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[Hotaru]

So, I may be getting my workable computer back today, and that means DF time! I'm tintillated, and planning a new vampire fortress already.

It would be a tripartite one, with
- Cattle living huddled in the soil, accessible to vampires, doing the menial tasks of the fort i.e. hauling, butchering, farming, mining, smelting
- Kindred (vampires) living in luxury in a tower above, dedicating their eternal lives to the mastery of combat and crafting
- Lastly, the chosen of the cattle living in a hidden subterranean vault behind an airlock system for bringing in food, practicing until their abilities are good enough to be locked as vampires.

Here's the design for the centerpiece - the fountain of eternal life (sorry, don't have paint on this one)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Side view
______well______
      l    ____to water
      l    ll___vampire access
      ^^^^ spike trap

What this poor-ass xrenderingx is meant to communicate is that: the chosen, noble donor vampire walks to the bottom, spike trap square (training spears) and is locked in. The spike trap is activated repeatedly, while the bottom level is filled as a pond from the level above (it drains again when the vampire is let out). This should produce vampirism-transmitting bloody water. Then it's just a matter of locking the chosen champion in with the well.

Notes for those who aren't yet in the know
- Vampires obey burrows
- Vampire syndrome is contagious from consuming vampire blood
- Vampires do not age, do not sleep, do not need to eat or drink (but apparently slow down without alcohol), do not feel, do not drown, do not get attacked by zombies or attack zombies unless ordered
- Vampires get a bonus to all physical attributes at the moment they become vampires, as well as some change in their material composition apparently making them tougher in combat. However, then their physical attributes are locked forever - do not rust, do not improve. This means you should train them first.
- However, they can learn new skills.
- It is apparently sufficient to have only vampires in a fort. There are several reports of this. This would of course make living in an evil biome pretty easy as I don't think they can become thralls either. The best place for the vampire fortress would of course be an evil mountain surrounded by an evil thick forest.
- Vampires are procedurally generated, hence some may be vulnerable to sunlight and some not
- Vampires do not apparently need to feed. Therefore a vampire soldier can actually theoretically just be stationed outside forever. No bed/food/drink needed.
- Vampires do take breaks, though.
- At this time the easiest way to detect a vampire is probably noticing the inconsistencies or oddities in back story (dwarf is former citizen of 23 rows of places... hm...) although the drowning chamber works, too. Or making your meeting hall and communal bedroom one shared space. A way to confirm, if you're not above abusing bugs, is attempting to change the vampire's name or title - for a vampire they will not actually keep the change due to it being a fake identity.

Questions
- If vampires are procedurally generated, does this mean their "vampire syndrome" affects the stats differently for each vampire, and grants different abilities for each vampire? Then you should be really careful about donors. Does this mean some are not contagious?

Also, vampire fortress discussion general if you like.

EDIT: It's now been confirmed to work. The same vampire questions keep coming up, so I changed the thread title to be more suggestive.

[NinjaBoot]

From what I understand, when it says vampires are procedurally generated, it means their weaknesses are randomly generated.  Do they take damage from sunlight, feeding tendencies, and other vampire related lore.

[MagmaSolutionsInc]

Simplest way to detect vampires - embark on a map with waterfalls.

"Oh hey! a waterfall!" glubglubglub*missing*
"Oh hey! a waterfall!" glubglubglub*missing*
"Oh hey! a waterfall!" glubglubglub*missing*
"Oh hey! a waterfall!" glubglubglub*missing*
"Oh hey! a waterfall!" glubglubglub*pissedoffdwarfsitsatbottomofriver*

[Hotaru]

From what I understand, when it says vampires are procedurally generated, it means their weaknesses are randomly generated.  Do they take damage from sunlight, feeding tendencies, and other vampire related lore.

Thing is, from what I understand from the example interaction it would seem that the original birth of a vampire from a divine curse and the transmission of vampirism are the same interaction, although written differently in history. And the vampire's extra tags are transmitted there. So wouldn't there need to be several interactions, actually, to produce the different kinds of vampires? So if there are, is there reason to believe the syndromes are otherwise similar?

[Ieb]

Do vampires limit their feeding to actual people?
Would be nice to have a bunch of guards who stay up all day and night, drink up a cow or two every now and then and then keep on guarding.

[Di]

I like the direction of your thought, however, let me point out that training spears are likely to be insufficient since they rarely cause even standard dwarf to bleed. And in case the marvelous setup of yours doesn't work out, I'd suggest making them bleed on floor bars over water source.

[Hotaru]

Do vampires limit their feeding to actual people?
Would be nice to have a bunch of guards who stay up all day and night, drink up a cow or two every now and then and then keep on guarding.

I don't think we know for sure yet. They apparently only attack sleeping things and hence other vampires are never in danger. AFAIK unknown if they might feed on an elf, if you could trick the elf to fall asleep somehow. On the other hand someone said that if they get really hungry they might attack a waking thing (but did Toady say otherwise?). Also, someone in another thread implied they had left them walled in a prison for extended periods of time without ill effect, so they may very well not need to feed at all. They seem to not feed outside burrows according to Boogeyman's find.

[Hotaru]

I like the direction of your thought, however, let me point out that training spears are likely to be insufficient since they rarely cause even standard dwarf to bleed. And in case the marvelous setup of yours doesn't work out, I'd suggest making them bleed on floor bars over water source.

Right, thanks. I was thinking 10x training spear to be sure not to hurt the vampire permanently by accidentally severing a hand, which I've seen happen with copper spears.

[NinjaBoot]

The number of Vampire curse types in-world is decided in the advance world gen. 

Not sure what else is generated with a curse though, so some science needs to be conducted in worlds with 1 vampire curse opposed to 1000 (max) curses to see if/what kind of differences there are.

[Hotaru]

Something pretty awesome that I didn't consider before:

If you level this up to mountainhome, you get the king or queen, right. So, you can have the eternal Vampire King living in his dark tower, surrounded by his nobles, and his royal undead blacksmiths and woodcrafters and soldiers. All devouring Urist McSoapMakers and Obok McTwoYearOlds hopefully at a slightly lesser speed than they are born in the world.

Also, vampire blood: Take one sip, and you will not grow old. Take two sips, and you will not know pain or sickness. Take three sips...

[Kavalion]

Okay, there's something to be said for having all your best dwarves become vampires and just letting them drain all the useless migrants.  I've had two vampires locked up together in my crypts and they've never drained each other, so it does seem possible to create an elite society of vampires.  It should also be possible to take cage trapped necromancers, collect the drained migrant corpses, and put them together to amass an undead army.

The question is just if we can really "artificially" create more vampires.

[Hotaru]

The question is just if we can really "artificially" create more vampires.

If you would feel comfortable testing it, you can build the eternal life fountain I described in the opening post. It's not copyright, actually I would be super flattered to have contributed something.

 I'm still waiting on a phone call, although considering the time, it's pretty unlikely I get started today after all (tomorrow's a new day).

[Psieye]

To guarantee it, mod some common food item to give the vampire 'syndrome' on consumption. That reminds me, haven't heard anything of people messing around with the new "syndrome on ingestion" feature we got this version. The evil must be too distracting.

[Montague]

I thought dwarves refuse to drink from water contaminated with blood or anything else? Or do they just get an unhappy thought from doing so?

I seem to remember announcements like "Urist McUrist cancels drink: Water source contaminated"

[Hotaru]

To guarantee it, mod some common food item to give the vampire 'syndrome' on consumption. That reminds me, haven't heard anything of people messing around with the new "syndrome on ingestion" feature we got this version. The evil must be too distracting.

Do we know how to reference the vampirism syndromes? The interactions examples are only examples after all.

Could also seek out a vampire with adventurer and drink his blood. I thought someone did already, but now I'm not so sure.