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[IndigoFenix]

After a long wait, the Plump Helmet Men are back and updated for DF2014!  Now once again, you can experience the fun(gus) of keeping a herd of rowdy and baleful sentient mushrooms under control!

This mod adds Plump Helmet Men as domestic pets for dwarves. The new-and-improved Plump Helmet Men are cheap, trainable vermin hunters, and most importantly, they are delicious! They breed quickly, can be slaughtered and eaten, and their 'meat' can be brewed into valuable and tasty Plump Helmet Man wine.

But beware...Plump Helmet Men are smart and resentful, so don't let their low price fool you. If you let them outnumber you, they may turn the tables on your dwarves, picking fights with stragglers, covertly murdering civilians in their sleep, even passive-aggressively rotting with the intention of driving your dwarves insane. Can you keep these mushrooms under control, or will you succumb to the Overgrowth?

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[Rammok]

Cool. I've not made them domestic pets, but I have added Plump and Blood Helmet Men to Dark Ages, as trainable exotic pets in [R1][40.24].

[Deon]

The most interesting thing about this mod is the guerilla war the pets lead against you.

[Meph]

The most interesting thing about this mod is the guerilla war the pets lead against you.

Would also make a good basis for any civ that keeps prisoners of other races as pets.

[Baffler]

Yeah, it's awesome. I think I'll try to train the non-breeding males for war and attach them to fortress guard units. I figure they can pack enough of a punch to considerably boost a squad's stopping power, if they're managed properly. If only I could give them weapons and armor. But can they be gelded? These would probably travel all throughout the fortress in such a career and I don't want them to... mingle with the civilian PHM population and push their population higher than it should be.

[IndigoFenix]

They can't be gelded, that would ruin the fun

You can generally keep them under control as warbeasts if you make sure they don't outnumber the squad members.  Assigning several to accompany a single hunter is usually a bad idea, though.

They are a little less volatile this time around - I had to make a whole new script to deal with the new AI for interactions.  (To put it simply, creatures interact a LOT less frequently now, and more randomly at that, so the population counting system is less reliable overall.)  Less volitile, but also less predictable.

To aid with this somewhat, I left in a few of the indicators I used for testing, PHM thinking about rebellion will blink with a purple question mark occasionally, and when they go into rebel mode they will flash with an exclamation mark.  Not sure if people will prefer it this way or the old way.  It fits the mushroom-men vibe a little better when you could never tell what they were planning until they suddenly attacked someone.  On the other hand, it's fun to watch the exclamation marks spread among the population.  (Not every "revolt" will actually lead to an actual attack.  There's a lot up to chance.)

It's pretty rare for PHM to actually gang-rush a target right now; they have to outnumber non-PHM by five to one before they'll go all-out.  They might occasionally take a swing at a passing dwarf at random when revolting though, which can potentially lead to all kinds of chaos.  Actually, most of the damage caused by a revolt seems to be from dwarf-on-dwarf combat in the aftermath of the revolt itself.  Loyalty cascades don't happen in DF2014 in the same insane way they used to, but it seems that if a dwarf sees another dwarf chasing a PHM through the halls, not realizing that the PHM punched him first, he will get angry and start trying to defend the 'innocent' mushroom man by attacking the 'aggressor'.  Usually there are only a few fistfights before it dies down but if you've got some hotheaded miner swinging his pick around during a brawl, accidents will happen... I've also seen one instance of a farmer going all Captain Ahab on the particular PHM who broke his leg.  He kept dragging himself after the PHM and getting beaten up by the other dwarves around him.  Everyone was feeling 'vengeful'.

[Arx]

I am disappointed you violated your promise to call the next release "The Fungus Amungus".

I'm tempted to try this out just for the novelty of the concept.

[GM-X]

Plump Helmet Man Overgrowth Returns is now blended with Dark Ages. Many minor changes and additions were made, namely your mod was fused with the Blood Helmet Men, something I had been working on before your lovely mod post.

You were given credit on the lore page of the site IndigoFenix: http://dfdarkage.com/lore.html

[IndigoFenix]

I am disappointed you violated your promise to call the next release "The Fungus Amungus".

I didn't forget, I'm saving that for when I figure out how to put the cordyceps infiltration back in.   
This may happen either before or after the update where they prepare for a rebellion by causing some of them to double in size.  The name of that update should be obvious

Plump Helmet Man Overgrowth Returns is now blended with Dark Ages. Many minor changes and additions were made, namely your mod was fused with the Blood Helmet Men, something I had been working on before you lovely post.

Cool.  Are the Blood Helmet Men any different from the Plump Helmet Men?

[GM-X]

Plump Helmet Man Overgrowth Returns is now blended with Dark Ages. Many minor changes and additions were made, namely your mod was fused with the Blood Helmet Men, something I had been working on before your lovely post.

Cool.  Are the Blood Helmet Men any different from the Plump Helmet Men?

Not by much. Stronger. Different booze. Some innate skills. Fewer in number. Gelding. Cost more. No miasma. Equips. They are more or less just another great animal men race (to enslave). Only ones that can be purchased at embark.

Your interactions are possibly the most clever I've seen. I did just drop them in, I hope that is okay.

[Baffler]

Yeah, it's awesome. I think I'll try to train the non-breeding males for war and attach them to fortress guard units. I figure they can pack enough of a punch to considerably boost a squad's stopping power, if they're managed properly. If only I could give them weapons and armor. But can they be gelded? These would probably travel all throughout the fortress in such a career and I don't want them to... mingle with the civilian PHM population and push their population higher than it should be.

Followed up on this, I decided I would continuously raise the number of PHM auxiliaries assigned to each guardsman as long as they were kept under control. They were all male. Females in this particular fort are generally kept separate from the general population as a means of population control. I find that while two will never make trouble unless they run into others in an otherwise empty part of the fort. I had to redesign the breeding area where females and studs are sequestered¹ to prevent just this sort of difficulty. three are somewhat difficult to manage and will attack maybe one in four times if they catch the handler corporal alone. Four or more tend to be so rowdy that they're basically unmanageable, and impractical for military use. Soldiers are given stewardship of two for the foreseeable future. So far they haven't seen any meaningful combat so no word on that.

¹I'm quite proud of my PHM stockhouse. It's laid out with one stud per 4 females. Each female is kept chained alone in a 2x3 room set in a box around a larger center room containing a single male. The male is pastured so he has free roam of the central enclosure and to a single tile of the female enclosures. Pet-passable double doors separate the male enclosure from each of the female enclosures to keep the PHM separate, and each cell is visible from the corridors outside.

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As such. The actual one has six such blocks, three in two rows. An 10 man speardwarf squad patrols it 24/7, with 1 patrolling  one permanently posted at both ends for both hallways at all times. I put them there after a string of riots sprung up after the females gave birth.

[IndigoFenix]

Wow, Baffler, that's a pretty elaborate system you have there.  It's cool to see people giving actual thought to their PHM stock, most of the time I hear that they simply stuff them all in a room and accept the losses from the inevitable rioting.

I prefer to let them mill about in the meeting area and just let my abundance of idlers keep them passive, but then again I am not very good at keeping my population working efficiently so that works.

[richieelias]

I am disappointed you violated your promise to call the next release "The Fungus Amungus".

I didn't forget, I'm saving that for when I figure out how to put the cordyceps infiltration back in.   
This may happen either before or after the update where they prepare for a rebellion by causing some of them to double in size.  The name of that update should be obvious

How will Plump, helmet men determine which ones double in size? Will it just be random, or will they hold some kind of Japanese elections?

[Meph]

Another idea: They can spawn a secretion, which causes the floor to get covered. Either harmless, but causes more labor for the dwarves (cleaning) or harmful, so that barefoot dwarves are affected by some syndrome.

You could also make them spawn vermin that has VERMIN_EATER, so if you have a rebellion you get swarms of tiny mushroom men that destroy your food stockpiles.

[Baffler]

Another idea: They can spawn a secretion, which causes the floor to get covered. Either harmless, but causes more labor for the dwarves (cleaning) or harmful, so that barefoot dwarves are affected by some syndrome.

I like this idea. It's just the kind of passive-aggressive trouble that such a creature would make. If I were making it I'd have them emit dust that causes coughing fits if inhaled, done at some point between miasma-ing themselves and open revolt.