you can add UTTERANCES to units via curse tags. What if I give that to syndromes? Alcohol intoxication?

[FantasticDorf]

Id been lead to believe that storing corpses in a minecart might be a more optimal way of mass ressurecting without getting people upset at bodies, but id only recommend raising intelligent undead of members of your fortress already. So that'd be a route to and from the corpses (citizens and friendlies) stockpile after you've done whatever deeds nessecary to the *cough* ressurection room.

I also from a modding viewpoint don't know if using the make pet interaction token will get around the distinction either, as a necromancer with a lot of pet-intellidead of numerous races might be a bit more reliable if it gets around aggression if you ressurect a bunch of goblins for instance, or if the flipside of this is that the necromancer and fortress is fine with these creatures, but becomes emotionally invested in their wellbeing which could potentially make a big vunerability in the casters psyche with their infinite lifespan that means they are more likely to burn out long-term as zombie-pets get mulched.