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[Niveras]

Can be fed at a dungeon cell (requires cages and rope, I think), but in my experience is a little buggy - sometimes a prisoner pastured on the cell when the reaction is run will stay hungry. The other five prisoners I had got fed fine, but that one didn't, so no idea.

You can butcher prisoners by 'v'iewing them, switching to 'p'references, and setting them for 's'laughter.

[heydude6]

I have some scalps, how do you preserve them?

[palu]

Tanner.

[caerul]

I'm building my library on level 3 of a 29x29 tower... now that I'm almost ready to begin actual construction on the library wings am I getting nervous. Are the stairs in the library's graphic functional? I built the entire tower's design based on the idea that they would act as stairs built into the library.

[burrito25man]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Suggestion:
Replace prisoner creatures with prisoner tools.
This means easy control of torture reactions.
Can be released to spawn the creature.
Can be used to gather more info, but destroys the tool.
Can be butchered to make bones/meat/soul/scalp.
Can be bisected to create more tools: 2legs, 1head, 2arms, 1 torso.
These individual part can be used to "build" special pets or civ members.
 - Thrulls, civ members with random bodypart mixes.
 - Fishing pets.
 - Igors, medical-skill civ members.
 - "Repair" Ghouls.
 - Improve Ghouls, like double headed ones. Or add an extra arm.
 - Warbeasts, like 4 armed guard zombies.
 - Scout like "Screaming heads", use bodyless head as early warning system.
 - Animated arms and legs running around, because why not.
These bodypart tools could also be butchered for bone/meat.

Following new civ members:
 - Zombie. Learns no skills, acts as hauler.
 - Thrulls. Specifically build Ghouls.
 - Igors. The medical helpers.
 - Lich. A magically able skeleton type.
 - More Warlock castes.

Vampires are not very... neat. It seems it is too hard to micromanage them in their current state, so I will either remove or alter them. Suggestions for more Warlock types are more than welcome.

will increase the rate of Warlocks though.

Warlocks could get a ranged spell.
Witches a slow/paralyze spell.
Summoners make Mephits once a year (normal Warlocks wouldnt create them anymore)
Sorcerer gets three minor starting spells. Support, mostly.
Enchanter creates a random, magical item/weapon/armor. (free once a year, like Mephits)
Necromancer buffs zombies/ghouls/skeletons around him. (good military leader)

Thats six castes, with different abilities. Ranged, melee, AoE, Support, Creature creation and item creation. Sounds good so far?

I could buff whip-weapons. They had been nerfed because vanilla whips are lightsabers.
 I could add a frenzy ability from drinking blood/bloodwine. Would give it more uses.

A "ground all flyers" reaction in the orrery.

I really love everything mentioned here. One thing that I remember seeing mentioned was the conversion of prisoners to warlocks. Now I feel this would be a little too easy to merely change Overlord prisoner directly into death dealing necromancer, so I feel that a middle stage would be necessary.
in my free time, I have been playing with the conversion of a special prisoner (called him "gifted human" for now) to a lesser caste of warlock, a warlock acolyte. The idea would be the creation of the proverbial wizard's apprentice, who has the same skill set as any other warlock (because your necros have better things to do than summon 1,000,000 blocks ). The caveat would be that the apprentice ages, does not learn spells, and has a lower skill rate of then the regular warlocks. I haven't worked out how to conduct the change from apprentice to full warlock, but it has to be something substantial to prevent a huge influx of spell casters. I think that the best way to do this would be to require the skeleton of another warlock, but I don't think you can use civ member remains as a reagent. Thoughts?

[Lord Aldrich]

I like the apprentice idea for creating new warlocks. Maybe it could use a time progression mechanic like the human squire -> knight ->  paladin line does (cultist -> apprentice -> warlock?). Or maybe a combination of time progression culminating in some expensive, profane initiation ritual.

Another bug report: all of the illumination buildings are free, you don't actually need an hourglass/brazier/candelabra to build them.

[palu]

A massive amount of souls?

[Lord Aldrich]

That, and perhaps a significant chance for the ritual to fail and kill the apprentice in a spectacular and horrific fashion?

I think that might be an interesting way to rebalance the grand convocation spells as well. Instead of consuming the warlock outright, give it a chance to fail and spawn some hostile monstrosity? Unless you have to have a creature for the transformation to work (I haven't really poked around with dfhack, not sure how that's implemented at the moment)? As another alternative, if apprentices were a thing, you could make the grand convocation spells consume them instead. I don't know, maybe people are happy with the way it works now, I just can't see my warlocks willingly sacrificing themselves for the spell effects, it seems too altruistic...

Edit:

Oh! Maybe there is a way to limit the number of apprentices to 1 per existing full warlock, or to just 1 total, like is the current situation with the overlord? That plus a time progression of two years and a chance for a failed initiation seems balanced to me. If your apprentice kicks the bucket in their invitation you'd have start over the time progression, you wouldn't just have an unlimited pool of other apprentices to redo the ritual with.

[Jilladilla]

perhaps a significant chance for the ritual to fail and kill the apprentice in a spectacular and horrific fashion?

Oh! Maybe there is a way to limit the number of apprentices to 1 per existing full warlock, or to just 1 total, like is the current situation with the overlord? That plus a time progression of two years and a chance for a failed initiation seems balanced to me. If your apprentice kicks the bucket in their invitation you'd have start over the time progression, you wouldn't just have an unlimited pool of other apprentices to redo the ritual with.

This seems okay, keeps warlocks precious, but allows you to (very slowly) recover from disaster

[Mithril Leaf]

A massive amount of souls?

Perhaps a half dozen megabeast souls?

[SharpKris]

bug list!:

-prisoners dont get hurt by being tortured, had 4 of them tortured on repeat for about a year getting mostly caravan info but not much otherwise besides letting them eat once in a while.

-Weasels are soulless and are basically unbutcherable though you can ressurect them as zombies.

-captured invader don't react to the turn into ghoul recation in the torture chamber. (i've tried pasturing,building the cage and stockpiling it right next to the torture chamber with no results 

- also my overlord can't be ressurected for some reason i have only 2 warlocks so its not an issue with former resurrects as i had none. (tried to run the reaction with him in his coffin and when that didn't work i took his body to the alter and still nothing happened)

[SharpKris]

so how do i brew blood goats milk?

[danmanthedog]

The reaction for making a new warlock could have a chance to kill or turn them into abominations that go on a killing spree.

[Lord Aldrich]

The reaction for making a new warlock could have a chance to kill or turn them into abominations that go on a killing spree.

That's what I was suggesting above. I think that this, along with a limitation on how frequently you could attempt the reaction (via a system with a limited number of apprentices that take time to develop) would result in a fun and well balanced mechanism for getting more warlocks.

Looking at the code for the overlord transform and human squire -> knight progression, I don't think this would be terribly difficult to set up. I'll see if I can throw it together later today.

[burrito25man]

The reaction for making a new warlock could have a chance to kill or turn them into abominations that go on a killing spree.

That's what I was suggesting above. I think that this, along with a limitation on how frequently you could attempt the reaction (via a system with a limited number of apprentices that take time to develop) would result in a fun and well balanced mechanism for getting more warlocks.

Looking at the code for the overlord transform and human squire -> knight progression, I don't think this would be terribly difficult to set up. I'll see if I can throw it together later today.

I completely agree 
For the squire > knight transformation, I haven't looked at it but I believe it runs via number of in game ticks. After XXX number of ticks, a syndrome actives.

As another alternative, if apprentices were a thing, you could make the grand convocation spells consume them instead. I don't know, maybe people are happy with the way it works now, I just can't see my warlocks willingly sacrificing themselves for the spell effects, it seems too altruistic...

A way to do this is simple. Have all the non-warlock castes have itemcorpse to a "mangled follower's corpse" tool. These "bodies" can then be used for the relevant reactions. Way I see it, in a necromancer's dungeon the only ones to be legitimately buried anyways would be the warlocks themselves. And to mediate a "non-rotting corpse" item, I imagine the body shriveling up upon death.