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[QuakeIV]

An alternative to coffins intended for evil biomes with undead.  Dwarves will automatically drag corpses and such to the spikes, 'bury' them, and the corpse will reanimate but be immobilized.  It will retain the ability to attack, but can be cleaned off of the spike with magma or attacks which would kill it (potentially leaving severed limbs on the ground that could reanimate)

This way you could for instance create a field of grasping corpses around your fort as a sort of first line of detection and defense.

Alternatively, you could stake corpses into place for later cleanup in a magma room or something.



Just a cool sounding alternative that struck me in the midst of the night.

[Button]

+1.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You'd have to find a visiting human to do the work for you though. Dwarf ethics don't allow gruesome sculptures/corpse mutilation.

Very nice addition for adventurer sites though.

[Catmeat]

Yes very cool, i have my raws open to all races being playable in both modes so i can see it being a great defence for goblin fortresses.
I think having a cremation/magmaburial would be good too. So the dwaves put the body in a coffin and then throw it in magma.
Do it

[Waparius]

Or even as a way to decorate an evil fortress or goblin tower in non-evil biomes. Heads on a pike and so forth.

[expwnent]

If your civ ethics allow it I approve.

[neblime]

this sounds totally horrific.. I love it

Or even as a way to decorate an evil fortress or goblin tower in non-evil biomes. Heads on a pike and so forth.

maybe you can strike the enemy with fear at the sight of their friends impaled?  Ah who am I kidding our own dwarves (or goblins) will probably curl up and cry first

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Actually already happens, albeit not as a player action. Along with torturous deaths for invaded or captured enemies, goblins will sometimes impale corpses on wooden spikes. They can do that to your adventurer after death if you die in or near a goblin settlement, and another adventurer can actually see it - it exists in the world. It's a "wooden spike" "trap", technically, I think. The kind that needs a lever to operate, so you can't get hurt unless you drop on top of it from above.

[Button]

We know. The suggestion is to be able to do it in fortress mode.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Just saying that it's already partially in, and Toady likes the flavor. You can be pretty sure that he'll add this suggestion. I didn't mean it as arguing against the suggestion, though it does seem kind of unnecessary given the current state and the plans.

[NW_Kohaku]

I've said this for a long time, but there really should be an option for cremation as a deliberate, culturally-accepted means of disposal of the dead.

Burial is a cultural artifact in the West mainly from Egypt (which impacted the Greeks, then the Romans, then Christianity as a whole through them) where it was thought that a physical body was needed in the afterlife.  It makes no sense in a culture that should always have believed in spiritual dualism, which the DF world would do, since the DF world has ghosts and the capacity for spirits to leave bodies.  Dualism is outright provable physics in the DF world.

In the case of a world where undead rising to eat everyone is a common occurrence, it is absolutely insane for burial practices not to account for this by having cremation or some other form of body destruction be a deliberate act by a culture. 

Yes, you can set up manual cremation through wooden coffins and magma flooding the burial chambers, (followed by a slabbing,) but this is a manual override of actual in-game scripted burial practices, not something the dwarves recognize as a deliberate action.  We should have the in-game option of setting up crematorium workshops and directing our dwarves to cremate their dead and then slab their fallen as a response to undead uprisings.

[Button]

Yes, you can set up manual cremation through wooden coffins and magma flooding the burial chambers, (followed by a slabbing,) but this is a manual override of actual in-game scripted burial practices, not something the dwarves recognize as a deliberate action.  We should have the in-game option of setting up crematorium workshops and directing our dwarves to cremate their dead and then slab their fallen as a response to undead uprisings.

You can also just set up a magma-safe minecart dump for corpses. Much less fuss.

A crematorium as a workshop should be easily moddable, too.

[NW_Kohaku]

You can also just set up a magma-safe minecart dump for corpses. Much less fuss.

A crematorium as a workshop should be easily moddable, too.

But that's a modded function, not a game-society-recognized cultural tradition.  My point is that the culture should recognize it's happening in-game, and support methods of handling the dead beyond mere burial, especially when burial can so spectacularly backfire upon a people multiple times.  Burying the dead in tombs when necromancers are a constant menace is just suicidally stupid, and meaningless in a culture that understands souls exist independently of bodies, which can occur not just to to the dead, but also the living in many of the stories...

[fluffymormegil]

Burial is a cultural artifact in the West mainly from Egypt (which impacted the Greeks, then the Romans, then Christianity as a whole through them) where it was thought that a physical body was needed in the afterlife.  It makes no sense in a culture that should always have believed in spiritual dualism,

Non sequitur. Plenty of cultures that believed in spiritual dualism have engaged in some form or other of funerary practice that did not involve cremation, ritual exposure for scavenger birds, or manual excarnation.

The fact that reanimation of the dead by fell sorcery exists in the DFverse is a much more compelling argument for body-destroying funerary practice than spiritual dualism could ever be.

[NW_Kohaku]

Burial is a cultural artifact in the West mainly from Egypt (which impacted the Greeks, then the Romans, then Christianity as a whole through them) where it was thought that a physical body was needed in the afterlife.  It makes no sense in a culture that should always have believed in spiritual dualism,

Non sequitur. Plenty of cultures that believed in spiritual dualism have engaged in some form or other of funerary practice that did not involve cremation, ritual exposure for scavenger birds, or manual excarnation.

The fact that reanimation of the dead by fell sorcery exists in the DFverse is a much more compelling argument for body-destroying funerary practice than spiritual dualism could ever be.

You confuse correlation with causation.

As I said, the funerary customs practiced by Christians have nothing to do with Christianity as a religion, and are purely a cultural descendant of Egypt's religious beliefs.

And furthermore, my point was that dualism makes funerary practices irrelevant, which is why there was no big push against the Egyptian-descended practices and they were allowed to continue.  Even outside Europe, funerary practices of burial largely have traditions dating back to animist belief systems.  (Only Buddhism, to my knowledge, places huge religious importance upon burial, although that is notably arranged as a repayment of a debt of the child to a deceased parent for being born being paid off through paying a Buddhist temple for funerary rights.)

When there are real threats arising from the dead walking, then people would rationally take funerary precautions.  (Even in real life, without direct evidence of undead, there were people terrified enough of the threat of undead that coffin traps were designed to behead a corpse that tried to get up from its grave.