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[Quarque]

This happened on a new volcano embark. There is a trade depot, somewhat close to the edge of the volcano. Merchants arrive and unpack their goods. Not needing anything, I just ignore them. Suddenly I get a message about merchants having been found dead. I take a look, there are great clouds of smoke around the depot, as if a cave-in had happened.

I check the (r)eports: nothing. No fighting happened at all.
Check the units: 8 units are reported as dead/missing.
- Two wagons
- two merchants
- a hammerdwarf
- a macedwarf
- a horse
- a yak bull.

The only wildlife on the map is a moose bull. There is a pile of forbidden equipment on the edge of the volcano that must have belonged to the hammerdwarf. A few surviving merchants are wandering near the trade depot but they refuse to trade any more. They refuse to leave either, even months later. What could possibly have happened here?

[Eric Blank]

Possibly a fire snake (a vermin) crawled out of the volcano and entered the depot, setting goods ablaze and killing them.

[anewaname]

The pile of hammerdwarf equipment would indicate that poor fellow burned up, possibly creating enough smoke to kill others.

You mentioned a bull moose, so presumably the biome is cold enough that the dwarf didn't spontaneously combust due to heat, but if the volcano was "full" and he was standing at the edge, he would have been standing on warm stone which increases his tile's heat (I don't know exactly how heat transfers to units, but if his body was the only one missing, he was on fire..

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think fire snakes spawn out of volcanoes, but fire imps and magma crabs can crawl out of volcanoes and set dorfs and terrain on fire. The smoke indicates fire, but I don't think smoke is directly harmful (bad thoughts and lowered visibility range). Critters getting out of volcanoes can get down into them again, and move down to such depths that you can't see them (if you haven't revealed that part of the magma sea, or even that part of the volcano pipe).

Warm stone causes units to refuse to step on it, and so they won't be put on fire by it. If, however, the volcano is bugged so magma spills over the top (because it's spawned too high up) it can slosh onto units and set them (as well as terrain) on fire. I've never seen or heard of such a volcano, but I've had a magma pool in the caverns that periodically set the cavern on fire because the magma rained down from above it, spilling over the sides.

[vjek]

My two guesses would be Fire Imp (they have ranged fire attacks) or they all ended up jumping/dodging/running away from something scary, and jumped/dodged into magma.
But, just guesses. 

[muldrake]

This happened on a new volcano embark. There is a trade depot, somewhat close to the edge of the volcano. Merchants arrive and unpack their goods. Not needing anything, I just ignore them. Suddenly I get a message about merchants having been found dead. I take a look, there are great clouds of smoke around the depot, as if a cave-in had happened.

I check the (r)eports: nothing. No fighting happened at all.
Check the units: 8 units are reported as dead/missing.
- Two wagons
- two merchants
- a hammerdwarf
- a macedwarf
- a horse
- a yak bull.

The only wildlife on the map is a moose bull. There is a pile of forbidden equipment on the edge of the volcano that must have belonged to the hammerdwarf. A few surviving merchants are wandering near the trade depot but they refuse to trade any more. They refuse to leave either, even months later. What could possibly have happened here?

Any magma crabs in the unit list?  Are there any reports in the "r" menu regarding the missing units?  If there was anything causing damage they'd usually generate some kind of report.

[Zealord]

This sounds to me like they simple caught on fire or got their fat melted away. I'm pretty sure that if you stand next to magma tiles you will burn up. If you didn't disable temperature, that is.

[Starver]

My two guesses would be Fire Imp (they have ranged fire attacks) [...]

Probably would create a Combat Report, for that. (Probably, not sure.)

But anything that is more accidental (just happens to start a bushfire that the unofficial 'victim' is in) should not record anything in that way (IIRC).

Both ways, I'm sure that visitors (in the pre Visitors fashion, i.e. wildlife and the transients like the Wagon Train/Caravan personnel(+wagon)) get mentioned when other visitors (also cave-ins?) 'attack' them directly, but not for being enveloped in 'normal' fire/water/whatever 'environmental hazards'.

(I have lost track of all the permutations, since secret killing by vampires came in as an exception to that rule, but I don't think a stealth flamebreath-attack is yet a thing.)


Anyway, my vote is for death-by-unattended-disposable-barbecue.

[muldrake]

This is at least a more entertaining event than the classic "caravan explodes because somebody decided a goat was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen" event.

[Staalo]

Are there any ramps to climb near the volcano? While ascending a ramp, animals pulling a wagon will briefly come into contact with squares one space behind the ramp. If there is any magma in those squares, the animals will catch fire and will spread it to others as well.

I learnt this the hard way when several caravans mysteriously melted after I had routed some magma works under the main exit corridor.

[muldrake]

Are there any ramps to climb near the volcano? While ascending a ramp, animals pulling a wagon will briefly come into contact with squares one space behind the ramp. If there is any magma in those squares, the animals will catch fire and will spread it to others as well.

I learnt this the hard way when several caravans mysteriously melted after I had routed some magma works under the main exit corridor.

I believe it is a good general rule to place trade depots as close to the edge of the map as possible, preferably as close to where caravans from your favorite civilization arrive.  The less distance these ridiculously buggy things have to travel, the less likely it is that they encounter some bizarre misadventure.

Sometimes an early caravan explosion can be marginally useful but more often you just get hundreds, even thousands of low quality junk items you don't want, don't need, and just bring you closer to FPS death.

[Starver]

...on the other hand, with such access to magma all you need is a dump-zone in the right place and you don't even need to atom-smash those mountains of junk.

(I tend to place my Depot as close to the centre as possible[1] with direct-but-blockable access from each of the side-centres wherever possible, perhaps the raison d'etre of the settlement being at a key crossroads (that didn't exist before I made it that). Only extreme engineering can stop caravans turning up almost wherever they like, even if you can force the wagons on a single-route, so I go for the least mean-travel-time from the start of my trading days, building in 'delaying detours' to my dynamic city-wall systems to accept all visitors (or 'visitors') but lets me make it more or less time-wasting to do so once I'm aware of them. I've had a whole-map multi-circuit helical/spiral route (with shortcuts at a pull of a lever) set up in times past, though I rarely need to make much more than a quarter-turn near-perimiter (between outer and next-most-inner defences) the default access route, I find. And when the traders arrive, assuming they don't land on a siege, or vice-versa, they quickly get shuffled into the direct axial accessway. But that's just my way. )

[1] With even-lengthed embark sides and odd-lengthed depot-side, it's usually a compromise choice to make the centre-tile of the depot the 'centre-tile' of my as-symmetrical-as-possible layout! Alternately, I could set up four depots, rotationally/reflectively symmetrically around the 2x2-tile centre-mark (as far off as in the extreme corners, give or take walls/trenches/etc of control and defence) all with their own internal/external accessibility switches of various kinds...

[muldrake]

...on the other hand, with such access to magma all you need is a dump-zone in the right place and you don't even need to atom-smash those mountains of junk.

(I tend to place my Depot as close to the centre as possible[1] with direct-but-blockable access from each of the side-centres wherever possible, perhaps the raison d'etre of the settlement being at a key crossroads (that didn't exist before I made it that). Only extreme engineering can stop caravans turning up almost wherever they like, even if you can force the wagons on a single-route, so I go for the least mean-travel-time from the start of my trading days, building in 'delaying detours' to my dynamic city-wall systems to accept all visitors (or 'visitors') but lets me make it more or less time-wasting to do so once I'm aware of them.

Is there some actual logic to where caravans show up?  Because I tend to embark in weird, complicated areas and despite this, I try to plan out the trade depot location as best I can, and yet, somehow, the caravan shows up 15 z layers up and then takes an absolutely insane route down to where I am.  I try to limit this but it never seems to work completely.

Every now and again I have an embark where they (the Mountainhomes caravan) actually do just show up where I want, but instead, they usually just show up from the most insane, dumb place imaginable on the map.  I have seen caravans show up from places on the map that I didn't even know existed.

[Leonidas]

Is there some actual logic to where caravans show up?  Because I tend to embark in weird, complicated areas and despite this, I try to plan out the trade depot location as best I can, and yet, somehow, the caravan shows up 15 z layers up and then takes an absolutely insane route down to where I am.  I try to limit this but it never seems to work completely.

Every now and again I have an embark where they (the Mountainhomes caravan) actually do just show up where I want, but instead, they usually just show up from the most insane, dumb place imaginable on the map.  I have seen caravans show up from places on the map that I didn't even know existed.

The caravan can only appear at a spot on the map where it can reach the depot. So you can predetermine that spot by restricting available paths. Use D.

So the safest way is to build a depot tunnel entrance at the edge of the map. Dig a downward tunnel three tiles wide, six tiles from the map edge, leading down to your depot. Surround that tunnel entrance so that the only way to reach the depot is to appear on the map edge right in front of the tunnel entrance.

You can't build constructions within five tiles of the map edge. But you can build drawbridges, then raise them to function as walls. You can also throw a bridge over the top of the depot entrance, to keep out flyers.

[Starver]

Leonidas just Ninjaed a whole lotta text in which I said much the same (in amongst some other guff).

Except that non-Wagon trading figures (beasts of burden and accompanying personnel) can arrive anywhere even with no accessible Depot, so a restrictedly-accessible Depot may not get all non-Wagoneers spawning correctly. Needs confirming.