Hey. I haven't posted on the forums before but this seemed like a pretty freaky event so I thought I'd put it up for discussion. I considered putting this in the stories thing but it seems like a bug that would work better here...or not a bug. Discussion either way.
So I started a new adventurer file today, and it seems normal at first. I get that little intro message thing, but then when I press enter, it says "You have discovered an expansive underground cavern."
I assumed it was some weird bug, maybe a cave was nearby and the cavern was already revealed somehow. So I take one step, and see this.
Giant wall of dust extending 10 blocks into the air. Like some kind of earthquake happened. So I duck in that house, and wait for a while (at 2 fps) then go back out and the dust is fading away. Some kinda clay plateau was to the north that looked like a cave entrance, but no cave was anywhere near it. Next I decided to fast travel to look around. I see on either side of the village I started in are rivers that go towards the ocean and turn into double tildes, I guess a tributary, so I go investigate one. Note this was a good distance away. When I come down from fast travel, I'm on some clay platform raised out of the ground. It's filled with holes, and waaay down under the holes is a mess of crisscrossing rivers and pockets of water. There appears to be no way off the plateau. I take one step, and suddenly the screen is engulfed in the dust again. It says I take the full force of the impact and get engulfed in boiling magma several times, then I smash against an obstacle and my brain is torn and I die. I should have thought to take a picture of this.
So yeah, worldwide pyroclastic flow. I tried to start a fort on that world (I didn't save on the adventurer's file) and DF crashed. I made a peasant and couldn't find any more ash, then got killed by bogeymen, then made a demigod to look for the same spot and it crashed again.
I couldn't find anything online like this. So, any ideas as to what this was? Bug, volcanic eruption mechanic that was secretly added, asteroid impact?