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[Zeebie]

I've just had a couple of odd incidents in which members of the my military seemed to directly engage each other.  My fortress was attacked by a wereiguana (of course) which rampaged through my fisherdwarfs before being killed.  The strange events started when one of the bit dwarfs transformed into a wereiguana himself - the military quickly ran down to kill him, and had no trouble.  But immediately after he was killed, three axedwarfs started fighting each other, leaving two dead.  Interestingly, all the combat reports were blue as though they were sparring.   There were no particular repercussions and everything was fine until another dwarf transformed, and the resulting melee again left one speardwarf dead at his friend's hands.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?  The only possibilities that occur to me:

- One of the dwarfs instantly started a tantrum after the battle and his compatriots shut him down. There was no announcement of a tantrum or evidence of this in the dwarf description.
- Transformed werecreatures create some kind of loyalty confusion that leads to infighting?

[Cryp18Struct]

Sounds somewhat like a loyalty cascade.

see:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3259
and
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Faction#Loyalty_cascade

[PatrikLundell]

I suspect it's the latter, a "loyalty cascade" (as Cryp18Struct said). The dwarf transformed was a friend of some of the guards, and those friends then attacked the killer.
Try to isolate those bit by were creatures when the next full moon occurs (bricked in or drawbridge enclosed. Doors are not enough). Those who are not transformed should be safe and can be let out. Those that do transform can be dealt with in several ways:
- I think they can be convicted via the justice system, but I have no first hand experience.
- Atom smash them.
- Use them as expendable cavern explorers/shock troops. If they survive, any damages suffered will regenerate fully at the next transformation.
- Treat them as unfortunate victims and lock them up over every full moon, but let them out otherwise. Will probably be a lot of work that will fail at times. It should be possible to use pressure plates to deny them access to areas when they transform, since the were form is probably much heavier than a dwarf. Haven't tried that, though.
- Put them to work in isolation. You could device a mine cart or chute based system to get stuff in and out. Also note that weres of the same type don't fight each other, and so could be placed together and act as company (don't think weres can generate offspring, though).
- This might be the chance you've been waiting for: You can transform the whole fortress (some people do that)!

[Zeebie]

I agree that it was a bit like a loyalty cascade.  What surprised me was that it didn't continue any farther.  I haven't had a cascade for many versions, but back in the day they were fort-wrecking disasters that were very hard to stop. 

[Larix]

It may be a problem in the latest versions - i've had some issues that looked like berserk units don't trace their (lack of) loyalties properly, and werebeasts in beast form count as berserk.