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[Eric Blank]

I've heard of women wanting to give birth underwater before. Now dwarves doing it is because they don't go into labor or anything, the pregnancy timer runs out and a baby is generated on-the-spot. So it can literally happen anywhere, regardless of what the mother is doing. As long as she isn't horribly miserable, she probably won't even miscarry.

[Xantalos]

I've heard of women wanting to give birth underwater before. Now dwarves doing it is because they don't go into labor or anything, the pregnancy timer runs out and a baby is generated on-the-spot. So it can literally happen anywhere, regardless of what the mother is doing. As long as she isn't horribly miserable, she probably won't even miscarry.

Anywhere, you say?
What about if she happens to be falling off a tower and the baby splatters on top of her corpse?

[Eric Blank]

...That's probably possible, I guess. Time for some ‼science‼?

A creature who's falling will probably be splattered on the ground within a couple of ticks, so the window for giving birth in mid-air would be unbelievably small, if it even is possible. You could probably through a million pregnant women off a 300 z-level-tall tower, and never see it happen just because you didn't time the tossings right. It would really be a feat if you could even come up with a simple way to gauge when they should give birth, besides waiting nine months after they migrated to the fort.

Actually, I remember that in Battlefailed there were a couple of miners caught in "limbo" where the game kept the falling flag on them because the player saved and reloaded from that save whilst they were in mid-air. They can't break out of that state because they never hit the ground, and there's nothing to uncheck that "falling" flag. So, if you wanted to see if dwarves can give birth mid-air, the best bet is to A) reread the Battlefailed story and see if one of them was a married woman whose spouse was still alive whilst they were in the air and B) download a save spanning the time period wherein the previous conditions were true. If you wait and watch, they may give birth.

[Xantalos]

They were both male, and somehow didn't exist in the game or somesuch. No time passed for them somehow.
We need some !!science!! to be done, though. Could that same glitch be exploited?

[Eric Blank]

Maybe with some DFhack script to check that falling flag, then saving and reloading the game. Runesmith is outdated, now, and that was the only program I know to have ever explicitly had a falling flag to check/uncheck.

[wierd]

It takes a few ticks to have them fall.

Just drop them from 3z up, and press spacebar at the very moment that the platform drops. You can usually catch the game in a paused state with them mid-air. Then you can save and reload.

[Xantalos]

Someone who can actually run a fort must do this thing.

[Larix]

I suspect that, like other bodily functions, pregnancies are put in stasis during a strange mood (i only have the flimsy evidence of a dwarf woman giving birth the moment she was finished making her artefact, and practicality - gaining a child interrupts any job for 'seek infant' and any interruption of a mood apparently leads to instant madness).

So, the setup would be to lure a presumably pregnant dwarf into a workshop held up by a support, stretch out the job as much as possible so that she's due eventually, then collapse the support and see if she gives birth after being insanified, and still in the air.

Hmm, can insane dwarfs still give birth? And what would the civ allegiance of a baby born by a berserk mother be?

[wierd]

It would be difficult to ensure that the dropped married woman is indeed preggers.

Best bet would be a very young fortress, where there is a easier potential to predict that a specific woman will be the major proletariat type, and suitable for experiments in suspended gravity obstetrics.

The first few to get hitched usually have a much higher probability of being highly prolific.

Putting water underneath to catch the falling infant, but not very deep (4 deep) should result in easier time of gaguing success, though will surely result in announcer spam about being unable to path.

I don't think "falling" is a mood flag, but instead a status flag, like "drowning" and "breathing problem".  This means that theoretically, the suspended dwarfette could pop repeatedly, especially with some modding to make dwarves require no sustenence for experimental purposes.

This could make for a very interesting method to draw sieges, if you combine with telportation of the suspended dwarfette, and also suspend her husband, to avoid his insane berzerk rages over losing babies to gravitationally related deaths.

Eg, suspending her 6 or more z levels above the drawbridge to draw goblins to the site, especially with babies being dropped on the cell below at intermittant intervals.

[Xantalos]

Stop: separate thread time.

[Babylon]

Dear Urist McSoldiers

Please pick up your equipment either before, or after the siege, not in the middle. If it wasn't important enough to do during the months before the siege it is not important enough to wander into the middle of the sieging humans and their giant war ticks to do now.

[WillowLuman]

Giant war ticks? *shudder*

Dear Dwarves,

Are you seriously telling me you'd rather eat vermin or starve than eat raw egg? I know preferences can vary between person, but don't throw a tantrum when your profile clearly states you prefer to consume turkey egg and there's more than 300 of the damn things.

[wierd]

To our illustrious overseer, HugoLuman,

While there most certainly are many delicious looking eggs, none of us relish the idea of developing salmonella from sucking raw eggs, given our malnourished condition. Perhaps if you would be so kind as to give us a kitchen, and assign a cook, we could make healthy, delicious omlettes, but as it stands, attempting to eat lizards, giant roaches, and the occasional pixie or bluejay will have to suffice.

Ps, please hurry; pixies do terrible things to dwarven digestive systems.

Signed,

A starving rabble of scrabbly short persons with pointy things and axes.

[WillowLuman]

Dear Dwarves

There's no wood to make a kitchen, as we need a new one after the ogres smashed all the buildings in the west wing, and the mayor -who is currently tantruming- ordered a massive mandate of barrels. Also, why can't you kill and eat the turkeys without a butcher shop? You've got sharp things and skilled butchers, and seemed to have no problem with raw poultry in the past, why won't you just decrease their overabundant population?

PS: that ale stockpile is for trapping grizzly bears. We have a massive pile already within the fort, stop raiding the outside one and then complaining about the rain!

[wierd]

Dear overseer,

We would like to respectfully remind you that there are options other than wood for the construction of kitchens and butcher shops, since they don't require magma safe materials.

Perhaps a lump of harvested clay, or a recycled bit of constructed wall? Perhaps dismantle some other workshop temporarily?

Also, have you considered assigning the the plant collection labor on a fish cleaner, then D, P ing a large section of the surface? We can eat raw strawberries and prickleberries without any issue.

Cordially reminding you that wood, no matter how satisfying it is to piss off the elves when collecting and using it, is not the only suitable material for workshop creation.

PS: that rotgut in the basement is old and stale. It's also all the way down in the basement. You honestly expect us to go all the way down there for a drink?