New version out, featuring the Vampire Counts (Von Carstein) as a new playable faction. Manual stuff in spoilers below. I also integrated Deon's DF Wanderer mod, though partially. The reason for the partial integration (rather than full) is because of the changes coming to adventure mode. Since I expect some stuff will be changed in his mod thanks to that, I will wait until adding the adventurer reactions.
Minor changes (Had them on a file, have no idea what happened to that file, forgot what the changes were).
In the case of reactions that spawn evaporating stones, I've changed colours from all being grey to grant feedback. Blue is a good effect, red is a bad one and grey is mixed.
Rebalanced vanilla weapons.
Longsword renamed to Arming Sword.
Fixed Strigoi transforming into themselves.
Strigoi should drink blood on bite attacks now.
If a ghoul somehow drinks vampire blood, they'll become a Crypt Horror.
Increased size of Vargheists.
Dwarf strand extractors should be called runecarvers instead (thought about runesmith, but then you could end with a "dwarf runesmith runesmith")
Added Storms of Magic.
Added Lore of the Wild and Lore of Nehekara (won't be seen for a while, but are done).
Added Ghoul and Liche adventurers.
(Partially) Integrated Deon's DF Wanderer.
Added playable Vampire Counts.
For lack of a better title.
"Alignment" refers to the sides that can be created within DF. While an entity might be at war with other entities of its own side, it will always be hostile to those belonging to another.
There are five possible sides, plus independents, that can be made, though only four are playable. They are defined by the presence or absence of certain tokens either at the creature level or at the entity level. The tokens that define the sides are BABYSNATCHER, ITEM_THIEF and OPPOSED_TO_LIFE. Tokens that can cause hostility to all are UTTERANCES, the absence of INTELLIGENT and CAN_SPEAK (is implied in INTELLIGENT, but can be defined outside of it) and CRAZED. OPPOSED_TO_LIFE creature renders the entity unplayable, and as such is not used (except partially for the vampire counts). An intelligent creature capable of speech is part of the default side, that I'll dub "civilized". The sides, such as they are, are defined below:
Civilized: Dwarfs
Snatcher: Vampire Counts
Thief:
Thief + Snatcher:
Others: Trolls, Ghouls, Gnoblars
So, even if it wouldn't fit too much (or at all) with the lore of certain factions, these tokens must be used to create the usual rivalries.
Replacing the much dreaded evil clouds of vanilla DF are the Storms of Magic.
Storms of magic are something of a gamble regarding what will happen when any creature is caught in it. The creature may temporarily gain the ability to use a certain spell, or maybe they'll mutate into a chaos spawn, they could be possessed by a daemon, or perhaps their brains just won't be able to take on the magical overload and succumb. Or maybe nothing at all.
Clouds have some variance based on the region it spawns, meaning that certain effects will only occur on good regions, some only on evil, some only on savage, and some on all.
There are some rules as to who can be affected with what, though:
-Dwarfs, Khorne Daemons and those blessed by Khorne in general cannot be affected by anything.
-Creatures can only learn the temporary spells available to their faction (so no humans with dark magic).
The second playable faction, the vampire counts are based on the Von Carstein bloodline.
There are several castes in the faction, which can be split into two groups: Lords and Servants.
The lord castes are: vampire, necromancer, and wight king.
Before I describe any of them, what they have in common is that they have the ability to remove "opposed to life" from any who have it. You may end up having to cull the pacified undead in your map from time to time to keep FPS in line, but it may be worth it for the added protection. Furthermore, with the exception of the ghoul, all servants start opposed to life by default, which means that if your fort has nothing but (regular) wights, skeletons and zombies you get a game over.
Vampires are, as mentioned above, based on the Von Carsteins. Think Dracula and you won't be far off. Every single vampire knows a lore of magic (vampire, shadow or death), for more info on magic check the respective file of the manual. Vampires are, of course, bloodsuckers, but very few of your minions have blood! And you want to feed the vampires, because they won't just get slow like other bloodlines: if a Von Carstein goes for six or more months without feeding, they'll devolve into a vargheist... permanently! Maybe you'll want to, sometimes, do that on purpose, but more often than not you'll want to keep your bloodsuckers as they are. To avert such a fate, keep ghouls around your fort (in an emergency, necromancers, traders and visitors may end up getting drained to sate their thirst). Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent bloodsucking from being a crime, so keep that in mind. Aside from that, vampires are tougher than their mortal counterparts, and are more than capable of learning various skills (except manual labour, because that, after all, is something for your minions).
Necromancers are also ageless like every other caste (except ghouls), though unlike their worldgen brethren (who become Liches instead (irrelevant for the current release as there is no one who can become a necro)). Unlike vampires, they need to engage in mortal needs such as eating and drinking, meaning you want to have a farm going. They can also use magic from the get-go, specifically Vampire or Death. Like vampires, they disdain manual labour, but won't get any attribute boosts either. I suppose you could turn them into vampires themselves if you want by somehow making them drink vampire blood.
Wight Kings are simpler than the other two. They are great at fighting, they serve as a lord, they enjoy all the benefits of undeath without thirsting for blood and are great at fighting. They are not so great at anything that is not fighting, however, and cannot use magic.
The servant castes are: wight, ghoul, skeleton, and zombie.
Wights are pretty much lesser versions of their noble counterparts. Not being actually intelligent, they can perform various tasks your lords would not. They also differ from skeletons and zombies by being able to (very slowly) learn skills and being naturally good at melee combat.
Ghouls are actually living creatures that are often enthralled by greater undead. While in the lore they are strict carnivores, I've relaxed that restriction here because most corpses will end up reanimated (preventing butchering). They can learn, albeit slowly, though more hunting and combat-oriented labours will be easier to level.
Skeletons and zombies might as well be put together since their only difference is the lack or presence of flesh. They are somewhat slower than every other caste, are not intelligent and cannot learn. Still, they have no needs and can be just reanimated if they fall.
Due to the lack of DFHack, they only get two workshops in the shape of the Shrine of Nagash, in which you can sacrifice corpses in exchange for a chance at buffs (only for the Vampire and Necromancer) and the Alchemy Lab.
Besides that, they have, besides those already present in the base game, access to weapons such as the scythe, club and shovel.
Vampires can make blocks out of bone, in addition to the cloth and leather available to others.
But, perhaps more importantly than any of the frivolity above: they can decorate their objects with spikes.
Addendum: If you pay attention to families in the legends mode, you may find certain oddities like vampires having children or ghouls giving birth to skeletons. This is an unfortunate limitation of DF, because any caste can give birth to (or marry!) any other caste, and you need at least one male and one female caste to make them even spawn in worldgen in the first place.
MISSING STUFF:
This is the stuff that is missing due to there being no stable release of DFHack yet.
-Ritual Circle
EDIT: Since there is an alpha of DFHack now, I'll try to add stuff I otherwise couldn't with it. Will likely throw in a new civilization in with it, likely Skaven (and probably based off Tiler's files that were posted in this thread)
