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[Lytha]

My last fortress was on a scorching beach; nothing too scorching, but the grass turned yellow and dry each summer. Because I had the rare event of a birth of dwarven twins in there, I looked at the appearance of my dwarves - and found out that all of them had ochre eyes, dark peach skin, burnt sienna hair colour. All the dwarves had to spend most of their time outside in the open.

I was a bit freaked out that they all looked so similar, and decided that my raw edits must have had some strange side effect on the variety of skin tone, eye and hair colours.



Right, now I am on a frozen map. It's always below 0°C, i.e. water in the murky ponds won't ever thaw; the grass thaws during mid-summer for a week or so though. Once again, I am forcing my dwarves to spend most of their time outside in the open. Anyway, I was bored and checked out if the dwarves still looked like in the last fortress.

All have chestnut (or clean-shaven) as hair colour. All of them have pale pink skin. Eye colour varies though, from indigo over amethyst (what?) to emerald.


To me, this looks like Toady actually implemented some checks of "sun duration/temperature can have an effect on skin tone and hair colour"; i.e. Dwarves in scorching environments get a tan; Dwarves in freezing environments don't. Perhaps they even turn pale if you lock them up inside for a couple of years? Omg.

Am I just experiencing some modding side effect here, or do you notice something similar in your fortresses?

[Marthnn]

It is well known that genetic traits like hair and eye colors are passed on to offsprings, which explains why, in worlds with long history, most civ members have very similar physical descriptions.

Those 2 cases are not enough to conclude much. You could see if migrants are the same or change (tan) with time, or make a new fortress with the same civ but on a different biome...

[Lytha]

I'll be looking at them again in mid-winter to see if the pale pink has become a bit more pale than pink, and I'm considering to lock one of them up in the basement for a couple of years.

Right now, I'd love to hear if anyone else can observe something similar to this in their fortress, to rule out the freak accident caused by inexpertly done modding.


I'll try to gen a world with both scorching and freezing environments next (as soon as I grew bored by the current fortress) and run two fortresses there from the same civilization, taking notes about their colours.

[Mimidormi]

Sorry, i don't think there's correlation. I play vanilla, and i had brown skinned dwarves in very cold maps from mountainhomes in freezing biomes, and pale pink skinned ones from scorching wastelands, and i've never seen them change skin color during decades. What i've noticed is plenty of genetic drift, though, both in old and young worlds, with some trait appearing on more than 90% of the population (e.g. 'has a deeply recessed chin', 'has a somewhat long nose'). Eyes and hair color seem to have more variance than the rest.

[Tcei]

From my expereince all dwarves will have the same base features normally skin tone, hair and eyes. With, at most, only 1 or 2 variances.  The rest of the details tend to be different (i.e tall/short fat/skinny). Things like ear lobe and nose shape seem to float between these two catigories. Sometimes they'll all be the same, other times it varies.

In one fort I had all my dwarves had umber skin, copper eyes, and were clean shaven, the males I think still had beards but its been a while so not sure

[Nidokoenig]

Looking at the ponies in my current fort, there seems to be no pattern across castes. Each caste has it's colour scheme defined individually to create variety, and this is the current state of them, on the 14th Slate, Mid-Spring, 1004, with 77 cave ponies:

Male Draltha Pony: moss green hair, rust coat, consistently.
Female Draltha Pony: lemon hair, coats can be heliotrope, red, cobalt, aqua, lilac, midnight blue, peach, pumpkin, azure.
Male Slippy Pony: teal and pearl striped hair, coats can be azure, red, black, crimson(occurs twice), brown, emerald, auburn, flax.
Female Slippy Pony: buff and goldenrod striped hair, buff coat.
Male Gorlak Pony: carmine hair with crimson spots, dark violet coat.
Female Gorlak Pony: dark blue, dark violet and pale chetsnut striped hair, coat can be dark olive, rust, dark indigo, dark chestnut, ivory, aqua.
Male Underlord Pony(only two): violet hair, chartreuse or dark brown coat.
Female Underlord Pony(only one): cobalt, amethyst and fuchshia striped hair, pine green coat.

No discernible pattern in coat or hair colour, though there isn't a skin colour defined. It's interesting how coat colour is either dominated by one colour or seemingly random. I also wouldn't expect new migrants to have the same coat and hair colour as members of the initial group if the environment were affecting them.

Anyway, easy way to test this in your worlds: note down which civ your dorfs are from, abandon the fort, settle a completely different biome with the same civ and check skin and hair colour.

[SpiralDimentia]

...ponies. I hate life. I'm going to bed.

[Lytha]

Alright, I did some very fast experiments now.

1.) I started another fortress on the scorching "dark peach skin, burnt sienna hair, ochre eyes" world, at the other side of this pocket world.

=> all of the starting seven had these features.


2.) I started another fortress on the freezing "pale pink skin, chestnut hair, varying eye colour" world, also at the other side of this pocket world.

=> all of the starting seven looked again like that; as far as I could tell (there were 5 with clean-shaven hair).


3.) I rolled a more normal pocket world that actually had some temperate zones near the other pole cap.

=> all of the starting seven looked quite varied. Copper skin, brown skin, pale skin, pale pink skin, peach skin. No pattern recognizable for the hair or eyes either.


4.) I rolled another completely freezing pocket world.

=> now I am looking at 7 dwarves who all have "dark peach skin, goldenrod hair, varying eye colours"

This falsifies the "biome has an effect on the skin colour" hypothesis, since "dark peach" was on a scorching AND on a freezing world. (meaning: I was wrong, dudes.)


All of these experiments have in common that they are pocket islands, that the dwarven civilization was dead a long time ago already, and that these starting seven were generated out of thin air.

It would still be interesting to understand the reasons why some of these worlds then end up with dwarves basically looking like clones of each other, while world #3 generated a bit more variety. Perhaps the civilization of that world hadn't died hundreds of years ago, but only some decades ago - some more prehistoric dwarven ancestors to give the newly generated dwarves a bit more variety?



@Nidokoenig: I don't think that these rules of variety count for animals; they aren't members of civilizations who became extinct.




Some more experiments:

5. A so extremely hot world that the dwarven civilization should have died out some days into year 0. Somehow, however, they managed to survive for 7 years before they were slaughtered by an ettin. I was starting in year 250.

Anyway: yes, 7 clone dwarves.


6. A mild and slightly warm world. Civilization is still alive (there's a general and a queen, at least). We're in year 2.

7 clone dwarves. Well, one of the females has wavy golden yellow hair, while the others just have golden yellow hair. Of course, in year 2, they are probably created out of thin air as well. Hrm.


I think the current version has the problem that dwarven civilizations never really thrive, doesn't it? So it may be hard to roll a world where the dwarven civilization is powerful and strong in numbers, to provide some more variety for the gene pool.

[Nidokoenig]

My ponies are civ members, and I made sure they came from a living cave pony civilisation before embark. Those 77 cave ponies are spread across six migration waves. The reason I gave that example rather than try messing around with a dwarven civ is it was eight castes with colour schemes tracked separately immediately at my disposal.
 Try adding [NO_DRINK] and [NO_EAT] to the dwarves' raws, see if that makes them more varied. Maybe remove [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE] as well.

[slothen]

All have chestnut (or clean-shaven) as hair colour.

the horror...