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[chairo]

I don't know if this idea has been brought up before, so bare with me.

We've all seen a ghost punch a Dwarves head clean off, or tear all his limbs off, or tear his leg off and hit him with it.

Do ghosts attack invading Goblins, or traders, or thieves? Would it at all be possible to weaponize these violent ghosts?

[Togre]

I'll be happy to bare with you.

<takes of shirt>

 

[Gerottomo]

The main problem I see is that you can't control where a ghost is. Due to their ability to go through walls.

I guess if you took the person they were close to and put them in whatever battle you wanted the ghost to fight it may follow them in?

Not sure if that would mean they would fight. Theres some good SCIENCE in here though.

[Callista]

I'll be happy to bare with you.

<takes off shirt>

 

Hey, don't do that! Before you know it, you'll be the one punching heads off. Those "no shirt" thoughts are pretty deadly!

Seriously, though, the only thing I know about ghost behavior is that they can reliably be trusted to hang around meeting areas most of the time; in my last Terrifying fort, the unmemorializable merchant dead used to be constantly haunting the memorial hall. You could probably set a meeting area aboveground to attract ghosts and hope they attacked goblins. The trouble is that this isn't guaranteed, and I wouldn't be surprised if ghosts looking for someone's head to crack will leave the meeting hall to do so. And "most of the time" isn't "all of the time". They just spent a lot of time there--it's a tendency, not a hard and fast rule.

The type of ghost is dependent on the dwarf's personality and mode of death. Some dwarves have worse tempers than others. I'm pretty sure that dwarves who died berserk or by murder are more likely to be violent ghosts, but that may just be because those dwarves are the ones with the bad tempers in the first place.

There's one way to weaponize ghosts that's indirect: Being "attacked by the dead" (NOT haunted; attacked) is a thought that goes toward the "doesn't care about anything anymore" descriptor. In a fort where dwarves were regularly attacked by weak violent ghosts, they could get that trait pretty fast. But zombies are much more reliable and safe for the purposes of "attacked by the dead", and seeing pets die is safer. I don't know if assigned wardogs count as pets, but if they do, that may be much preferable to keeping berserk baby ghosts around.