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[Misterstone]

So it looks like someone made a similar suggestion about this:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56177.msg1214025#msg1214025

The idea is, a forgotten beast (or mega-beast) arrives, and your dwarves don't think they can take it out.  Or maybe they're just impressed.  Anyway, you have an option to appease the beast by building it a shrine and assign it to the beast (if there is more than one beast on the map, you choose one for your cult).

Once you make a beast shrine, the beast behaves like a noble, making mandates and demands.  If your fortress decides to worship the beast, then your relationship with the dwarf and human civs will erode (unless maybe they are evil beast worshippers too), possibly resulting in sieges to purge the land of your evil.  Perhaps the siegers could give you a chance to renounce the beast worship before attacking.  Maybe other civs such as evil humans, goblins or Kobolds could begin to worship the beast, and make pilgrimages to your fortress.

If you voluntarily destroy the beast shrine, the beast goes crazy and (tries to) kills the fortress.  If something else destroys the shrine, the beast will give you time to re-build it before it goes crazy and kills the fortress.

The dwarves have to keep the beast happy; there could be many ways to accomplish this: build it a nice temple, give it nice things, show it adultation, make engravings or statues that flatter it somehow.  Perhaps just seeing things die horribly could make it happy (you could be creative with this).

The beast makes demands from your dwarfs that enrich or feed itself.  The 'shrine', which could either be a simple structure, or perhaps even better a customizable zoned room, would allow you to assign wealth and other objects to it, and these things belong to the beast's personal hoard.  Also the beast might ask for animals or people to be fed to it, which you could also specify from the shrine menu.  Possibly the beast could demand that visitors (merchants, etc.) from other places be fed to it.

Perhaps a 'grand priest' nobility title would be added, and the dwarf with this title would be the one who caries out services for the beast (brings it treasure, performs sacrifices, etc.)

Serving the beast, or even being around him often might cause dwarves to go somewhat crazy (perhaps the priest could be buffered against a full-on freak out, but he'd also go crazy in a non-debilitating way).  However, the population would be required to worship the beast in person at least every now and then.  In the shrine menu, you could specify a number of on-call worshipers, and dwarves would rotate in and out of worshiping duty.  The beast could demand more adulation as part of its steady stream of demands, so the more arrogant or greedy it becomes, the more people it draws away from productive measures.

Dwarves can free themselves from the beast by killing it.  Perhaps to prevent this from being too easy, the beast could become more powerful the longer it is cared for, or it could demand that dwarves not make certain items that would make them a threat (ie, demand that they do not produce steel armor, weapons, etc.)  Building weird mechanical constructs near it's shrine/lair might also make the beast nervous.  Also to prevent players from getting off too lightly, dwarves that have been devoted to the worship of the beast for too long might go insane or berserk if it dies.

Anyway, the older topic touched on this stuff, I just had the idea independently and decided to elaborate a bit.  Hope this isn't all old hat...

BTW I'm not saying that this should be required by any means, but rather exist as an option to the already existing ways of handling beasts (killing them or walling them off somehow).

[Granite26]

What kind of heretic advocates solutions that don't involve pointy sticks or magma.

[Misterstone]

The kind who thinks a 20m tall chinchilla twisted into humanoid shape with a giant poisonous stinger is the envoy of Armok.

[King_of_the_weasels]

The forgotten beast could be made of magma.  Does that help?

Anyway, cool idea, but forgotten beasts would have to be much rarer to keep it from happening to every fort.

[Misterstone]

Well, most forgotten beasts can simply be killed by the military.  You'd only want to engage in beast worship if you had no other choice because you are too weak or the beast is a very powerful one.  Or maybe for extra !!fun!!.

[Granite26]

I like it as an extra option....  It's functionally equivilent to hiring mercenaries

[GreatWyrmGold]

Combine this with all sorts of surrendering, and there would be a challenge to surrender to every hostile.

To the original:
1.) Maybe if the beast got enough sacrifices in the right kind of ceremony, it would create "Spawn of [forgotten beast name]"s that would be smaller versions of the beast and would serve as its servants and enforcers.
2.) The presence of a forgotten beast shrine warps nearby dwarves to be more like the beast...and likely also drives them insane.
3.) Multiple FBs? If they get along, they might make ever-more-arrogant demands jointly...but if they don't, each will try to gain more and more power before the inevitable war between the beasts and their followers, allies, and minions. The fortress guard would try and hold the fort together, beating dwarves and monsters that attack other dwarves or (this would be hilarious) chaining up one or all of the offending horrors from below.
4.) In conjunction with idea the third, have some FBs followed by minions from underground that serve its interest, and have more beasties enter the fort once a shrine is set up to serve the FB and (as long as you are compliant) the fort. Imagine if these were your only military...

[Icee77]

I like this. Maybe, a benefit to the cult of FB is that they start making "Mysterious Bars". These bars would be used to make a "Soul Weapon". These weapons would be as powerful as an Adamant sword and maybe could only be used by cult-followers. They could also have a negative effect, like slowly rotting a dorf's body into a night creatures!

[GaxkangtheUnbound]

Perhaps the forgotten beast develops a liking for your dwarves(Not in the hunger way) and decides to start bringing in stuff from its travels(Possibly for something in return?) and it would be quite useful.
And the suggestion for forgotten beast spawn: Maybe they could start collecting items from other places to bring back?
This would likely be a very rare case.

[Unfrozen Caveman]

This is a really neat idea.  My first thought is that the player shouldn't be able to force dwarves to worship the beast.  They should do so if and only if they're sufficiently wowed and impressed by it to the extent that they forget about their old god.  I think it also should only work on some FBs depending on their intelligence and temperament, and it probably shouldn't work if you already have one FB noble.  There should be substantial risk involved in attempting to appease an FB, such that it would only appeal to players with no military and those with vast militaries (for fun/science).  It should not make FBs easier to deal with.

I like the idea of them leaving and returning with new things or randomly leaving to never return with their followers babbling on about how it will return.  I really like the idea of the personalities of followers and caretakers becoming darker, with the possibility of them turning into homicidal sociopaths, not like a berserk dwarf, but more like serial killer.

[Max White]

This, for concept alone, is some what kick ass, on the basis that it allows you to carve a culture, an entity, a soul into your fort. That forgotten beast that you all worship? That makes your fort unique.

I like that.

I think to improve on this, we should improve on the FBs themselves. If we assign alignment modifiers to them, making some evil, so good and some neutral, that is a nice start. Worshipping an evil FB is almost certain to have elves, dwarfs and humans breathing down your neck, but worshipping a good FB would lead to more positive relations. Sphere alignments could also come into play, in that if you chose to worship a Titan that was related to mountains, dwarfs would continue to love you, but elves not so much, so so forth.

[Naryar]

That sure is a good idea...

...I would rather have it applied to dragons myself.

[Blade Master Model 42]

I like this idea. Maybe, in addition to other effects stated above, fell moods might be possible no matter what a dwarf's happiness? Or perhaps, artifacts will simply have a much greater chance to feature engravings of the FB on them?

What would the FB's Shrine quality requirement be? Would it be set? Or, as seasons pass, would it require it's shrine to increase in quality?

[anon_outlaw]

i say we extend this worshipping idea to every powerful creature in the game, hydras, titans, giants, dragons and so on. worshipping something like a hydra would be kinda hard as they arnt intelligent and would have a higher probability of just chomping down on your dwarves anyway though it would still be fun to try and work out it's demands when it spazzes out and starts eating your dorfs.

FB's are nearly always murderous with no mention of good ones in the game but also very powerful so i reckon they should have more awesome aspects to worshipping them but are pretty damn evil 99% of the time.
Titans to fortresses are bad but there is mention of titan gods that seem ok, i guess that would give an even spread of ethics and of course have the same awesomeness of FB's.
Dragons would just be selfish more then anything.
Giants would be your best friend and really help out, but at the same time be quite murderous for even slight failures of demands/requirements.

[Girlinhat]

(Didn't read all of the thread, only the first post)
I really like this, as long as we get good creatures too.  So far, your fort gets trouble, or it gets merchants.  Sometimes merchants are trouble.  If you get some good beasts, that encourage crop growth, from 5 per stack to 7 per stack, or allow healing of nerve damage and missing limbs, or encourage masterwork quality production and increase learning rate, then you'd very much want to appease such a creature.  On the other hand, these are weak and easy to stab.  If an evil creature appears, you can appease it, and it will respond by protecting your fort.  After all, you're source of income, and the evil beast is the owner (at least from the beast's point of view) and it protects its investment.  Good creatures consider you more of a tenant, cleaning and stocking their temples while they reside there, but they consider themselves residents (nobles) where YOU take care of everything.

It's possible, epic even, to lure in multiple beasts.  If you have a creature, then an approaching good creature will either decide to leave, or will hang around and try to sway the population.  You can build another, smaller temple to house both of them, but neither will be very happy, or you can kill one of them and the other will be ecstatic.  If an evil creature arrives, it will decide to leave, or pick a fight.  If you're housing a good creature, then it will just try to kill it, but if you've got an evil beast on the map, then they fight to the death!  It should also be possible, but highly unlikely, to build dual temples and house two evil beasts, or a good and evil on the same map.  If you put enough effort into it, it should be possible, but VERY expensive, to have a dozen patron creatures of your fort.  After all, they'll all demand a certain quality of temple, a certain amount of devotion, and a certain amount of jealousy.

I don't see this happening immediately, but when religion and trade is overhauled to allow for temples of worship and guild unions, then something like this may be added.  That would be the right time to slip it in, anyways.