A oddly dwarven role of significance, the post-master dwarf is responsible for the communication and can replace (figuratively) messengers entirely once you have a mayor present to give and recieve faster remote ways of communication.
- Flying vermin are used for this job, though this can be narrowed down to certain types if nessecary are trained and assigned to the post-master to be used as courier animals for messages, some vermin only live for a short time, but the caverns for instance has a abundance of bats and cave swallows capable of the job. Though on the surface rock pigeons living close to the sea might be capable and reliable...
- The flying vermin won't always be as dependable as sending a dwarf out though, and they need to be protected from cats and wild vermin hunting birds of prey before the courier-vermin marked with a special color and lettering after being made pernamently visible are able to leave the map edges to complete their purpose and return (ideally).
To create a courier vermin animal, the post master needs to have animal traps or cages installed into room (which they will request) they own, wherein tame vermin flying animals will have a single quire attached to them changing the vermin's type, and when the nessecary time comes to send a message at the players discretion, the post-master will write something on it, take the vermin inhand outside and release it so that it can path out of the fortress.
Vermin may appear with inbound important messages from other civilizations, especially your own if they are not killed prematurely, if this happens the message will fall to the ground, destroying the contents and reverting it back into a regular quire. Invaders might attempt to shoot messanger vermin which have a debuff to how easy they are to hit compared to normal, if your post-master released the "bird" somewhere inaccessible to them, but it had to pass overhead of enemy forces.
Related threads//
Pigeon messenging system (Read 2530 times) | August 28, 2014 \\