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[Captain Swing]

Many good dwarves died at the hands of the goblins, but after a protracted battle I managed to fend them off with only about a quarter of my fort going insane and trying to kill the remaining population - the first time, in fact, that this has happened. I'm rather proud of the fact. Although the goblins were deadly enough to destroy almost all of my army and most of my important workers, the mayor, pillar of the community, miraculously survived.

God I hate the mayor.

I have put up with his whining long enough to know that when half of my fortress is wiped out only for him to come out unscathed to prance around whining and throwing tantrums, he has to die. How do I propose to do this? I will build him his bedroom. And then I will divert a river through it.

I think that if I build the following arrangement:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

                                                                                        ^^^^^^
                                                                                       (CORRIDOR)
                                                                                   (OPEN FLOODGATE)
             (CLOSED FLOODGATE)(CHANNEL)(CLOSED FLOODGATE)(BEDROOM)(CLOSED FLOODGATE)(CHANNEL LEADING BACK TO RIVER)
(RIVER)<                                                                                                                                   
             (OPEN FLOODGATE)(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ORIGINAL COURSE OF RIVER~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

and then link all of the floodgates to the same lever, build the mayor's beloved bedroom and then assign it to him, I can create the titular Self-Flushing Murder Room - the room will seal whilst he sleeps, and he will then be flushed into oblivion by the fury of nature. However, I am still relatively new to Dwarf Fortress and still don't know the following things:
Will the mayor be flushed away by the river?
Will the furniture go with him?
Is there a reliable method of draining rivers on a map without much natural open space?
Will the mechanism fail spectacularly and flood the whole fortress?

I'll give more details if necessary.

[peskyninja]

The water won't go back to the river, you need to pump it or redirect it to the caves.

[Captain Swing]

So if I replaced the channel leading back to the river with a dirty great pit down to the caverns, would that work?

[peskyninja]

yup.

[Couchmonster]

Furniture is a "building" and therefore will not be moved.
If the water is on the same level with the room you build (or if the water is higher) the room will not drain, unless you drain it.

a) Use a draining room big enough to give the water room to evaporate. Water evaporates on waterdeepth 4 or lower.
b) Pump the water somewhere else
c) Use floodgates to destroy the water. Any liquid on a opened floodgate will be destroyed on closing the floodgate due to game mechanics.

[Quietust]

a) Use a draining room big enough to give the water room to evaporate. Water evaporates on waterdeepth 4 or lower.

Wrong - water only evaporates at depth 1 (unless it's outdoors in a "dry" environment, in which case it can seemingly evaporate at any depth).

[Muttonhawk]

2 things:

1. Remember to lock the door before flushing, lest a dwarf senses the mayoral socks are unattended.

2. Bonus points if you can get the mayor to "admire a fine floodgate recently".

[Captain Swing]

Thanks, I think I've got the structure figured out now. However, I still need to drain the river. I've had a go at this based on what was evidently a very loose interpretation of the draining page on the wiki that went something like this:

Upper Z-level:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ORIGINAL COURSE OF RIVER~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
                                              (TUNNEL)
                                              (TUNNEL)(FLOODGATE)(OPEN SPACE)(TUNNEL)(STAIRCASE)
                                              (................................................
                                               ................................................
                                               ...............OPEN SPACE................
                                               ................................................
                                               ................................................)

Lower Z-level:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

E                                                                        (*************************
N                                                                         *************************
D                                                                         ***********PIT************
O(///////////////////(********DIRT TUNNEL********)*************************
F////////DIRT///////(TUNNEL)                                      *************************)
M///////////////////(*OVER*)
A//////////////////)(**TO**)
P(FORTIFICATION)(*ROCK*)

and have ended up with what is best described as a walk-in fishpond, complete with fish that have must have come in from the river. I don't have the heart to kill the fish, so I'm just going to start over. Any idea where I went wrong?

[DrGravitas]

I tried something like this, once. Although, it was meant to be an automated drowning chamber. I would assign a special bedroom to the noble. It was deep in the fortress well past where any other dwarf would tread to go to bed. When the entered the room, they would trigger the device, which would lock them in and start the flow of water from above. The idea was that once they were drowned, and the water had filled all the room to 7 levels deep, another tile would trigger the opening of drainage gates and unlock the room. This would drain the water and the corpse out of the bedroom where the body and belongings could be collected later.

In practice, I actually built a device that was 33% swimming trainer, 33% waterboarding torture chamber, 33% laundry machine, 1% hilarious, and 100% failure.

The thing would never reset itself properly either, and I ended up having to lock a dwarf in the control room to reset it at the end of the thing before giving up and sealing the whole thing up.

Spoiler: So I guess my advice is Keep it Simple! (click to show/hide)

EDIT:
Ah, I found an old post of mine that goes into more detail about how it worked, how it mostly failed, and how I eventually did build an alternative semi-automatic solution:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64076.msg1492315#msg1492315

[Captain Swing]

I'm sorry, but that was more than 1% hilarious. On another note, would it work if I created a bigger channel that went off of the map's edge and then linked it up to the river?

[DrGravitas]

Mine eventually linked up to a brook. It can work, just don't expect it to do so easily. Also, when dealing with rivers, be careful what level you put it on, relative to the river, or you may find your self with a surprise flash flood if you don't keep an eye on it. I did that once with a a turbine battery I was using to power my magma pumpstack in a different fort. Make sure your channel is amply capable of holding the river's output.