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[ProjectXMark1]

What has happened to my mason, anyone?

One day, an announcement says:

Alath Edemging, Mason has been missing for a week.

Should I be worried? Is there some unknown force attacking things behind my back?

[AutomataKittay]

I've found it's usually happened when one of my dwarves dies or got atomsmashed somewhere out of sight of anyone and nobody's seen them die or their corpse.

Well, it would technically be unknown since your dwarves wouldn't know

[ProjectXMark1]

It's just that I had a tame goat and a rabbit have the same announcement related to them, and there's nothing deadly that I know of that Alath might have ran into, just a bit concerned that whatever made the dwarf and the animals disappear might be a threat to my fortress.

Oh, wait, is a Giant Olm anything to worry about?
Scratch that, it was in the sealed off caverns.

[smjjames]

You can also check the combat reports. Even if whatever killed them is not visible, the combat reports should still show up.

[AutomataKittay]

You can also check the combat reports. Even if whatever killed them is not visible, the combat reports should still show up.

Only works if it's combat or falling death. Starvation/thirst and atomsmashing doesn't gives combat report.

Though if it's not smashed, could use stock screen to zoom to the corpse ( I think it's corpse category, then tab to detailed stocks, and so on ).

[smjjames]

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about the stock screen. Death from starvation/thirst would show up in the announcements but might have gotten buried in announcement spam on the bottom of your screen.

[Larix]

Starvation/thirst/drowning/etc. deaths are only reported if they're witnessed or the body found. A dwarf dehydrating out of sight (e.g. stuffed into a cage in the name of justice) never gives a report upon death, just the 'missing' notice.

If a dwarf 'goes missing' and no combat report exists, your only hope is to go through the stocks and hope the location of the corpse gives a hint as to what the problem was.

The goat and rabbit probably just starved to death because they weren't assigned to pastures. It's a problem that crops up for me frequently - i buy some animals from a caravan and forget lining them up for slaughter or sending them to a pasture in the whole business of sorting through the trade loot; and two months later i'm told that 'the stray alpaca has been missing for a week', because dwarven eyesight doesn't allow spotting a corpse in a cage.