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[Khym Chanur]

Unless a forgotten beast escapes to the surface during worldgen,  all it will do is "start wandering the depths" until it happens across the caverns of your settlement.  This is kind of boring, both when looking at the forgotten beasts in legends mode, and also when one arrives at your caverns without having any history behind it.  So, some ideas.

• They could encounter and fight each other (possibly leading to some of the dying).  When they arrived at your cavern they'd have pre-existing scars from these fights, and maybe even missing body parts.
• They could have encountered the caverns of other dwarven settlements before and got into battles with them.  This would not only give them scars and missing body parts as above, but also a history of fighting and killing dwarves.  Your fortress could be the one to avenge the death of dwarven heros of yore.  The beasts be still carrying around loot stolen from those previous raids, maybe even artifacts of legend.  And the beasts could make items out of the bodies of the fallen, like a necklace of dwarven skulls.
• The beasts could take over animal man civilizations, and arrive at your caverns with an entourage.
• The beasts could create primitive equipment (ripping stalactites or underground trees from the floor to use for clubs) which would become famous artifacts simply by being used by the beasts.

[Pilsu]

Expecting a "forgotten beast" to be well known with a rich history is kind of oxymoronic don't you think?

[Khym Chanur]

Expecting a "forgotten beast" to be well known with a rich history is kind of oxymoronic don't you think?

Ah, good point.  Maybe a name change when it becomes known, like "cavern titan" or something.  The same would apply to forgotten beasts that escape to the surface, since once they escape they aren't forgotten anymore.

[Felblood]

Perhaps the legends of forgotten beasts who haven't actually done anything should be hidden.

I mean, they are forgotten.

[PsyberianHusky]

Expecting a "forgotten beast" to be well known with a rich history is kind of oxymoronic don't you think?

I like the idea of one just coming into your fort, killing everything in the path of an artifact and the running back underground

[sweitx]

Expecting a "forgotten beast" to be well known with a rich history is kind of oxymoronic don't you think?

I like the idea of one just coming into your fort, killing everything in the path of an artifact and the running back underground

That might be interesting.  Have a generated fortress that reach underground cavern to be "destroyed" due to one or more forgotten beast.  So an un-revealed legend might go something like...
"Rumor has it that the fortress of DepletedLuck was destroyed by a creature of many eyes and tentacles."

[Draco18s]

I'm going to put my vote on this, as right now with worldgen needing 80% megabeast death to halt generation, if Forgotten Beasts aren't doing anything, then...world generation just keeps going!

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I say have them do stuff, but hide the legends- have the odd adventurer, megabeast or fortress die to them, but list the cause as unexplained in legends.

Then, when you kill them, they have some mementoes on them- maybe an artifact the adventurer was carrying, the head of the megabeast or a scrap of uniform baring the insignia of the fallen fortress, and let players piece the rest together themselves.

[MaDeR Levap]

I always thought that "forgotten beast" is just a cool name for new concept for new version of game: randomized beasts. :p

[Ilmoran]

Another alternative to the "Forgotten Beast" moniker is to have them start out as surface creatures (or keep them as underground creatures, works either way), have them get into a few tussels with civilizations, and then disappear from history for a thousand years or so (perhaps taking a city or two with them).  Might end up extending world gen time though.  The point is so that when they resurface, they've been "forgotten", but there's still the odd legend about them that is regarded as complete and utter rubbish.  For example, the Loch Ness monster could be a Forgotten Beast if it ate a few villages, and then disappeared for 1200 years.  By the time it's resurfaced, it's regarded as complete myth that never had any basis in reality... until it eats your dwarves who mistook it for "a bloody huge carp!"

I do like the idea of finding forgotten ruins underground,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And not just the HFS sword fortress

[sweitx]

I say have them do stuff, but hide the legends- have the odd adventurer, megabeast or fortress die to them, but list the cause as unexplained in legends.

Then, when you kill them, they have some mementoes on them- maybe an artifact the adventurer was carrying, the head of the megabeast or a scrap of uniform baring the insignia of the fallen fortress, and let players piece the rest together themselves.

I think whether to reveal legend or not is either a map-gen setting or an init setting (can't remember).