(accidentally asked this in the silly thread instead)
So a dwarven caravan came to my fortress for the N'th time and we traded with them just fine (I made sure they made over 10k in profits) and I look away for a while, when suddenly, I see job cancellations, and the unit screen tells me that some merchant animals have been caught in cage traps. I also see one merchant's axedwarf killing my fortress dwarves. I stationed my military near him and they killed him. The rest of the merchants started leaving a bit before that happened.
Can anyone explain what could cause a merchant guard to randomly start killing my dorfs without provocation?
You have any hostile chained creatures nearby? The merchant guards can attack the creature, and I think your fort members might be obligated to respond, and so on. Potentially werebeasts and tantruming dwarves could be
No, the only thing I have chained in the general viscinity is a tame dog. I do have a large number of caged prisoners and caged hostile creatures, but I don't think you can start a fight with those. The only lead I have is that this happened at roughly the same time as I released a goblin and a Giant Cave Spider into my silk farm, and the spider started shooting webs, but there is no way those could be seen by the merchants as they were several levels down and behind a wall. Unless one of them had [EXTRAVISION] i suppose. But even then, the merchant guard can't path to those.
Is it possible that either my dwarf or the merchant guard were the enemies of my civ, despite never harming another dorf since the fortress was founded?
Edit: now the elven marchants came. My civilians got scared of them and military immediately attacked them. It looks like all of my dwarves have somehow become evil!