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[pisskop]

No other body part is as necessary, with the Lower body coming close.  The head is literally only important because of the brain.  If you didnt have the brain nobody would die from having it chopped off.  Except by the obvious blood loss and perhaps the spine, but the spine is also a distinct, moddable part.

afaik this isnt true. creatures without brains, spine, or blood, will die from having their head chopped off. maybe this has to do with the default humanoid body implementation somehow?

the [Head] tag (specifically the head tag in body_default, not the head as an object) is redundant, but still gets flagged as required if the creature has it to begin with.  Contrast hydra to the various headless creatures that exist in DF.

[Dirst]

You know how it only says your right arm is gone when you lose the arm? You are actually missing your entire body when you are dead, but because the upper body is the base of the body it only says your upper body is gone.

Still, isn't it just as correct to say that their lower body is gone if they have been chopped in two pieces?

If you look at the BODY tag of a creature, the first part is always the one that has the "upper body" tag in it.  It's the core onto which the rest of the bodyparts attach, so everything else is a child part to it.  As Cptn said, it's like losing an arm and not seeing notices about missing fingers.

Once the upper body is removed along with its child parts, the only thing left of the creature is its soul. With enough DFHackery, you can actually do things with that soul.

[Max™]

Speaking of which, I was trying to copy the save over to a new folder to see if I could get .14 working and apparently saved over the original with the only backup being nearly a year and a half before my last post there...

[Bumber]

Have you gotten duplicated dorfs before, has anyone?

It's possible in adventure mode with the quick travel duplication bug introduced in DF2014 (which may or may not be entirely fixed yet.)

"Just now, I killed me." It was inevitable.

[TruePikachu]

Have you gotten duplicated dorfs before, has anyone?

It's possible in adventure mode with the quick travel duplication bug introduced in DF2014 (which may or may not be entirely fixed yet.)

"Just now, I killed me." It was inevitable.

How does that work? Multiple Unit structs referring to the same HistEnt? Or multiple HistEnts?

[Bumber]

How does that work? Multiple Unit structs referring to the same HistEnt? Or multiple HistEnts?

I don't know. Found the relevant thread. It's actually a retire bug, with fast travel kind of maybe fixing it temporarily.

[Max™]

I remember my first time playing with arena mode and as I was learning how to spawn things I made a huge column of goblins that collapsed on itself and when I ran around killing them they would utter the seemingly nonsensical statement "in a time before time I attacked me", I figured it meant they fell in a pile and their own arm or knee struck their body... now I'm not so sure.

[99Hedgehog]

Also, why has no one argued over what is actually gone if you are cut in half at the waste? Is the upper body gone or the lower body gone?

When you die, it describes you as "your upper body is gone", so it's the upper body that's missing apparently.

[Naryar]

I'm sure Armok collects dead upper body piles instead of skull piles.

He teleports them away when people die. After all, the upper body is where there is the most blood...

[Bumber]

Also, why has no one argued over what is actually gone if you are cut in half at the waste? Is the upper body gone or the lower body gone?

When you die, it describes you as "your upper body is gone", so it's the upper body that's missing apparently.

That just means the entire body is missing, since the upper body is considered the root. The lower body is missing from the upper body. The upper body is missing from the soul, which probably escaped through the newly created opening. (Why else would bisecting kill a non-organic critter?)

[IndigoFenix]

Fun facts about bodies, souls, and the life-death boundary in DF (based on DFHack experimentation):

A unit (that is to say, any creature, living or dead) always has a body and a soul.  When a creature dies, it is flagged as 'dead', which prevents it from appearing on-screen or doing anything, however, it still exists.

The corpse of a creature is an item, and is in fact only loosely connected to its unit through a reference number.  Corpses have body data, but this data is simply copied from the living creature at the time it dies and is not, in fact, the creature's real 'body'.  The 'real' body of a creature remains in the place where the creature originally died, albeit invisible and intangible, which is why ghosts appear where the creature originally died, not where the corpse is at the time of their rising.

A ghost is the actual original creature, with the same body and soul, only with a single 'ghostly' flag set (and, interestingly enough, the 'dead' flag switched off), and some new ghostly behaviors added.  DFHack can easily flip the 'ghostly' flag on and off with almost no change to creature behavior, except that it cannot attack or be attacked by creatures ('ghostly battering' runs off of a different system than standard combat), can fly, and can move through walls (but only if it is not carrying or wearing anything).

When a creature dies through in-game methods, all of its body parts are immediately flagged as 'missing', although the 'dead' flag can be hacked on and off without removing a creature's body parts.  The reason why dead creatures have the description 'his upper body is gone' is due to a quirk in the description system, which only describes the 'bottom-most' break in the body 'tree' that is missing.  If his left upper arm is gone, the game doesn't need to also say that his left lower arm, left hand, and each individual finger is also missing.  The upper body is the 'base' of the body tree, so when the entire body is gone, the game only describes that the upper body is gone.

All creatures are programmed to die immediately when their last HEAD part is removed/destroyed, or when any part flagged 'LOWERBODY' are removed/destroyed.  This is irrelevant to whether or not these parts contain actual vital organs - a creature with NOTHOUGHT, or that stores its brain in its chest, will still die when its HEAD is removed.  If you make a custom body part that resembles a head but isn't given the HEAD flag, removing the head will not kill the creature, unless it needs the brain to survive, at which point it will die shortly afterwards due to vital organ failure, generally through suffocation.  This is why removing the head of a zombie will kill it instantly, but the intact headless corpse can still be animated (or even resurrected) just fine.

Each creature also has a historical figure entry, which is separate from the creature itself.  A unit has a reference to a historical figure, but it is possible, through standard modding, to create a situation in which multiple units share the same historical figure, by creating an interaction that allows resurrection of body parts that are not FIT_FOR_RESURRECTION.  This typically results in very buggy behavior, though, such as units with blank names, and can easily cause crashes.

Animation of a corpse (or bodypart) creates a new soul (and historical figure - this is why a zombified body part can actually get a name and title of its own if it scores enough kills), while resurrection implants a copy of the original soul and reconnects the revived creature to its original historical figure.  In both cases, a new body is created by copying the data contained in the corpse item.  The FIT_FOR_RESURRECTION tag exists in order to prevent the multiple-copies-of-one-soul problem, since every creature must have one and only one UPPERBODY part.  As previously stated, modders can get around this, at the cost of bugginess.