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[chucks]

Perhaps not to a large degree or on a grand scale, but it would be interesting to see them represent micro-nations of their constituent creatures.  The might make demands on you similar to the elven diplomat, except demanding you to stop hunting their kinds.  I know most folks (and I probably won't in most cases) care about pissing them off or not, but there should be some positive side effects from maintaining positive relations with them.  Perhaps they could bring you animal skins, leather, GCS silk, wood logs, fruits, etc. but not in the same frequency, quantity, or quality of the elves.

[Dakk]

Now build a fortress on it.

-It should rather be impossible since there is nothing to build a foundation upon. Though it makes me wonder if there should be places so dangerous that they allow you to take more people with you when you Embark (or some way to have larger Embark crews such as funding them through fortress mode)

If you could fill the swamp in with gravel or loam, then it would be possible to build on.
Quote
Hermits walk the depths of these places, luring nearby travelers to their doom
I dont think that all hermits should try to kill you. Some might join your fortress or give you quests in adventure mode. But some hermits might just burn down your fortress or assassinate your adventurer.

Well, the philosophic and sociologic definition of an hermit fits your idea perfectly. Hermits are considered different from the average humans in that they avoid society because:

1-They're too corrupt/evil/mad to live in society (psycopaths and the like).

2-They're so superior to most members of society that they have to leave it to remain sane/live happily (some philosophers fit this archetype).

[SirHoneyBadger]

A lot of Christian saints lived as hermits, as well. And then ofcourse there's the example of Yoda.

[Byakugan01]

What about having mires and quicksands? Quicksands you might be able to escape from, but you would get sucked down to the bottom of a mire if you stepped in it...and oh lord, the lemming sock rushes would become epic. Might be able to use cats/dogs/animals to find them, and once observed by one dwarf they would not path across the mire-kind of like how humans are immune to traps they've seen in action.

[Sukasa]

I like the idea of evil/good swamps and the animals in them.  The 'quit killing us' idea might work well with an inversion of the new 'Kill ____' orders, implemented as '[H]unting-> Don't Kill <species>', or something similar.  The idea about not damaging the swamp [too much] would also be neat, though there'd have to be some sort of feedback on that, not just a spontaneous 'you've wrecked too much DIE' sort of response.

[SirHoneyBadger]

A good start on this would be for someone to make an extensive list of all the plants in a mangrove swamp, so we can start modding them in, as soon as the update happens.

[GlyphGryph]

This sounds like it would be very cool - I especially love Byakugan's ideas for fauna and flora to add.

Mechanical things like quicksand and the like will definitely be difficult to add, so I doubt they'll go in any time soon, but I agree that a lot of current swamps are just forests with a lot of lakes.

I think the best small change we could make, one that would be actually fairly easy to implement, would be to make swamp areas water with lots and lots of islands instead (and a normal water level of 4/7 or something instead of 7/7, and most of it ramped edges). Then those aquatics creatures could start being really dangerous since they could actually move around, and wagons can't swim all that well so you really would have to build a stable road for them to get anywhere even if your individual dwarves can move around (though they might mind constantly trudging through water).

Speaking of islands, do we actually have small islands at the moment? I don't think I've ever actually seen one...

Also, leeches, mosquitoes, and other REALLY annoying blood drinking vermin that specialize in bad thoughts.

[The Mad Engineer]

I was also thinking perhaps some bottomless pits of water, similar to Beowulf.


There could perhaps be HFS entry points at the bottom of said water pool.

[Kilo24]

It sounds like a swamp with the [DANGEROUS], [DARK], and maybe [LOVECRAFTIAN] spheres once they get implemented.  Maybe the [FLAMMABLE] sphere too.

[Byakugan01]

Not lovecraftian, but perhaps the [DEATHWORLD] sphere or [PRIMORDIAL] sphere. You know, it's amazing how little we have in today's swamps that is actually IMPRESSIVE in terms of danger. I did some more research, and the most recent giant crocodilians are only 8 million years old-and there were several in the same ecosystem, one of which was actually a filter feeder not unlike a baleen whale! Not only that, they were about the same size as the monsters I previously mentioned. The largest crocodile around today, the salty, is only at most 2/3rds their size-and keep in mind that's at the upper limit's of the size for saltwater crocodiles. Regardless, however, giant crocodiles have evolved more than once, we know that much at least. Which means we have two options with them: use the ones that did exist-or we can make up our own . Or both. There's more interesting stuff that I'm starting to look through now, and believe me we have alot of potential here.

Out of curiosity though, what other kind of creatures might be associated with swamps in mythology? Possibly long, but they seem more of a river creature/force to me.

[SirHoneyBadger]

 Considering this is a fantasy world, there's no good reason why we can't have paleolithic critters running around. That's been an element of fantasy since Jules Verne's time, and probably before.

I've always wanted to mod in a partially reconstructed Earthlike world, mostly from about 65,000 years or so ago to the present, with 'Rule of Cool' elements ranging perhaps as far back as 250,000 years.

I generally think of dinosaurs as being-for the most part-a little too over the top, but there's a vast amount of geologically recent material that can be added in, while still preserving the general idea that this is a world--not terribly far removed from our own. One that perhaps has taken a few alternate history detours, but hasn't gone completely off the beaten path.

[Silverionmox]

Out of curiosity though, what other kind of creatures might be associated with swamps in mythology? Possibly long, but they seem more of a river creature/force to me.

The hydra, of course, helped by crabs. The stymphalian birds roosted in a swamp, but originated from the Arabian desert. Mostly they are reptilian or amphibian creatures. There are also demon-like or undefined creatures: kappa, bunyip, will-o-the-wisp,... Morla, the giant turtle from the Neverending Story (great book, by the way) was a kind of reclusive but very old and therefore very knowledgeable creature in the swamp of despair. For this game, I suggest that instead of travelling to a wise turtle, folks would travel to a wise toad. Which doesn't rule out the giant turtles and their shells, of course.

[ballisticginger]

Actually, there are species of spiders which live most of their lives underwater (not sure of the common name, would someone who doesn't have arachnophobia mind looking it up?), which could lead to interesting situations if Giant versions lived in the swamp. And had decent population/ cluster size-basically, imagine a giant cave spider that can hide underwater and drag it's prey underwater in ADDITION to the paralyzing bite and webbing ability. Spoilered to make the whole thing more readable and less of a wall of text.

the bellweb spider, spins a little web under water which it fills with air.

maybe the best way to implement swamps at present is sandy ground covered in <4/7 water that forces dwarves prone, (slowing their movement greatly). This however would add the issue of not being able to build on water.

you could ake them murky pools but this would present an wanted side affect, when it rains you'd all drown.

making a flat area full of murky pools and large sany sections with infrequent rain and occasional islands. with all layers being aquifiers.
it would be a constant scramble for the small numebr of trees on the islands

this would mean you would have to wait for summer to build walls upon which you could build your fortress which would end up looking more like a tree top city. not very dwarvish i know, but a bit more realistic.

[Byakugan01]

Actually, there are species of spiders which live most of their lives underwater (not sure of the common name, would someone who doesn't have arachnophobia mind looking it up?), which could lead to interesting situations if Giant versions lived in the swamp. And had decent population/ cluster size-basically, imagine a giant cave spider that can hide underwater and drag it's prey underwater in ADDITION to the paralyzing bite and webbing ability. Spoilered to make the whole thing more readable and less of a wall of text.

the bellweb spider, spins a little web under water which it fills with air.

maybe the best way to implement swamps at present is sandy ground covered in <4/7 water that forces dwarves prone, (slowing their movement greatly). This however would add the issue of not being able to build on water.

you could ake them murky pools but this would present an wanted side affect, when it rains you'd all drown.

making a flat area full of murky pools and large sany sections with infrequent rain and occasional islands. with all layers being aquifiers.
it would be a constant scramble for the small numebr of trees on the islands

this would mean you would have to wait for summer to build walls upon which you could build your fortress which would end up looking more like a tree top city. not very dwarvish i know, but a bit more realistic.

Actually, it might well end up looking like the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, which was essentially built upon the water outwards from an island in the middle of a lake. The main difference would be that stone would not be easy to acquire, so everything would be wooden.  I do think there should be a stone layer somewhere down there, though-although some swamps could be very deep indeed, and it should be very hard-earned, and reaching it should be the result of much effort. Some wetlands might dry up periodically, though, particularly those that might be formed by flooding-stuff which lives in these areas should be able to deal with that, so i like the idea of them burrowing into the muck and hibernating there until the next rain comes. 
EDIT: Thanks for the common name btw.

[waldo]

shouldn't an evil swamp spew clouds of miasma every so often? and also i think that a giant mosquito would be the best evil monster possible:

urist mcdwarf is running from giant mosquito
urist mcdwarf has been stabbed in the arm by the giant mosquito
urist mcdwarf screams in terror as his blood starts to be sucked out at an extremely fast pace.
urist mcmarksdwarf fires at the mosquito causing it to explode into a wall of blood and gore.
urist mcdwarf is badly hurt and nauseous
urist mcmarksdwarf vomits because of excessive blood splatters.

also i think that a haunted/evil bog should give dwarfs consecutive bad thoughts because they can "hear" the throws of battle even though it's been two or three seasons. and really really evil bogs should have swarms of regular mosquitoes.

and if it ever get's implemented, i know it's been talked about, but if a fortress gets a reputation for being evil then, the surroundings should be more willing to help then to harm. imagine an invasion being slaughtered by zombie/skeletal trees while urist mcdwarf stops by to give the sacrificial cow and collect the invaders armor. or a caravan reports items missing after traveling over a particularly unruly patch of vines.