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[Lightning4]

Possible spoilers if you want to find out some extra dragon fun for yourself.


Had a dragon decide to pay a visit to my fort. My military dispatched it with no casualties (to start), and besides a major forest fire, all was safe.
...Until random dwarves started bleeding to death. Specifically, military dwarves. At first my friend and I thought it was some kind of strange disease attached to dragons, since the strange part is, it always affected the feet of my dwarves. A few dwarves were lucky and somehow survived with missing right foot fat, but the few I saw before they bled out were bleeding profusely out of every part of one of their feet.

I finally found the cause after inspecting the gear of the last casualty. His boot was covered with dragon blood, and indeed, several other boots were covered with it as well. At first I thought it might've just been some twisted offshoot of the melting fat bug that evaded a swatting, but after looking into the raws, it may be a feature.
Turns out dragon homeotherm is hot. Very hot, in fact, several hundred degrees over the melting point of fat, and still two hundred degrees over the heatdam point of pretty much any organic material.
That means fat will melt quite quickly, and if the poor clueless dwarf doesn't take his boot off fast enough, his skin will eventually boil open and he'll bleed to death... quite a horrifying death. Clothes won't protect a dwarf for long, assuming they've got shoes under those boots. DISREGARD. As stated a couple posts below, most likely cause is the blood being superheated when the dragon breathes flame, then bleeding all over your dwarves' gear. Nonetheless, still a fun feature, and pretty hard to reproduce.

I had a few lucky bastards apparently know what was happening to them. Their right feet are missing fat, but otherwise they're completely fine. The boots are now forbidden, and I'll be seeing if it's possible to wash those boots with water. Or magma, if it comes to it.

Theoretically, this may affect ANY part of metal armor, but boots seem to be the most prone to collect blood. Fortunately, weapons covered with the dragon blood have no effect on the dwarf... but perhaps I should see if it has any effect on enemies.

[Jake]

I think I'd better add a decontamination room to my list of things to build once I get .04 working. The simplest method would seem to be a large cistern with a retracting bridge at the bottom, with a place for the squad to stand underneath and some means to safely drain the contaminated water.

[Greiger]

It's actually not the blood directly causing the melting feet.  Just because it's heatdamage point is so high doesn't necessarily mean it's always at that point.

However, if the dragon breathed fire anytime during it's attack (which it sounds like it did from the forest fire) it's body temperature can increase significantly.  Sorta related how a dragon could burn itself to death back in 40d.  Except now instead of dying from the heat it builds up it just stores the heat without being harmed by it.  Which means much of the dragon's blood will be the same temperature of the dragon at the time it was 'extracted'.  Thus melting feet.

While the blood probably isn't quite all the way up to that heatdam point it is still likely the temperature of dragonfire.  The dragon's spec heat also means that bodyparts lose that heat very slowly.  So a decontamination chamber is a good idea, I would also take the extra step of setting all tiles that have dragon blood on it as restricted, and forbidding everything in the blood.

tl:dr  The blood is whats melting yer dorfs, but it's because the dragon built up that heat before losing the blood, not just because it's dragon blood

[ungulateman]

Am I the only person who sees the possibilities here?

Dwarves armed with swords / axes forged with dragon's blood.

YES.

[smigenboger]

If you had a pool of dragon blood, could you tell a dwarf to drop a spear in it, thus covering it, and tell a gauntleted dwarf to pick it up?

If that spear pierced an enemy, it would begin to melt them!

Spear of Fire +2

[Hugna]

I had a human fully bronzed in adventure mode, completely covered in dragon blood, and i killed it when it dragonfired me, and survived, and i never melted... but that was in 31.03.

[Blackburn]

I'm also very intrigued at the idea of covering weapons with dragon blood so that they cut and burn enemies.

Seriously, that sounds awesome. A sword covered with the blood of a dragon being used as a weapon. Only way it could be cooler is if you could pour blood into the forge and make all weapons innately hot. And if dragon blood burned. Flaming blood sword.

[Eagle0600]

Just because it's heatdamage point is so high doesn't necessarily mean it's always at that point.

He said homeotherm, not heatdam. homeotherm, I believe, means it IS always at that point.

[Lokii]

I'd kida goes with the fantasy idea of dragon blood being deadly poisonous... except, melting poisonous.

As for coating weapons, wouldn't the blood eventually cool down?

[Eagle_eye]

a quick magma bath will fix that. you can have two armories: one for magma safe and dragon blood coated weapons, and one for everything else. When the blood cools down, you give it a nice magma bath.

[Lightning4]

As for coating weapons, wouldn't the blood eventually cool down?

I thought so too, but it's been basically been a couple months since the dragon attacked. Season ticked over too. The boots are still deadly, so it stands to reason the blood on the weapons is deadly warm too.

Further oddness, I have one guy who has blood on his gauntlet, but he's perfectly fine. The weapons that are coated with the blood seem to be perfectly safe, even without gauntlets. Perhaps these aren't covered with the deadly variant of the blood, but I'd like to believe the weapons are at least.

[smigenboger]

Does the amount make a difference? They could be trodding through a pool of blood, but only get spatterings on other parts.

[Greiger]

Just because it's heatdamage point is so high doesn't necessarily mean it's always at that point.

He said homeotherm, not heatdam. homeotherm, I believe, means it IS always at that point.

I apologize then.  I had assumed he mixed up the tags in his post.  A dragon's homeotherm actually isn't very hot at all, it's only set at 10040ºU, which is only 72ºF.  I assumed he meant the much hotter melting and boiling points.

At any rate I made a number of assumptions from memory, and I apologize.

[ungulateman]

I've had a better look at this in the arena - a dragon blood covered weapon will cause your opponent to mel, but it's rather slow, and doesn't work against most nonorganics.

I did end up with some melting cows though.

[Lightning4]

Just because it's heatdamage point is so high doesn't necessarily mean it's always at that point.

He said homeotherm, not heatdam. homeotherm, I believe, means it IS always at that point.

I apologize then.  I had assumed he mixed up the tags in his post.  A dragon's homeotherm actually isn't very hot at all, it's only set at 10040ºU, which is only 72ºF.  I assumed he meant the much hotter melting and boiling points.

At any rate I made a number of assumptions from memory, and I apologize.

Damn, you're right. I'm not entirely sure how I thought it was several hundred degrees hotter, but it's in fact lower than dwarves.
I think you're spot on with the blood being superheated due to it breathing fire.
Nonetheless, still an interesting... feature, I guess.