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[flarn2006]

So I'm waiting for this zombie siege to end. I have some dwarves outside that I'm pretty sure are all dead, but the majority of my dwarves are inside with the drawbridge up. I dug out a room and put some coffins in there, but some of them say "This is the resting place of Dwarf Corpse." I have it set to allow citizens and not pets. How do I make them bury only citizens? I don't feel the need to memorialize the enemies.

Also, how long do these sieges normally take? I thought they only occurred in evil biomes and near necromancers' towers. (I did murder an elven caravan before; could that have anything to do with it?)

[Jacob/Lee]

Yeah, this irritated me as well. I don't think I actually bothered using coffins then, just making slabs for whoever died. Sorry I can't provide.

Zombie sieges are lead by necromancers and only happen when they attack and you get the purple message "The dead walk. Hide while you still can!" Necromancers can ambush as well, which produce no signs until they either get caught in a cage trap or start raising corpses. Even while raising zombies they'll still be under cover until they're spotted. In evil biomes, any valid parts are automatically raised after a little bit, even if they're in the hands of a dwarf or in a coffin. These produce no special messages and will attack your dwarves like normal.

Back to sieges: I've never actually seen one end on its own. Other invaders get bored and leave eventually but I had to catch or strike down all the zombies to end the siege. Pretty sure the necromancers will run off eventually, but their creations stay.

[flarn2006]

I got the message about the dead walking, and it says "SIEGE" in the corner. Should I just lower the drawbridge to fight the zombies and hope for the best? It could be Fun, I guess.
Also, is there any benefit to using coffins rather than slabs?
EDIT: Actually according to the wiki it's possible to wait out necromancer sieges.

[Jacob/Lee]

Despite what you might think when fighting shambling corpses, even a 1:1 battle with unskilled soldiers will probably get your men massacred, and you're most likely outnumbered by a good bit.

There's no functional difference between using a coffin or a slab except the coffins are filled automatically while you must manually order slabs to be carved and engraved. You might be sitting in the fort for a while, so I hope you don't rely on any outside goods.

[flarn2006]

Yeah, I was really only going to open the drawbridge if there was no chance they'd go away naturally. Also I've got a couple ghosts in the fortress...will memorializing them make them go away? And what can ghosts do to dwarves? Just give them unhappy thoughts?

[Jacob/Lee]

Yeah, I was really only going to open the drawbridge if there was no chance they'd go away naturally. Also I've got a couple ghosts in the fortress...will memorializing them make them go away? And what can ghosts do to dwarves? Just give them unhappy thoughts?

Burying them or engraving and building a memorial to them will make them disappear. If you use {k} to view a ghost, it gives a description including its type and what it does. Most ghosts will be a "forlorn haunt" (or restless) which hang around familiar places or haunts people and cause unhappy thoughts. Dwarves who died in especially violent ways (like berserking) can rise as a violent or murderous ghost who batter dwarves to death. There's also a bunch of inbetween ghosts who don't really do anything except possibly waste a bit of time, like poltergeists who "misplace" items that will draw up another job to move them back to an open stockpile, or ghosts who make noise and produce the negative thought sleeping dwarves would have if they were too close to a workshop with a job going on. Most of the details can be found on the wiki's ghost page.

You'll typically want memorials if the dead dwarf "fell" into magma and was torched completely or happens to be lying at the bottom of a lake or something. Also note: you can shove any bit of a dwarf into a coffin (including the victim's single toe cut off) and it'll count as them being "properly" buried.

[Keldane]

Just to add, Jacob/Lee is understating the potential of ghosts a bit - ghosts that "batter" dwarves are well known for ripping limbs off their victims in the process. While a lucky dwarf may escape with just a collection of bruises, one frequently hears stories of horrific injuries to dwarves as a result of unhappy haunts, and woe be to you if it's your chief medical dwarf on the receiving end when you have patients waiting. For some reason, that seems  to jack up the likelihood of horrible death. =P

In other words, slab those suckers as quick as ye can.

[Lagash]

by gesturing I raise this topic again.  [sorry in advance for my poor English ^_^]

I have moved in the neighborhood of a tower because I find much FUN with undeads, and at now I am going good with many captive necromancer in the fortress and A LOT of corpses...

but I cannot bury anyone of my deads (few) or necro-dwarves deads (also few but their ghostly presence may be dangerous-FUN leading if they spawn near my dead's pile) because every time I build a coffin and mark it for citizen burial a dwarf corpse APPEAR inside, nobody carried it.
I have also tried to atom smash every dwarven corpse there were in my corpse stockpile but this thing of "teleporting undead's corpses seeking for eternal rest" is still haunting me.

Now I am engraving lot of memorial slabs and living with it, I am also massively crafting coffins to test if this behaviour will end after "enough" wasted rocks (test starts with a batch of 200 coffins)... but does anyone knows if there is a way to keep using coffins instead of slabs and leave the zombies to rot?

EDIT: internet left me in the while so I have the results of the "tests"... after 201 buried "dwarf corpse"s I regained the ability to bury other entities. According to the Dead/Missing list there are 201 dwarven corpses deceased so the math is easy.
I tried also to deconstruct and rebuild a couple of coffins, marked one for use after rebuild and the corpse returned there so I left the other one denied and marked for burial a "fresh" one in another room and... the second corpse appeared there too.

I assume there is no way to NOT bury unknown brainless rotting dwarves and now I have a 250 graves graveyard for a fortress capped at 120 dwarves; sounds like "Come with us! Death is common as drinks here!"

[Garath]

is the corpse actually in there? they tend to say it's the coffin of someone while they're still dragging the corpse there

[Catsup]

this is one of the most annoying "bugs" ever, because in addition to taking up coffin space, enemy dwarves cannot be handled in any way if caged (ie, pitted, penned, restrained) and can only be un-assigned from a built cage or released through a lever.

i suggest deleting your current world and making a new one and modding dwarves with the tag "CANNOT_UNDEAD" so they cannot become undead during world generation, and thus will never be used against you in a necromancer siege. You can remove the tag later when youre actually playing so that your dwarves can still come back as zombies for fun, but you wont have to deal with 50+ dwarf corpses sent at you from every necromancer siege that takes up all your coffins.

i asked if it was possible to mod dwarves to be able to be handled in cages like other sentients, as well as being treated like other corpses, but apparently its impossible because its hardcoded.

[Lagash]

i suggest deleting your current world and making a new one and modding dwarves with the tag "CANNOT_UNDEAD" so they cannot become undead during world generation, and thus will never be used against you in a necromancer siege. You can remove the tag later when youre actually playing so that your dwarves can still come back as zombies for fun, but you wont have to deal with 50+ dwarf corpses sent at you from every necromancer siege that takes up all your coffins.

And THIS will be, nice hint! 
Just a little curiosity:
necros won't use dwarves against me and zombie sieges will spawn only elves/humans but the number of undeads ...
a) is minor
b) is the same

thanks for this blessed solution.

[Hurkyl]

I don't feel the need to memorialize the enemies.

He wasn't your enemy. Some poor dwarf was out merrily chopping trees to fuel the furnaces of the mountainhome only to be surprised and killed by an undead monstrosity, and his corpse violated by a necromancer. His soul had to endure the heart-wrenching torment of watching his desecrated corpse wreak terror on the living for so long, even his name has been lost to the mists of time.

And now your fortress has finally put down his corpse one and for all and freed it from the terrible enslavement to the necromancer, his soul only has one final wish: that his body could finally be laid to rest safely beneath the dirt and the rock in the halls of his brethren.

But now, so close to having this nightmare end, you are leaving his corpse out to rot, unloved and unwanted, and will crush his spirit completely just as his final ties to the mortal world are to be severed.

*tear*