Print

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

[mathi]

My fortress is struck by a syndrome.

In an attempt to reach beautiful marble (i love it how the bottom of a chalk deposit is made of marble) to standardize on a material for new furniture, i reopened the sealed off caverns. There one of my miners was killed by a so aptly named Forgotten Beast. Since my 4 professional military squads were tired of practice and killing the occasional goblin ambush (defenses agains sieges are excellent) i send them in to dispatch the shrimp. I didn't think too much about its dangerous blood (i cannot remember the exact description) and that might be the doom of my fortress.

With only one casualty the military did an excellent job...but then the trouble started. Dwarfs, children and pets are bursting into a mess of blood at random moments. One moment they decide to drop their activities and rest their wounds, the next one they die of blood loss. I already lost 1/4 of my population (among them my baroness) to this. It can happen while sleeping and in any area of the fortress, so it is not like they die on contact, it is only that when the symptoms are showing they die immediately after.

Even before opening the caverns i took measures to prevent exactly that. All the grown-up dwarves are in a squad and uniformed with socks and leather shoes. The dwarves that die seem to be barefoot or with only one feet covered. The stupid baroness refused to join a squad, so she was already walking around naked and got what she deserved for that indecent behavior.

Dwarves are walking through 2/7 or 3/7 water when entering the kitchen, the dining room, the hospital or the sleeping quarters. This water is refreshed regularly but still contains contaminations from the feed of dwarves (the walls of those sewers are really dirty, it seems the water doesn't flush that away).

Among the contaminations there are smears of Tise the Terrors of Spray's forgotten beast blood. I think this is the source of misery.

Now many dwarves are feeling bad about this situation. They consider it a tragedy when one of their friends or family die and sometimes start throwing tantrums or become melancholic. I can see a problem with that since there are no new immigrants coming. Caravans and diplomats still pass by.

I don't feel like abandoning the fortress and reclaiming. Even though there are only 3 of the original 7 alive, they are the ones that own the place, not some 7 random new ones.

I don't know if the bathing makes the situation better or worse. I don't know if the contaminants from the wall can get into the water. I don't know if the blood of death dwarves can be dangerous to others. But the next time i (re)open a cavern, i'll make sure you cannot enter the fortress again without taking a bath.

It would be wonderful if dwarves were smart enough to put on a pair of the socks and shoes that are in great supply and excellent quality present in the fortress. The method with squads is clumsy and doesn't work all the time. And i would expect the dwarves to prefer some covering when wading through the water or over Dense Cave Moss. Does anyone have a better solution?

[ASCIt]

Cull the unclean, quarantine the rest, and cleanse your fortress with purifying redwater.

[ThatAussieGuy]

Could you pour water down over a floorgrate to make a clensing shower?

[mathi]

Separating the fortress into two areas (i don't want to cull anyone, but to keep them isolated is a good idea) is not possible since i don't know which ones are infected. Death is instantaneous when the symptoms are showing. And i haven't found a dwarf with Forgotten Beast blood on him. The red cleaning agent is 83 levels under the lowest level of my fortress.

Maybe a shower will help. I am going to try that out. Flushing from an aquifer into the caverns tends to kill my fps though. But it'll improve the mood a lot!

Anyone knows an explanation about the lacking immigrants?

[ASCIt]

It may be the fact that half of your dwarves are exploding for no apparent reason (or else they'd know better than to walk through that tainted blood), but it may also have to do with your current fortress value. Basically, try finding precious metals and making stuff.

[Daetrin]

For certain syndromes, those cleaning baths actually cause infection. Because dwarves are instantaneously coated with water and anything in it, it can bypass the protection of foot and handwear.

[Sphalerite]

I built a device to help with this kind of situation, described here:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93780.msg2645439#msg2645439

It's a well with a magma-powered automatic self-clean cycle.  Dwarves clean themselves at the well, leave behind a spot of contamination, and magma is then flowed over the contamination to destroy it.  Having a handful of these should work to permit dwarves to clean themselves without then re-contamination whoever uses the well after them.

[ThatAussieGuy]

Huh, magmawiki confirmed what I thought - A waterfall will wash off blood and goo when dwarves go under it.  Hello decontam showers at every entrance into the caverns!

[Sutremaine]

What was the problem with assigning the baroness to a squad?

I no longer know how well dwarfbaths work without a team of janitors there to swoop down on contaminants*, but one thing that will help is keeping everything equippable behind one. If there are contaminated clothes around, they'll get cleaned before they're allowed back into circulation.

Use boots instead of socks or shoes. They don't wear and can't be claimed. Don't forget hand protection as well.

*I don't even understand how contaminants in dwarfbaths work. On the tick in which a dwarf enters a water tile with a pool of something, they remain dry. On the next tick, they and everything on them are covered in water and nothing else. How does the contaminant come and go within the same tick?

[mathi]

My fortress is very rich and well engraved. I guess i'll just have to engrave more. The explosive bleeding has stopped, so i think the disease is gone. It would be cool when it would spring up again every year to take a dozen dwarves. The atmosphere of the fortress has already become much darker, and this will only add to that.

I just discovered that you can make leather boots! For some reason i assumed it was just metal and i don't want civilians to use that. Now they are going to wear masterwork leather high boots when stumping through forgotten beast pulp. Gloves and mittens are already part of the civilian uniform, and until the boots are ready i am adding another pair of socks.

That auto-cleaning system is not an option since i don't want to get the lava to the top. Maybe in future fortress.

The stupid baroness left the squad before she took on the uniform. Now we are a democracy again.

Thanks for all the advise!

[i2amroy]

If you don't want to get lava to the top consider using a combination of a dwarven bathtub and a Mist generator. Together what will happen is that the dwarven bathtub will remove all contaminants from your dwarves and anything they are carrying and then the mist generator will destroy any contaminants remaining in the bathtub. Also if you place the mist generator right (so that it's mist is generated over the middle of the bathtub) then the water used by the mist generator won't affect dwarven pathing. I use the design in all of my forts as it's easy to set up and run and only requires water in amounts that can be hauled by hand. Also with a little additional planing you can have the other 3 mist generation spots created by the mist generator someplace like your dining room, providing further cleaning of dwarves there as well.

[Tevish Szat]

Cull the unclean, quarantine the rest, and cleanse your fortress with purifying redwater.

I've been watching too much FMA and not playing enough DF, because I thought something along the lines of "But wouldn't that just cause more syndromes?"

This illustrates why Military should be fully quarantined after fighting (almost any) FB.  At this stage of infection, I have to agree with the oft repeated general principle of sorting your dwarves...  Get clean ones in a clean room, hope one of them was carrying a pick, and begin to rebuild.  Disable corpse hauling (perhaps all haulings) on everyone at the very least, forbid death drops, and try drafting the fort in uniforms that require footwear.