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[Josephus]

Good we're on the same page then.

I reiterate, since Toady apparently intends DF's magic to be more organic and natural than "I use X Mana to cast Fireball", magic would be an essential part of the universal law.

[Neonivek]

would be interesting if the undead did more then just come to life

For example if having a lot of undead would somehow change the scenery and world around them.

[Hyndis]

Why is magic always a bad thing?



Also if there are undead hordes shambling about, they will certainly change the world around them. The area outside the walls of your fortress would be a desolate wasteland, with all plants trampled underfoot by the undead hordes, body parts, crossbow bolts, swords, armor, and all sorts of other things of battle laying about haphazardly, but unable to be retrieved due to having to keep the gates shut to prevent the horde from slaughtering everyone in the fortress. The landscape would be a barren wasteland painted with blood everywhere, and the horde would only grow in size with each migrant wave, trade liaison, or caravan. A full on siege might have a chance of making a dent in their numbers, but if the siege fails those goblins will join the ranks.

[Umi]

I am all for this on one condition.  Bites need to be an instant kill from zombies with a garunteed reanimation soon after.  It is zombie cannon.  Maybe nerf it so that only bites from a zombie of your own species can insta-kill, but biting needs to transfer the love.

[Hyndis]

Ehh, not sure about the instagib thing. That seems a little harsh, even for DF.

There are syndromes in the game now. There's no reason why undead shouldn't be able to transmit syndromes. It could be a slow acting but eventually lethal thing unless you happen to have a top notch doctor around to treat it, along with the right cure. Golden Salve perhaps? That has no use otherwise, and so if that was the only possible cure for a slowly spreading zombie infection then it would definitely have value, and be a very important thing to produce or import.

[Kurouma]

I think the absolutely-endless-world-flooding reanimation is a bit silly to be honest. I mean, how many times do you have to hack an animated corpse down before, you know, it starts to lose limbs and flesh and bits just through you bashing it? I *do* think corpses should reanimate infinitely in evil biomes - but only until you hit it enough so that it falls apart anyway.
This solves not only the problem of: 1) "Wouldn't it be awesome to have corpses reanimate...?!?" but also: 2) "Oh but yuk, then you
have to implement zombie butchery or corpse burning or have to have strange dispelling rituals or otherwise have endless hordes or..."

On living enemies you have to make a killing blow but, since they're already dead, you can't do that to the undead. Maybe you just have to land a certain number of 'critical hits' before it'll fall over? And each time it gets up it would have more yellow and red bits until it collapses through abuse. It should still have all the part and limb requirements of any other creature/dwarf/adventurer (minus nerves, blood, organs, etc): say it loses both legs, it can't walk; it loses its arms? can't manipulate stuff, etc etc.

On the subject of of religion and using ritual to prevent zombified dwarfs: bah! That's not the way to do it. Sure, maybe implement ritualised burial in Fortress Mode, but don't have zombification hinge upon it.
If you embark in an evil biome, presumably this 'evil' permeates the whole landscape. If you have a corpse, no matter where, even if it's in a coffin, then it *will* eventually reanimate. Now, in Fortress Mode, the coffins are all new and flash and sturdy. No zombie dwarf is escaping that. Where you should encounter them is in Adventurer Mode (or even reclaiming a fortress). There, when you come back, the buildings are crumbling and items are strewn everywhere, so then some of the coffins will just have to be worn or broken. Then some of the zombies will escape! Maybe the ones with arms can then let their buddies out too. You get my drift.

[Mel_Vixen]

Dont kill the zomby, kill/destroy/claim/counter the zombyfier.

[Kurouma]

Dont kill the zomby, kill/destroy/claim/counter the zombyfier.

Sure, that's cool too. But what would it be? It would be lame to have that hard-coded, like "Every evil biome has an evil temple of evil in it somewhere and if you take the evil stone out of the evil stone holder then the evil power is broken, and then every zombie turns into a fluffy wambler"
But otherwise, even if only some of the evil biomes have a cause for their evil-ness, that would be cool. Maybe there was a battle there where a lot of guys died, or maybe it's actually caused by an artefact power (I think Toady actually used this as an example of future powers in one of the DF Talks). Stuff like that would not be hard to check for in the legends, even if the reason is assigned retro-actively.

[Hyndis]

There are actually 9 different types of surroundings. You have benign, neutral, and savage. You also have good, neutral, and evil. Perhaps require certain restrictions. Neutral evil? Zombies are just hungry, not particularly thoughtful. Savage/evil could be restricted to the more demon type wildlife. Also, neutral evil is listed as haunted on the selector.

I think if you embark in an area marked as haunted, seeing the undead reanimated spontaneously wouldn't be out of place.

This means you can restrict undead to approximately 1/9th of the landmass of the world, which is enough that there should be plenty of embark locations in those regions, but not so much that the entire world is consumed by zombies.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Surroundings

[Mel_Vixen]

Well actually Good <-> Evil and Benign <-> savage willmake way for sphere based lands iirc toady saidsomething along that lines.

[Shade-o]

Undead might not have a particular "Zombie Infection" bite that specifically kills and reanimates, but it would make sense for them to have extremely virulent diseases that are passed on by them. As mouldering, fetid corpses, they would be prime locations for all sorts of diseases. Add in some evil magic to put it on steroids, and you have walking biological disasters that can eventually kill people if they infect a wound.

Things like soap and golden salve would be good counters for that. A well-stocked fort would have little to fear, but an outpost overflowing with wounded migrants and traders would be in for a tough time.

[kuketski]

I like the idea of zombyfiing corpses, but the mechanics behind it should be more thoughtful.
DF is coming along with law of energy conservation and real-life phisics(well... doing its best at it!). So if zombie is reanimated, then there must be some kind of energy, that makes the corpse moving.
As for now Toady maked sime kind of subsitute HP system for non-organics to be killable. To get rid of it, he need to implement the magic system so basically undead should have some kind of mana stock, that makes them moving and with every structural damage, stock size lowers along with lovering mana level with each hit.
For example - Minimal level of mana need to animate the corpse is 20+70% of max mana level. default mana regen of dwarven corpse is 5+random(5)-random(4). if Undeads mana level falls lover 30% corpse is falling
Urist McUndead have died. Urists max mana is 220. level of mana for Urist to rise is - 220*0.7+20=174. Urists mana regen rate is 7
Urist have mana stock size - 0 - emptying on death.
Urists corpse regens 9 mana per day.
so in 20(174/9) days Urist McUndead will rise.
Urist McHammerer have come and smacking McUndead`s bones.
Mc Undead is losing 1-5 mana with each hit(since Undead is keept alive by mana istelf, whith each appempt to make him dead again lowers mana level).
lets say on one hit McHammerer was lucky to break McUndeads leg - McUndead loses 20 max mana level and at level of 60 mana McUndead is dead again.


now mana level needed to rise is 160(200 max);
some time passes(body in not buried/burned to prevent rising) and in 12((160-60)/9) days McUndead rises again.
McHammerer jumps in and starts atacking - breaking left and right hands(-40 max level) and after that - cmacking skull (-40 max level) and crushing... well... 7 fingers(-14 max level) and 5 ribs(-25 max level) and lover spine(-30 max level)


now McUndead have 51 max mana level. to rise he need 55.7 (51*.7+20) mana, so he`ll never rise again.

This way, undeads will rise with higher frequency each time you "kill" them and eventually will lie forever as normal corpse.

[Farthing]

So wouldn't it be great if there was a thread that compiled all of the suggestions about necromancy, death, and undead together in the first post?

*pokes Hyndis* 

[mrtspence]

I love the idea. A lot.

However, I really think the undead shouldn't rise from the corpse of an undead--from the corpse of a formerly-living being. If they are missing their head/had it crushed, are chopped in half/had their spine crushed, or are missing more than two of their limbs/had the upper and lower bones of the limbs crushed, then they shouldn't reanimate as they are no longer functional. This could also serve as the method of killing the undead, so that the undead truly stay dead.

[Angry Bob]

As for 'proper rituals' preventing reanimation, I feel like the dwarves' rituals would involve filling the coffin with magma, dismembering the corpse, or chaining it into the coffin rather than 'sanctifying' it or whatever, even if such an option did exist once magic was implemented. What happens if you're without a priest when you get trapped in an evil biome? And other than political reasons, keeping the church the priest in question's attached to happy, keeping the gods happy, etc, why take hours on a ceremony that could be done in minutes?