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[decius]

I started a new fort after a very long hiatus, and after a few waves of immigration I got a dwarf necromancer migrant... everything I've seen in the forums about the implications of that is several years old.

Can I safely let them go about their business as normal, or will they raise the corpses in my refuse pile into undead that will attack the living? Can I safely have them exhume dead citizens? Are they obviously spies of one of the nearby towers, who should be dealt with quickly?

[kaijyuu]

If they're a migrant or are petitioning for citizenship, their purpose is sincere: they just want to live in your fort.

As for raising corpses, they only do that in combat. And yes, the undead they summon can hurt your other dwarves (or them). So keep them out of harm's way.

[decius]

Thanks for the quick response.

What does "in combat" mean?

From what I've gleaned, at one point intelligent undead would retain their previous loyalty and not gain [opposed_to_life], which suggests that raising other citizens should be safe, if potentially less useful.

And it appears that Necromancers don't eat or drink, and don't need to eat, but they still need to drink alcohol?

[kaijyuu]

If they're spooked by a hostile creature they might try to raise a nearby corpse or body part to defend themselves. To my knowledge this does include brawls and tantrums, so keep stressed dwarves away from them too.

Intelligent undead are an uncommon result of raising a corpse, and people who have filled their forts with them have done so through rather extensive processes (drowning chambers/etc).

[therahedwig]

The necromancers aren't being very smart about whether they go for the intelligent undead raising or the regular zombie. This is probably because necromancer migrants were not expected and having necromancer siegers only raise intelligent undead would be a little unfair.

The regular zombies are still dangerous to anyone who doesn't have an internal 'opposed to life' tag, which makes necromancers a bit tricky to deal with... like all night creature civilians, really.

[DwarfDwarf]

Thanks for asking this, I've been wondering the same thing. Recently destroyed a tower with raids, and been wondering if I should set up a library so my dwarves can read the captured books and become necromancers. Sounds like a bit of a pain, but I'm starting to get bored with the fort, so maybe its time for some unorthodox FUN.

[Man of Paper]

There’s a YouTuber, Kruggsmash, or maybe it’s one g, but either way he’s running a fort right now with a benevolent necromancer migrant and has even done a little bit of experimentation with what he can do if you’re interested. It’s the ongoing series for Scorchfountain.

[decius]

Well, it's a moot point. I got distracted trying to figure out how to necromancer and forgot to mechanic. When the undead siege arrived the main gate had not yet been connected to a lever. My loyal necromancer put up a valiant effort, drastically inflating the kill count of the invaders before being overwhelmed and cut down.

In memoriam of him and the farmer's guild's last stand, my next fort will be named Tubthumping.

[Loud Whispers]

Aw, poor necrodude just wanted a place to chill, but his history of undeath... Followed him to his grave

[decius]

Aw, poor necrodude just wanted a place to chill, but his history of undeath... Followed him to his grave

I don't think he's getting one of those.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I have piles of intelligent undead in my fort now, and they are only semiuseful, but waaay more useful than zombie anything. I only let my necromancers fight in one siege and while I ended up with 6 intelligent undead out of it, it was a mess.

[AnarchCassius]

Huh, I've found that just having intelligent undead visitors is a lifesaver. Two faint ghoul bards checking out our tavern did more to hold off a recent invasion than our entire fort's army.

We've had a couple necromancers join the fort but they don't seem nearly as durable so I've been hesitant to put them in battles. The couple ties they have gotten involved they showed no attempts at raising the dead.

[PatrikLundell]

Huh, I've found that just having intelligent undead visitors is a lifesaver. Two faint ghoul bards checking out our tavern did more to hold off a recent invasion than our entire fort's army.

We've had a couple necromancers join the fort but they don't seem nearly as durable so I've been hesitant to put them in battles. The couple ties they have gotten involved they showed no attempts at raising the dead.

All visiting necros in my fortress were villains. Not only that, but one of them proceeded to slaughter everyone when I tried to exterminate a were visitor (helped by raising an ogre prisoner I'd just executed). When I exterminated the necro before tacking the were (before it turned, and after save scumming) I was "rewarded" with a loyalty cascade. Since then I just used DFHack "exterminate him" on all of those bugged villains and questers out after artifacts in my fortress (a lot of extermination, as the villains outnumbered the legitimate visitors).

[KevinM]

I had one come in on a Migrant wave.  She (I think) hasn't been an issue until recently.  I've had her do all various tasks and even tried out being included against a goblin seige as a Marksdwarf.  During a savescummed test, I had set her up as a marksdwarf during a goblin seige and she raised a goblin but it didn't seem to do much against anything else, was just still mad at my dwarves and my Dabbling marksdwarves were doing little to nothing shooting it so I decided to retry it without having the Necro as an active military dwarf.

Recently though, the lack of positive thoughts have caused stresses and now has had a tantrum (nothing raised thankfully) and a depressive state while chained up, all the while going through reliving the death of another dwarf that slid into depression and had stopped eating.  For some reason, the Necrodwarf keeps complaining about family and friends but doesn't have any family (and as such can't be exiled) and won't socialize.  I'm thinking of tossing her into the bridged up section of my fort that has a vampire manager and see if doing nothing but staying in a generic temple branch, military training and doing nothing else helps. 

After 10 years, I'm trying Dwarf Therapist so have been learning to read the thoughts and needs a bit more.

I also had a Giantess bring in an Artifact slab that has the title "The secrets of life and death" so I'm considering if I want to try experimenting with it on more dwarves or if I should chuck it in with the Necromancer and vampire and slowly feed them unhappy dwarves.  For some reason, nearly all of my migrants in this session are herbalists, animal caretakers or a combination of both which has been really annoying.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think dorfs can read slabs...

Why do you care what supposed professions migrants had? You're free to retrain them to whatever professions you need.