Print

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

[Girlinhat]

Looking at the main page, Toady is furiously working on zombies and curses.  This made me consider, "a slain goblin is a valid target for corpse reanimation, and you cannot bury a goblin..." and thus I came to the rational conclusion of "there needs to be a way to neutralize the corpse" and the best way that came to mind, is burning.  Funeral Pyres should require something fire-proof to build, and require one log plus one corpse to use, and will destroy both of them.  Alternatively, it could use several cloth, like burning those goblin loincloths and socks in case your area is low on wood.  Bonus points if this counts as burial, and a cremated dwarf will never ghost.  Or perhaps it will ghost again, but you can burn an offering periodically (5 years time?) to put the ghost back to rest, something like a piece of meat or a nice robe, and the time put to rest depends on the value of item offered?

Either way, want a method to destroy or neutralize a body, to prevent hilarious and destructive zombie hordes.

[IT 000]

Great idea! Until a half burned goblin corpse becomes a !!zombie goblin!! 

Now that ash has a use, perhaps burning a corpse causes it to become ash.

[Supercharazad]

You could choose an option for "burn with clothes" to light their clothes on fire instead of wood.

[Urist McArmok]

Supported, but would they still come back as a zombie if you just built them a memorial in your Halls of Killage?

[Starver]

At the moment, though, Dwarves appear to have no flint-like fire-starting kit[1].  It'd need to be a built workshop-like place (crematorium?) which could be magma or non-magma powered (the latter needs (additional?) fuel, and the initial flame comes from wherever it comes from in other circumstances).

One thought I had, when I was opening this thread is that the spirits of Dwarves really should prefer to be either entombed (coffins/sarcophagi) or memorialised in stone, and that they probably wouldn't recognise being "sent up to heaven in a great big puff of smoke" as being a suitable funereal ritual to sate their souls and prevent their ghostly selves wreaking havoc.  When I saw that it was about goblins, though I realised my initial assumption was wrong.  But even when applied to Goblins, do they like to be pyroscipated?  Far be it for me to suggest that the dwarves should bow to the wishes of their most[2] hated enemies spiritual needs[3] in order to sate them, but is it something appropriate to their kind?  Is it the same as putting an elf in a harvested-wood coffin in a wood-panelled tomb with loads of illicit wood crafts littered around to further mock the deceased?  Or are Goblin spirits happy with the flame treatment.  (At least after death, although I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't enjoy getting a magma shower immediately before they say goodbye to mortality, the little buggers.)

(BTW "light their clothes on fire"?  I know I'm verbose, but isn't that a bit redundant?  When there isn't any possibility of mistaking it for merely illuminating their clothing, of course. )


@Urist McArmok: If any part remains 'intact' (at least individually, e.g. creepy roaming hands or rolling eyeballs), that needs to be dealt with.  Perhaps if the entire corporeal self has been seared by magma and yet the spirit is restless[4] something similar to the engraving method: "Ho, most vile enemy, we defeated your flesh and by these runes we shall defeat your spirit!  By marking your destruction upon this tablet of the vanquished we abjure your nameless spectral form to remain beyond the veil and never more to meddle in the land of the living!"  Possibly only named creatures (including named wildlife, killed in hunting or military actions) need to go that far, the un-named ones fade away, or just add to the general aura of the place and make it easier for the next named goblin general to turn aggressively poltergeist-like.


[1] Well, everyone does in Adventure Mode, 'cos you can set trees on fire "for the lulz".  Maybe they have them, that's how they start furnaces going.  Which leads straight back to the "Workshop Pyre/Crematorium" idea anyway.

[2] Second most.  Their most hated adversaries would just love to be buried under a sapling, I suspect.

[3] Not mentioning a certain recent death, IRL.

[4] Given ghosts of dwarfs apparently wreak havoc among their former selves, would ghostly goblins mess with attacking forces?  Or perhaps it is more that the dead dwarfs are complaining that their living comrades are forgetting about them, so a dead goblin would be equally/more aggressive towards the dwarfs that caused the untimely demise in question.

[Reelyanoob]

Supported, but would they still come back as a zombie if you just built them a memorial in your Halls of Killage?

Yeah I think they will still come back. On the download page Toady says ghosts as zombies are separate, so you can be haunted by someones zombie and their ghost at the same time.

btw we already have cremation using !!Magma!!

Body cremation would only seem to be relevant to zombies, you'd still need the memorial. Maybe We can add engraved urns to hold ashes though?

[Dynastia]

I like it, but if the sole reason is to avoid zombification, you could always throw the corpse into a river/volcano/magma sea/murky pond/deep pit...

Which means soon we'll have ZOMBIE MOATS.

[God of Toast]

I like it, but if the sole reason is to avoid zombification, you could always throw the corpse into a river/volcano/magma sea/murky pond/deep pit...

Which means soon we'll have ZOMBIE MOATS.

Corpses(Or every object really) ought to be dumpable then, when they're outside. (Correct me if there already is a way to do that, but I know for stone at least, my dwarves will never pick up stone if it's outside, despite being designated.)

[IT 000]

@God of Toast

'o' 'r' 'o' you can also click 'v' if you want them to gather pesky vermin corpses

[Girlinhat]

The main objective here is zombie containment, funeral rights would simply be a bonus.  As there's no way to conveniently dispose of a body aside from modded ethics to allow butchering, then zombies are going to be VERY bad for any evil fort.  With no way to dispose of a corpse, there's no way to stop every little death from returning to assault you.  Granted, when a zombie dies it leaves no corpse (at least right now) so goblins turn into goblin zombies, which then disappear when killed.  Still, having a few siege's worth of goblins suddenly reanimate is very bad, for the fort and for FPS.  A purposeful way to destroy a corpse is needed.

[Pilsu]

Making a trade depot -like structure out of wood and setting it on fire manually once all the bodies you want have been moved to it seems like it'd work better.

[Girlinhat]

Mass unmarked burials/burnings are also acceptable!

[NW_Kohaku]

Welcome back to the forums, Girlinhat.

Anyway, before you start the mass graves and funeral pyres, you might want to check this:

In a world where undead exist, why would anyone bury their dead at all?  Why not just chuck everyone in the crematorium?

Will a city surviving a zombie apocalypse have an effect on burial practices in-game?  Do they "learn" to do something different in how they bury their dead using some sort of method to stop another mass rising?

Also, will there be a "safe" method of burial, such as incineration and slabbing, or will that just produce some other kind of undead in a zombie apocalypse?

Undead uprisings are extremely rare events. It is rational that a culture will generally take only the minimum level of burial protection.

Some people think the undead exist in our world, and possibly did in greater numbers in the past depending on the kind, and still do/did burials of whole bodies in many places.  Without zombie uprisings there are just minor traditions, I think, as PTTG?? brings up.

Adding cultural reaction to widespread zombie attacks is fair to explore, although having it pop out naturally from some sort of basic AI is not in the cards most likely.  There will still be large concentrations of unhandled bodies at places like battlefields, probably, especially if the culture that worries the most about the undead loses.  Your fortress dwarves are free to improvise in advance of course.  I doubt there's going to be a 100% safe burial method for your dwarves, but being respectful will almost always be the better choice (although being respectful and also placing the coffin in a sheer pit might be the best choice in certain areas).

Leave a dead goblin on your lawn, all you have is a goblin zombie.  You can just kill the zombie again.

Burn a goblin corpse, and you get an unkillable goblin ghost that travels through walls and strangles your dwarves in their sleep.

What I'd rather like to see is some sort of way to have in-fortress religious services along with the temples in adventurer mode, and to have some sort of exorcist religious figure that could actually combat ghosts or undead.  Sending out the religious leader to perform funeral rights would somehow prevent the magic of undeath from causing ghosts or zombies, perhaps with only a percentage chance of working based upon the skill rank of the exorcist. 

If it fails, they could try to actively disrupt the undead with some sort of religious service to make the dead rest in peace, and "kill the ghost".

[Blade Master Model 42]

An exorcist noble for would be nice, I think. Cheaper and easier than producing slabs and coffins in the late game. So, have to fix that problem.

I'd think that if a dwarven ghost was exorcised, its surviving friends and relatives would get unhappy thoughts. Urist McDeadbro was mortified that his brother was sent to the afterlife without a burial. Or something.

[blizzerd]

suggestion: throw all corpses in deep deep pit

if game gets laggy, lava