I want to embark on a husk biome, but I fear early set up. I think it would be slightly more fun than the resurrect undead biome, which honestly beat the hell out of me. Any deaths count up so fast it is worse for me than a sneaking necromancer (and those have made placing my fortress in the vicinity of a tower impossible.)
In practice, husks are a pain in the ass. If you embark on a location with husk-making fog, you have a time limit: the first time the fog turns something into a husk, you have to pretty much wall yourself in and watch as the map is slowly filled with husks, preventing migrants and traders from reaching your fortress and killing your framerate (they often fight each other forever). Even if you set up husk-murdering devices, most of them will just wander around, never actually trying to attack your fort.
If I understand it right... a dwarf husk can still trance.
I haven't seen that happen (and my husks have been fighting for ages), but I guess it could be.
Also I thought husks had been known to survive decapitation? That would be much cooler.
They don't. I've had some of them decapitated (clearly not bisected) by falling and they have died.
Regarding combat: certainly, husks can be killed by decapitation or bisection, but I guess your dwarfs would need to be real lucky for that to work.
Serrated disc traps work pretty well: looks like every limb severed by a hit is one less target for the next hit, and eventually the husk is decapitated or bisected because there are no more targets left for the traps to hit. Also, long falls. Husks assplode like every other creature when dropped a high enough height. My current drop trap is over 40 z-levels high and so far has proven 100% effective for killing husks.
And last: I have a corridor filled end to end with husks bodyparts and none of them have turned into brand new werelizard husks, so either no werelizard ones walked into the trapped hallway or the cloning effect isn't consistent.
Now my problem is mainly that most of the husks just don't bother attacking the fortress, so I'm considering either to train axedwarves, pump magma all the way up to the surface or somehow unleash my pet fire blob on the husks.