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[DwarfUli]

One of my dorfs made a legendary musical instrument, my first. He even used glass in its manufacturing, it was so glorious. A human trader offered me 60k db for it....what a treasure. Of course I would never dream to sell such an item.

Then this happened...

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I hate keas for their intelligence.

The way between the tavern drawbridge entrance and the instrument had 3 war dogs chained up, the last one literally standing in the square in front of the instrument. I received no (timely) warning and apparently war dogs don't attack birds. I have two black bears, will they attack thieves? What does a war dog do? My dorfs can kill keas quite easily (see corpse pile), but the dogs seems useless, even for warning? I guess next time I will station a dorf next to my treasured artifacts? The world I created is covered in keas for some reason.

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Now the tavern is becoming overrun with pond turtles. If I had filled my tavern moat by pump or through a grate, would I have avoided turtles getting all over my water wheel and inside my tavern? or are they just part of the biome once the water connects to river. They rot quite easily and are becoming a nuisance.

Thanks!

EDIT: I solved the pond turtle problem by building a small fishery/restaurant next to the tavern and now I serve local pond turtle stew. Stew is served in the turtle shell...fancy..

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[anewaname]

If there was no roof over the area, that could explain how the keas got past the dogs. Often there is more than one kea dive-bombing to steal, and while the dogs try to bite one kea, another kea steals something.

The pond turtles are part of the biome once the body of water is connected to the river, and their dying corpses are because your dwarfs are fishing or the cats are hunting.

[coalboat]

Sometimes chained animals don't attack enemy.

[Uthimienure]

Sometimes chained animals don't attack enemy.

+1          I tend to pasture them instead.

[DwarfUli]

Thanks for the responses. I observed the tavern for a bit, it is roofed with two stories, but with a staircase going from the bottom floor to the rooftop. The keas will fly down from above and appear to actually hop into the stairwell on the rooftop and enter the tavern that way. Pretty cool. I did see a small green "k" hop around and enter the same square as the war dog and it instantly turned to a dead kea..pretty cool. I took your advice and now they get to run around the tavern.

The interesting thing I learned is, I replaced the legendary instrument with a bunch of (6-8) normal quality instruments, and they never get stolen. The only other tavern item stolen was a pot of stew that was very high quality (masterful I think). The keas seem to have an excellent sense of item quality and only steal decent stuff. I find easiest way to deal with them is to bait them away from the fort with small gems, decent quality junk items etc. They seem to love my animal traps with hamsters in them.

[Uthimienure]

My favorite way to deal with keas (or other flying pests) is to have Crossbow Dwarfs in the area. 
Examples: patrolling, traveling to & from barracks, or training in barracks/archery targets outdoors near areas the pests frequent.

[DwarfUli]

My favorite way to deal with keas (or other flying pests) is to have Crossbow Dwarfs in the area. 
Examples: patrolling, traveling to & from barracks, or training in barracks/archery targets outdoors near areas the pests frequent.

I have been enjoying trade caravans come by and have their guards kill keas for me, my dorfs run around after them to collect iron bolts and then sell their own bolts right back to them for some extra dbs 

[coalboat]

I still haven't managed to get keas to steal any caged dwarf in any of my fortress.

[DwarfUli]

I still haven't managed to get keas to steal any caged dwarf in any of my fortress.

That would be pretty amazing. Because the kea stole the artifact, he is now listed in my Legends as the owner of it. I guess the kea became a historical figure of sorts. I envision a kea nest somewhere
with my beautiful instrument in it, and the kea plucking away at the strings with its claws...such a waste of an instrument, but maybe the kea will master playing it.

[DwarfStar]

It might be possible to get the artifact back via expedition, but I have never even tried that option myself so I have no idea whether it might work.

[DwarfUli]

It might be possible to get the artifact back via expedition, but I have never even tried that option myself so I have no idea whether it might work.

I recently had an adventurer create a scroll called "The meaning of Glue". It was a pretty good essay on adhesives. I dropped it in the library of my fort and it was stored there. I loved the title so much I placed it in a display case in the library. It ended up being stolen and I was able to use Legends Viewer to find out what human town it went to. I created a mission and made sure artifacts were collected by my raiding dorfs and to my total surprise and delight, I got my scroll back. That was another one of those moments where I was "wow..this game is amazing"...

Sadly though, there is no location listed for the kea. I think the artifact instrument is lost forever...

[PatrikLundell]

The artifact instrument exists somewhere in the wilderness. It may or may not be possible to find it in exported Legends data, but if it isn't, it's probably possible to find it with DFHack (manually and/or by writing a script). You'd then have to send an adventurer to that wilderness tile to search for it. I don't think you can send fortress expeditions to places other than certain types of sites.

[DwarfUli]

The artifact instrument exists somewhere in the wilderness. It may or may not be possible to find it in exported Legends data, but if it isn't, it's probably possible to find it with DFHack (manually and/or by writing a script). You'd then have to send an adventurer to that wilderness tile to search for it. I don't think you can send fortress expeditions to places other than certain types of sites.

It would be amazing to try to get it back. So there is a tile with a kea on it, and if you kill the kea it will drop my instrument? The fact that it could not just be on the ground but also in the sky, probably would make it incredibly hard to find. But I guess one could bait it with other nice stuff. That would be very fun to work on if I knew the location to within maybe a couple of embark sites. Hunt for the great white kea.

Sadly, this is all I know and I have no DFHack skills, but I will look into how hard it would be to find this tile.

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[PatrikLundell]

I don't think the instrument is still carried by the kea, although it might be. Most probably it's on the ground somewhere.

You'd be able to find out which by finding the instrument with DFHack and look at whether it has a location or not. In the latter case it would have a reference to the creature in whose inventory it resides, and you'd have to look up the location of that creature.

Writing a Lua script to find the location is probably the easiest way (which obviously isn't easy if you know neither the structures DFHack use nor Lua).