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[Banzayatc]

About my heart of the mountain idea and Othob's suggestion:
Maybe the heart points out some good ore veins? And maybe some of the other underground diversity (disablable)? So you don't have to search for it. Also, everebody who sleeps near the heart gets a stat boost until he sleeps next time. But if you don't mine the heart, the dwarves will become even more greedy and will get more and more bad thoughts for not having such precious gemstone.

[zagibu]

I like the heartstone suggestion. Maybe the effects of mining it should be linked to the mountain itself, increasing the chance of rock bursts, tunnel collapses and increasing magma activity. Additionally, it should curse the miners with a general bad luck modifier, so that more negative events happen to them, and that the impact of those events is more drastic.

[Granite26]

I like the heartstone suggestion. Maybe the effects of mining it should be linked to the mountain itself, increasing the chance of rock bursts, tunnel collapses and increasing magma activity. Additionally, it should curse the miners with a general bad luck modifier, so that more negative events happen to them, and that the impact of those events is more drastic.

Hmm, mental image of deep elves showing up out of your chasm and demand that you stop destroying the 'mountain seeds'...

[Othob Rithol]

My take on the Tiberium-like crystal kudzu:

Make it grow way faster and unpredictably for a while when touched by miasma.  When a dwarf dies near it, well, you're in trouble.  But otherwise, you can keep chucking dead enemies at it, and let it grow.  Just be careful...real careful.

I love this idea.

As for the heartstone, this is really starting to shape up into a nifty addition. In my original objection I missed the obvious alternate to a benefit to keeping it, which zagibu rectified. Avoiding a disaster is far more in the spirit of the game.

Effectively what we have is an alternate form of HFS. When detected it generates greed in the dwarven populace for this rare and valuable gem. However when mining it out you expose the fortress to increased chances of mountain-based dangers : bad luck, rockbursts, cave-ins and .....an earthquake when the last tile is mined out. Some good dressing might be that when mined the tile also leaves a blood splatter, and that moods (fell and macabre in particular) occasionally lead to a dwarf mining out a tile on their own.

I think at this point starting to put together its entry is in order.

[Align]

I don't think it's possible for dwarves or goblins to form in any amount in nature... And there we have them in games. Don't forget this is a "simulation" of a fantasy world and not a simulation of our own world. Anything is possible in fantasy, with or without a good enough explanation.

Breaking realism (apart from the dwarves, elves, etc which are accepted as real creatures and behave accordingly) cannot be motivated by "its fantasy".

[zagibu]

One of the problems I see with mineral suggestions in general (geodes, kudzu crystal, heartstone) is that valuable mineral is already abundant, and it doesn't make a lot of sense (gameplay-wise) to dig for even more valuable mineral. So we probably need some other beneficial features of those new minerals besides their sheer value in monies.

[Fieari]

What if the heart of the mountain WAS the adamantite, and that an additional penalty for digging it up includes various curses as described above, such as additional rockbursts, earthquakes, etc.  Could be easily explained as demonic influence.

[Skynet 2.0]

General spoiler-heavy post, and I didn't want to put spoiler tags around every other line

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Maybe the Heart of the Mountain would normally be a very valuable type of gem, but sometimes, if the mountain was 'corrupted' (was located in an evil biome), the heart of the mountain would be like the Pits, only with one very powerful demon, rather than numerous weaker ones. The valuable gem would be replaced by some corrupt version, which might even be worth more, but would have more negative effects for unearthing and mining it, in addition to the standard weakening of the mountain. It could give negative thoughts to dwarves who work with it, mine it, or carry it ('Urist McJeweler has been unhappy lately. He has been forced to work with a corrupted gemstone lately'), or increase the berserk/melancholy/insane rates for dwarves who are within a certain distance of it ('Urist McGuard has been driven berserk by the taint in the Heart of the Mountain!'), and other negative effects for discovering it. The weakening of the mountain effect should be permanent, if you mine it out, but the insanity/unpleasant thoughts should go away after you mine out the gems and sell them to traders, giving you an incentive to work as quickly as possible to get it mined/cut before the next batch of traders arrived. You also might want to keep it for awhile. You could dig a storeroom as far away from your main fort as reasonably possible, and deal with the negative effects, in case a jeweler gets a strange mood. That way, you could get a super-valuable (10 million ☼ or more) artifact in exchange for some dwarves who get too close to it being worse off.

It could also explain how that mountain became 'corrupted', because of the evil influence of the demonic entity trapped within it's heart. With a whole range of mountains, it could be explained as one of the mountains was taken over by a demon, who spread his sphere of influence to the hearts of neighboring mountains, which infested them with a demon. Then those demons, working in tandem, corrupted the mountains further away, until they reached the limits of the range, so all of the mountains in the range would be an evil biome.

[Othob Rithol]

One of the problems I see with mineral suggestions in general (geodes, kudzu crystal, heartstone) is that valuable mineral is already abundant, and it doesn't make a lot of sense (gameplay-wise) to dig for even more valuable mineral. So we probably need some other beneficial features of those new minerals besides their sheer value in monies.

I couldn't agree more, but the topic needs some constraints. Here we discuss the feature itself, not possible fundamental changes to the game like new properties etc. Now don't think I am telling the great zagibu to shut up (zero sarcasm in that). If you've got an idea about a good property for heartstone : SHARE! I just don't want this thread to devolve into a mineral mod.

Which brings me to another point: this ongoing prattle about realism. Is it really relevant to the discussion at hand, or is it just someone trying to make a point. If the former, bring it back to UD. I the latter take it elsewhere, please.

As the OP and maintainer of the list I get final say in what goes in and what doesn't. Maybe not fair, but that is the constraint of the forum. So my definition of realism rules and here it is:

Realism in the context of DF is limited solely by the works of the brothers. It is constrained by the limits of technology and understanding of the societies within that universe and/or the posted expectations of the game's evolution. Any new content on the UD list will have to demonstrate a clear level of harmony with existing, planned, or former features of the game.

The frame of reference is not Earth circa 2008. The frame of reference is the Glowing Fields of Redemption, circa 507.

Still looking for a definitive blurb for Heartstone. Necrophilic reactions added to the "tiberium cave kudzu" entry. Gotta love that nickname.

[Granite26]

My personal thoughts on this has always been "We're stocking a kitchen, not making a pie"

Everything we put in the kitchen doesn't have to be good in a pie, or even good in the same pie...

[zagibu]

I don't have any concrete ideas about heartstone, but if this is going in, it HAS to be VERY special. Just imagine what the heart of a mountain would mean for a race that spends 90% of their time inside it's bowels.
Of course, there are the common interpretations for such a mythical thing, source of magical power, rejuvenative effects, etc. I think this can't be worked out in a few posts, as it demands other questions answered first, questions about religion, magic, and the dwarven societies themselves.
Not to discourage brainstorming, though, I'd really like to read what people think about a "heart of the mountain".

[Skid]

The heart of the mountain might want to deploy some monsters of it's own material to defend itself.  Maybe they'll go and grab whatever objects you made from the stuff and take them back to be reabsorbed into the heart's mass.

[Mephansteras]

All of this talk of a Heart of the Mountain makes me think of the Arkenstone from the Hobbit.

[Random832]

My personal thoughts on this has always been "We're stocking a kitchen, not making a pie"

Everything we put in the kitchen doesn't have to be good in a pie, or even good in the same pie...

Right - if you don't want it don't use it - either don't embark on sites that have it (I assume it could optionally show up just like HFS does now) or savescum, reveal, and avoid digging near it.

[Granite26]

My personal thoughts on this has always been "We're stocking a kitchen, not making a pie"

Everything we put in the kitchen doesn't have to be good in a pie, or even good in the same pie...

Right - if you don't want it don't use it - either don't embark on sites that have it (I assume it could optionally show up just like HFS does now) or savescum, reveal, and avoid digging near it.

Hell, take it one step bigger.  I want to be able to mod in Xenomorphs, Preditors, Terminators shotguns and plasma rifles, but I certainly don't want to have critters building themselves through autonomous workshop reactions in vanilla.  (I.E. a single world doesn't need to have every possible creature or HFS, and more significantly, there should be mod tags that don't appear on any creature in the vanilla raws.)

In my opinion, of course...