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[Random_Dragon]

So some players have found vampiric citizens useful for making a fort effectively immortal, as they don't actually NEED to drink blood, and a sealed-up vampire is effectively safe from everything except vengeful ghosts and going insane from lack of clothes, or from outliving their far squishier mortal friends.

So I had a thought about rendering that second hazard a moot point. If a dwarf goes berserk then of course they no longer count as citizens, and therefore can't be used to keep a game from ending. But a melancholy or stark raving mad dorf should still count towards population. Since they can't die of thirst or starvation, and the melancholy ones will be confined safely anyway from any convenient ledges (plus they can't simply drown themselves), then you could render a fort truely impossible to lose to anything except a lucky ghost.

So, I'm pondering the viability of saving vampires from going insane by driving them insane. Add some nifty spikes and a way to drain blood into a water source, and you have a way to procure additional "test subjects" in case an initial vampire goes berserk instead.

[Sutremaine]

a sealed-up vampire is effectively safe from everything except vengeful ghosts and going insane from lack of clothes, or from outliving their far squishier mortal friends.

Ghosts: Give the vampire access to slabs. One pick in a cell surrounded by rock will be sufficient, though you can give them workshops and a bunch of blank slabs if you want a ghost put to rest in a hurry.
Lack of clothes: Assign them armour.
Bad thoughts about dying friends: Easy if the vampire has mooded, more difficult otherwise. You could injure them repeatedly to traumatise them to the point where they don't care about anything any more, which will dull the bad thoughts considerably. There are also the usual happiness generators of furniture, personal possessions, and mist.

[Random_Dragon]

a sealed-up vampire is effectively safe from everything except vengeful ghosts and going insane from lack of clothes, or from outliving their far squishier mortal friends.

Ghosts: Give the vampire access to slabs. One pick in a cell surrounded by rock will be sufficient, though you can give them workshops and a bunch of blank slabs if you want a ghost put to rest in a hurry.
Lack of clothes: Assign them armour.
Bad thoughts about dying friends: Easy if the vampire has mooded, more difficult otherwise. You could injure them repeatedly to traumatise them to the point where they don't care about anything any more, which will dull the bad thoughts considerably. There are also the usual happiness generators of furniture, personal possessions, and mist.

I'll admit the armor solution is easier for dealing with clothing. Hell, it's my preferred solution to civilians needing replacement clothes, once my armorers and/or leatherworkers can ramp up production.

Mass-producing vampires through a contaiminated well then driving them loco sounds more dwarven though. Serves the little bloodsuckers right.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I prefer my caged melancholy/stark raving vampires - the ghost can't target them while they are in cagespace.

IIRC dwarves that have had a successful strange mood (artifact) can't go insane, so turn one of those into a vampire and cage him. If you let him commit a murder first, you may be able to cage him using justice, and then wall off the cage-containing cell so he is never released. I don't know if that causes job cancel spam. May want to use other tricks to get the vampire caged.

[Random_Dragon]

I prefer my caged melancholy/stark raving vampires - the ghost can't target them while they are in cagespace.

IIRC dwarves that have had a successful strange mood (artifact) can't go insane, so turn one of those into a vampire and cage him. If you let him commit a murder first, you may be able to cage him using justice, and then wall off the cage-containing cell so he is never released. I don't know if that causes job cancel spam. May want to use other tricks to get the vampire caged.

Yet another potential option for exploiting vampires and rendering them safe from harm, that could sound promising.

I would like to test whether a fortress population of just one stark raving mad vampire will really work though, as I dunno the nuances of whether the game decides to shrug and hand out a game over or not.

[Melting Sky]

My experience is limited to a single vampire I have had living in my current fort for a couple of years, but they actually seem pretty easy to keep happy just by giving them a nice place to hang out and some masterwork armor and a quality weapon. Her happiness has been slowly increasing since she arrived rather than decreasing. It also seems to help to give them some goblins to tear apart on a regular basis for additional happy thoughts but I think you could just entomb one in a nice room with some high quality gear pretty much indefinitely without them going mad. Perhaps I just haven't had mine long enough, but from what I have seen its not hard to give a vampire a nice enough prison that its actually quite content to sit out eternity down there.

I almost killed my vampire on discovery after she drained a couple of poor peasants but I'm glad I kept her around. A vampire hammer lord is a true beast in battle.

As far as driving them crazy goes, I think dwarfs have very strong predispositions towards which form madness they will suffe4r from based upon their personality traits.  For instance if you have a dwarf that is easily angered, then they will almost always go berserk if they get unhappy enough rather than melancholy so I would pick your vampire carefully based upon their personality traits if you want to avoid having them go berserk. I don't know how the game handles game over as far as madness is concerned and whether or not it differentiates between the flavors of crazy when it comes to this purpose.

[Nuoya]

Dwarves who have completed an artifact can't go insane. It's not exactly feasible to force a particular citizen (vampire) to get a mood, but there are certainly ways to increase it's probability.

[Random_Dragon]

Dwarves who have completed an artifact can't go insane. It's not exactly feasible to force a particular citizen (vampire) to get a mood, but there are certainly ways to increase it's probability.

So one could further exploit this by manufacturing vampires and either waiting for them to get moody, or just letting them go nuts. Either way you'll eventually solve the insanity problem.

[Thormgrim]

I had one that I stuck into a series of nice rooms with good furniture and doors between them.  I assigned the vampire to a squad of one (to give him armor instead of clothes) and simply stationed him inside the rooms and locked the doors.   Whenever I needed to give him something, I stationed him at one end, locked a closer door and unlocked the door at the other end.  It was easy and he was happy with all his stuff.

The hard part was keeping the nimrods from making him mayor all the time.

[Random_Dragon]

The hard part was keeping the nimrods from making him mayor all the time.

I generally have to always reassign my mayor as I almost always pick someone that has easily-sated preferences yet apparently has all the charisma of a potato, as my choice gets undone every so often by the plebs. o3o

[Nil Eyeglazed]

The hard part was keeping the nimrods from making him mayor all the time.

I decided to roll with this once, and figured out how to make a perfectly functional vampire mayor.  It's easy to get a vampire assigned to a chain-- just make sure there's only one chain, in the mayor's office.  After that, forbid the chain, and nobody will ever release the mayor, who will continue to hold meetings from his chain, since it just happens to be in his office.  I think I had some weird pressure plate/hatch things going on too, but I don't think they were actually important, maybe just so I didn't even have to forbid the chain.

I really loved the image of the chained mayor meeting with unhappy dwarves, consoling them while fruitlessly lusting for their blood.  I've always wanted to make an exterior noble's office in an evil biome, taking advantage of the vampire/zombie truce to allow trade agreements without allowing fortress penetration.

[doublestrafe]

Rovod! At last, we see each other plain! 'M'sieur le Mayor'--you'll wear a different chain!

[Random_Dragon]

Vampire mayor, sure.

Though when things eventually go downhill and your mayor goes nuts from a dire lack of slade mugs...

Melancholy and stark raving mad dorfs can't conduct meetings or issue mandates, right?

Using an insane chained vampire mayor as a fort's route to immortality sounds even more dwarvenly than my original idea! ;_;

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
Melancholy and stark raving mad dorfs can't conduct meetings or issue mandates, right?

Using an insane chained vampire mayor as a fort's route to immortality sounds even more dwarvenly than my original idea! ;_;

Dwarves who go insane, vampire or not, instantly lose mayorship. A new mayor is chosen where possible.

[Random_Dragon]

...
Melancholy and stark raving mad dorfs can't conduct meetings or issue mandates, right?

Using an insane chained vampire mayor as a fort's route to immortality sounds even more dwarvenly than my original idea! ;_;

Dwarves who go insane, vampire or not, instantly lose mayorship. A new mayor is chosen where possible.

Damn. Any other uses for an insane vampire? o3o