I decided to put the [ITEMCORPSE:STATUE:NO_SUBTYPE:IRORGANIC:BRONZE]
[ITEMCORPSE_QUALITY:5] tags that turn Bronze Colosi into statues when they die into my dwarves. I just thought it would be nice to decorate my mayors bedroom, office, dining room etc with statues representing those whom S/he has failed (I usually just have their quarters double up as my catacombs).
I embarked and looked through my dwarves preferences to see who the first test subject should be...I found a Slade Lover...the choice was easy.
The quickest way I could think of to kill a dwarf and leave a retrievable corpse was to build a floor-bridge to nowhere off the side of a cliff and have the Slade Lover/statue-to-be deconstruct the tile supporting the one on which he was standing...I had him build the bridge himself, he did it with gusto (don't you just love very agile dwarfs)
It seems the drop wasn't long enough. The Slade-Lover was barely injured at all, just a few broken limbs.So I had him rebuild the floor he destroyed and try again.
Alas the Slade Lover failed again
But he kept at it and was able to rebuild the floor a third time in between loosing consciousness and stuffing his guts and liver back in.
This time it worked, but sadly it was a bronze statue of nothing(in object testing I get statues of random creatures), not even a generic dwarf. and it could not be placed or even melted down, just put into a corpse stockpile.
I've Just noticed that he seems to like Shale and not Slade...............
.....
anyway..... I'm now going to try to make the statues be composed of blood or bone or something like that.
What's the most efficient way of killing a dwarf right after embark? I've tried sending an unarmed dwarf against a heard of badger and he did just fine, so far I'm leaning towards the method described above and cave ins.