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[NEANDERTHAL]

Recently, I've heard the the world slowly becomes more more boring as titans, megabeasts, and forgotten beasts die. I propose a tag be made that will allow certain beasts to hide in lairs that are impossible to just walk into, so you'd have to dig into them in fortress mode to uncover the beast , if you really wanted to. Or, after 50-1000 years, the beast will break itself out, MUCH stronger than before. The inaccessible hibernation liars could be extremely well-hidden inside cavern pillar or other unexpected places. Other animals could hibernate as well, albeit for a MUCH shorter time. The beast could be triggered to hibernate after a certain amount of other beasts are dead. Some beast could not even have lairs at all, intstead just embedding themselves in the ground for your dwarves to find, unconscious. Unconcious beast could be encased in a cocoon or harden fed skin or such and be indestructible, and could be used as extremely (instant legendary or higher, depending on the world's "age") high value furniture, at least so long as the beast doesn't wake up.

[Pwned dwarf]

cool, I've always resented having no megabeasts in the world

[Dirst]

I think this was the original thinking behind the Forgotten Beasts, that they were just as powerful as Titans but less active and eventually... forgotten.

This idea is more in keeping with the term Forgotten Beast, and the current FB's can maybe just be called Titans.

[falcc]

This sounds great. It reminds me of Lovecraft, beasts sleeping in the Earth and deep beneath the sea. I guess the HFS is kind of this, thematically, and there's no reason the heads of goblin civs couldn't be included, but with megabeasts it has more not-immediately-destroying-the-world possibilities if they continue into play post-world gen. But it also seems like it'd work great with the myth generator accounting for supernatural sleeps and imprisonments. Titans could be locked away by the gods Olympian style and released through different events instead of just wandering caverns. Magic or artifacts could be associated with keeping prominent megabeasts imprisoned so there can be occasional consequences to thieving, ruin pillaging, or even hunting down necromancers. Maybe worshippers would seek to awaken or free them, leading to mines being financed or rituals being performed that require artifacts and specific timing. Maybe places could have festivals that keep the beasts in the ground, whether people realize that as the reason for doing it or not, and then the goblins could raid and when the festival doesn't happen a giant stone hydra comes out of the ground and starts stomping everything mid-war.

Other cool things could be localized problems related to a sleeping beast. The two dragon eggs under that kept causing earthquakes in the story of Merlin seem like good starting places. Creatures could create sphere associations in a region while they sleep, or natural disasters when they stir. And even if they didn't come out somehow especially strong, this seems like a good way to just get full-sized long-lived creatures without having giant dragons crashing into early world gen civs and destroying most of them once it takes time for armor knowledge to develop.

Maybe once constellations are modeled the stars can become right and release a bunch of horrors at once.

[NEANDERTHAL]

...constallations? Are you talking about aliens?

[Vattic]

Star constellations and other astronomy has been connected with myths, magic, gods, mysticism, and more for far longer than with aliens. Just look at the role the moon plays with werewolves.

[NEANDERTHAL]

So stuff like "when conigunnimo aligns with funojini, the beast unigornio will rise!"?

[healhound]

Semi-offtopic Q: has anybody seen a sleeping animal? I haven't, and it bothers me a lot. Do they sleep?

[pondicherry]

Star constellations and other astronomy has been connected with myths, magic, gods, mysticism, and more for far longer than with aliens. Just look at the role the moon plays with werewolves.

I want this...

[Splint]

Semi-offtopic Q: has anybody seen a sleeping animal? I haven't, and it bothers me a lot. Do they sleep?

Not normally, no. But if certain syndromes cause sleepiness, then they'll crash wherever until the syndrome wears off. Fun fact, I read somewhere (where specifically I can't remember) anything asleep is a valid blood bank for vampires.

This idea is more in keeping with the term Forgotten Beast, and the current FB's can maybe just be called Titans.

Agreed, this idea is more what I would initially imagine forgotten beasts as. And maybe calling them Cave Titans would be more appropriate? I mean there's cave crocodiles, cave swallows... Might as well keep the Cave train rolling.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

PTW. This would be fun to see in the game.

[StupidElves]

PTW

This would really neat if put into the game.

[NW_Kohaku]

The death of megabeasts exists in-game for a reason.  It's part of the story that DF is built to tell.  There's a logical progression of the ages that exists as part of the game's coding. 

In much the same way as Narnia or Middle Earth, (and I'll remind you, DF draws a LOT of inspiriation, especially the early stuff like the ages, from Lord of the Rings...) magic and the mythic are supposed to be gradually fading out of the world as it ages.  That's kind of why dragons and rocs don't breed in worldgen in spite of being able to do so in play.  Catching The Last Of The Dragons is more interesting than catching dragon hatchling #25126. Catching the last female dragon, and pulling out your male dragon such that you can breed them to keep this majestic, if terrible, beast still in existence such that magic will not die from this world yet is also an epic story waiting to be written. 

If you want more megabeasts, there's two simple solutions for you: Crank up the megabeast population in worldgen, and stop worldgen sooner, when less of them have had a chance to die.  If you are starting out with 200 megabeasts, and stop worldgen at year 100, I can guarantee you'll not be running out anytime soon.  (And for that matter, you might find elves or some other races nearly extinct if the megabeasts rampage hard enough...)

That doesn't even take modding, that's just hitting "advanced worldgen" and going to megabeasts and punching in a bigger number.

Likewise, megabeasts already hibernate, functionally.  This is mostly what Forgotten Beasts are doing all the time. 

Now, making, say, hibernation cycles such that bears, snakes, and frogs hibernate (and maybe some Titans, dragons, and FBs, too for a few years, maybe,) would be a decent addition to the game, but I don't see a reason why we need to make titans even more powerful than they already are when several of them (flying steel blob with syndrome titan, I'm looking at you!) are functionally invincible in any "fair" fight, anyway, and the ridiculously flimsy ones (mist titans that snap in half on a rabbit's nibble) wouldn't be helped by just arbitrarily upping their stats, anyway.