Hey all,
A search turned up not very much on the topic of zombified Dragon-y types, just one thread from last year. I thought i'd make a new thread then necro something like that for a first post.
The old thread mentioned the possibility that zombifacation makes dragons stupid, and my first/last/only encounter with them seems to reinforce this.
My fort was churning along fine, about 100 or so dwarfs strong. Defenses were made up of a rotation of 4 champions/elite wrestler/macedwarfs and a trap filled tunnel. After some time, I realized that I didn't even need full time guards, due to the geography of the map. Anything large/named/eventful would have to take a roundabout way to the entrance due to the contour of the mountain, giving enough (or so thought) time for the guard to assemble on the entrance.
So ANYWAY, after the standard bunch of annoyed kobolds and goblins, even with a larger raid or two thrown in for entertainment, things are chugging right along, when in year 4 plods onto the scene Boney McPretentiousName, The Zombie Dragon.
After taking a minute to try to imagine that, and wonder where it came from, as I didn't think i'd embarked on anything particularly evil (do zombies even care about that sort of thing? I thought it was related), I quickly assembled both squads and sent them to do their guard thing. Mr Ugly stomps up the side of the hill, crests the bonepile and into sight of the guards, and off they go, not as much like a coherent unit as I would have liked, but there you go.
They set onto that zombied drake like rabid third graders on a substitute teacher, just about pulled it in half, came back on station and resumed their bored loitering.
A few months later, after a siege, came Scaley McUglyFace the Zombied came to play. Apparently these things are fairly rampant around my mountain. The fort setup hasn't changed very much at all in a few months, so I set up for the second dragon the same way.
Except.
I need to set up my craftdwarfs to make a giant tuba, hook it up to a set of bellows and install that next to my barracks, because apparently my lax working hours had set them into a habit of sleeping into a drunken stupor or vice versa, something like that.
So nobody shows up to guard duty.
%^$^%$@#
For a while I thought it'd be ok, since the dragon was wandering around the meadow at the base of the mountain for a while, but no, he got a whiff of juicy dwarfy nuggets and bolted for the entrance portal.
The only combat force who thought to meet him was one of the stray dogs who must have seen that critter and gone "ZOMG BONES! OM NOM NOM" and FLEW at the dragon, trying to gnaw its legs off.
Funny thing, the dragon didn't much care for this and started trying to stomp the dog.
Well, long story short, the dog lasted a lot longer then I would have imagined. Apparently this dragon never trained in small animal stomping.
But! This realllly ticked the dragon off, getting run around in circles by a random stray dog, apparently, because about at this point a giant 15ish tile long cone of flame rent out (thankfully) towards the bonepile, which was about the moment when I began to think this might be going a tad shade wonky.
The second roar of flame came in the other direction, towards the fort, apparently deep enough to catch a fat barrel on fire I found out later.
At this point, I drafted the 45 nearest dwarfs and sent them screaming at the foul beast to... well... gnaw it to death.
After this the fort dove into a lousy tantrum spiral, but that isn't what i'm curious about.
My question is, DOES zombification make things stupid in Dwarffort? Maybe the first dragon didn't prefer to use its breath weapon? Maybe it only uses it if annoyed? Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?
(Hope the story wasn't too rambling, but it was a fun show to watch, and hopefully to read about.)
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Topic: On the intelligence of Zombie Dragons (Read 535 times)