Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Farthing]

Yes. Zombies.

As a note, I don't feel that buried corpses should get a reprieve from undeadness unless there's some kind of religion involved. Coffins and other burials should make it very difficult(impossible?) for a zombie/skeleton to get out unless the burial is disturbed, but the reanimation should still take place.

A butcher shop should be a completely valid way of getting rid of zombies. It might cause an unhappy thought, but it should be doable. Most would be creeped out, but when the dead start rising and you take one down, you want to make sure they stay there.

There are two primary problems with zombies right now. One is they require magic which looks like it won't be implemented for a long while. Two is that any special treatment of zombies would be based on expanded culture/religion and also magic.

Also to add a unique thought to the thread ( I think). It would be cool to see ghosts as another kind of undead. Harmless, and unharmable, but generate unhappy thoughts in those that can see them. Maybe they can pick up items too.

[Hyndis]

Problem is that you need to have the thing work also in terms of gameplay.

Dwarves die. Sometimes they even die from old age. You need some sort of mechanism to allow the player to put dead dwarves to rest. Coffins are already in the game, and the way coffins work is that the dwarf corpse object is put inside the building object of a coffin. As the corpse object is inside a building it is not laying around on the ground somewhere, such as at the bottom of a chasm or in a stockpile, the reanimation mechanic I described won't work on it and so the corpse will be immune from reanimating assuming it is in a coffin.

Remember, I am trying to keep the idea simple, to work within current game mechanics as much as possible, and yet still have a large impact despite the minor changes. Less work for Toady, more FUN for us. Everyone wins.

Just having an X% chance of a non-buried corpse object reanimating each month or season change, with the corpse object being despawned and in its place a zombie or skeleton spawning of the same creature type, would involve very few changes made by Toady and even with a few relatively minor changes you get an entirely new gameplay mechanic, including undead hordes shambling about outside the walls of your fortress, with migrants, liaisons, caravans, and sieges all adding to their numbers.

[EvilMoogle]

Perhaps work in religion someway with a way to 'sanctify' bodies for burial or tombs/coffins/graveyards?

Could even add to the Fun if you have "Urist McWidow was disgusted by her husband being burred in a sacrilegious tomb" if the "wrong" religion presides over the service (zombie invasion or tantrum spiral, take your pick)?

[Andeerz]

I long for the day when we can see this, or an ASCII equivalent.

[Hyndis]

Perhaps work in religion someway with a way to 'sanctify' bodies for burial or tombs/coffins/graveyards?

Could even add to the Fun if you have "Urist McWidow was disgusted by her husband being burred in a sacrilegious tomb" if the "wrong" religion presides over the service (zombie invasion or tantrum spiral, take your pick)?

Some things you can abstract away. Like a dwarf working in a carpenter workshop presumably has some tools to work the wood with, or a blacksmith working in a forge. He's probably got some hammers and tongs in the workshop to work the metal with.

I'm assuming that the process of burial, bringing a corpse to a coffin, involves some sort of ritual. Its abstracted, but you can presume that its there, just not explicitly shown.

[Pilsu]

Personally I'd just use fire and leave wishy-washy holy magic for settings where unicorns and elves aren't terrifying, man-eating beasts.

I suppose the corpse might get up while still burning but that's just a part of the Fun™.

[Hyndis]

You could consider that they actually lock the corpse in the coffin. Preferably one made out of stone or iron. Chained shut. The undead dwarven corpse would then be eternally clawing at the inside of the coffin, unable to escape, but unable to die either.

Dwarven catacombs in haunted biomes would be truly terrifying places.   

[Farthing]

On second thought, the way Toady seems to be going, Undead should only need to be "killed" once, though this will be rather difficult, so only plain "dead" corpses should be able to reanimate. I stand by my statement about buried corpses being able to revive though.

[Hyndis]

Perhaps only a regular corpse, such as "Urist's corpse" or "Urist's skeleton" would be a reanimation candidate.

"Urist's mangled corpse" or "Urist's partial skeleton" would not, as it would be missing chunks, thus, mangled.

A corpse can be mangled with just the removal of a single limb, like an arm. Normally this would not stop a zombie at all, but mangled can also refer to missing a lower torso or head, and that definitely would stop a zombie.

[Neonivek]

Personally I'd just use fire and leave wishy-washy holy magic for settings where unicorns and elves aren't terrifying, man-eating beasts.

I suppose the corpse might get up while still burning but that's just a part of the Fun™.

It depends if it is really holy magic or not.

As I have said before the cause and effect may be different.

If not having a proper service can cause the dead to come back to life (VERY VERY VERY common theme in undead) then it isn't magic.

[Hyndis]

The undead are still animated by magic.

And yes there is magic in DF. DF is just a very low magic setting, its not one of those high fantasy settings where every other person is a wizard.

There are already undead in the game, animated presumably by magic. Similarly, creatures like magma men, fire men, giant weasels made out of coral, and all sorts of demons in the underworld.

[Josephus]

Personally I'd just use fire and leave wishy-washy holy magic for settings where unicorns and elves aren't terrifying, man-eating beasts.

I suppose the corpse might get up while still burning but that's just a part of the Fun™.

It depends if it is really holy magic or not.

As I have said before the cause and effect may be different.

If not having a proper service can cause the dead to come back to life (VERY VERY VERY common theme in undead) then it isn't magic.

That's ridiculous.

Proper burial services (read: rituals) required to prevent undeath is exactly what magic is.

[Neonivek]

Proper burial services (read: rituals) required to prevent undeath is exactly what magic is.

The proper burial doesn't do anything

It is the improper burial that is the effect.

Goodness so quick to call anything magic. In order to be magic it needs to call on gods, spirits, or energies. Since a proper burial doesn't call on any of these how is it magic? Improperly burried people come back as the undead is a law of the universe not an interjection of magical forces.

[Josephus]

Magical forces would be a part of the physical laws of the universe - doing a certain something (or forgetting to do so) produces a certain result.

The reason I'm considering it magic is the same reason we consider Dragons fantastic beasts rather than mundane creatures: because in the real world, people don't come back to life if you don't bury them right.

[Neonivek]

Ok yes if you define magic as "anything that doesn't occur in real life" then yes it is obviously magic.