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[Spinning Fly]

A while ago I had a berserk dwarven caravan merchant (who got caged and subsequently released and killed by his own guards) come back as a violent ghost. Fortunately his skeleton was still sitting in my corpse stockpile, so I managed to put him to rest.

Shortly after this a vile force of darkness arrived...which comprised of 21 humans, 13 elves, 4 dwarves and not a single goblin. I guess the snatchers must have been working really hard. Since about 2/3 of them were recruits, I was able to wipe them out with my ill-equipped and poorly trained military. So now I have 4 more "enemy" dwarf corpses sitting in my corpse pile (together with a lot of elves and humans).

So my question is, what exactly are the criteria for a creature to come back as a ghost?

I used to think that this only happened to your own fort's citizens, but that's definitely not true. So do I have to worry about any non-dwarven citizens, like the tavern performers and mercenaries, turning into ghosts? Also, should I bury/memorialise the enemy dwarves/elves/humans?

[Libash_Thunderhead]

If you kill merchants from the mountain home, they may turn ghosts. Dwarves from other civs won't turn ghosts or I haven't seen any example.

[PatrikLundell]

My guess is that you can let your dorfs sort this out by themselves by providing coffins for burial. If they use a coffin the deceased would probably have been a ghost candidate. I've had dwarven military visitors arriving during a siege and thus get killed, and some were buried while some were not. My guess is that they're buried if they die in the span from when they've talked to someone (so you can see their reason for visiting) and the change to leaving (a departing military dwarf killed wasn't buried). As indicated, I haven't waited to see if they actually become ghosts.

That doesn't answer the question, but might be a way to deal with the issue.

[Diamond]

Only dwarves can come back as ghosts. Unless you mess with the occult.
Enemy dwarves need to be memorialized to avoid hauting, at least in previous version they were.

[Spinning Fly]

Well I'll put it to the test then. I'll carve out memorials for the dwarven invaders but I'll refrain from building them. If any of them turns ectoplasmic then we'll know for sure.

[PatrikLundell]

I have killed off and disposed of enemy dwarf bodies in 0.40.24 without them coming back as ghosts (while other races' bones could be used for crafting, the dwarven ones couldn't, though). I have definitely done so with undead and necromancer dwarves, but I'm unsure if any dwarves have participated in "goblin" sieges.

Looking forward to hearing the results from Spinning Fly's experiment.

[Spinning Fly]

Update - it's been about 4-5 years since the siege and none of those dwarven invaders has risen yet.

However I have a human ghost who just popped up and killed my poor surgeon:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He was a mercenary who had gained citizenship who got burnt to death in a garbage dump magma mist incident roughly 2 years back. So it seems that non-dwarf citizens at least can come back as ghosts in the vanilla game.

Sadly all the goblin sieges since that first one have been purely goblins, trolls and beak dogs, so sadly I have no further enemy dwarf corpses in my pile.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Kasat Osmandonu, Ghostly Human Bard has risen and is haunting the fortress!

Oh, guest ghost!

[Spinning Fly]

Was he/she a citizen?

[khearn]

Kasat Osmandonu, Ghostly Human Bard has risen and is haunting the fortress!

Oh, guest ghost!

At least his moaning and chain rattling will be in key and hopefully entertaining.

[NorkasAradel]

Kasat Osmandonu, Ghostly Human Bard has risen and is haunting the fortress!

At least his moaning and chain rattling will be in key and hopefully entertaining.

this is one for the sig

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Was he/she a citizen?

Not a formal citizen at least. I recall he couldn't work so I arranged an unfortunate accident.

But I could have made a mistake.