Hey guys, I'm here to report about the Carp-God cult.
A very curious thing happened to me. Well, I chose the "Secret !FUN!" in the Creatures tab, expecting to have a lot of fun. Unfortunately, that's not how it happened.
I embarked on a glacier with flux stone, and ice, nothing else, and with all possible invaders and races enabled. I was looking for a hardcore, endless war.
I built a great castle, set a lot of defensive measures, and managed to get past the first waves very, very easily. The problem is that I had wounded soldiers, and I needed water for them. Well, Glaciers aren't known for their liquid water, so I had to find some water underground (I particulary hate the cave-in method to melt ice).
I started to dig until I had found a cavern, and when I found one, I built two wells to generate some water (I built two wells mostly because the wells were in the Z level -12, while the water was somewhere around -70. That made the wells work pretty slow). When the first dwarves used water (my docs for tending wounded dwarves), something curious started to happen.
I must state here that I built the wells right beside the hospital, for more efficiency, and that my chief medical dwarf had his bedroom inside my hospital.
Very well, after the using the water to clean some patients, I saw a fighting report from my chief medical dwarf: he had been stunned by some mysterious evil magic and developed a fear of water. There was something about a Carp God in the report, too.
Let me repeat: after using water from the well, my doctor, who slept 15 steps from the well, started to have hallucinations, developed FEAR OF WATER, and said something about a Carp God.
"Oh, amazing new feature. So the caverns have a carp god in their lakes." "Let him be", I thought, "If he comes up here, we'll have free sea food". Well, I changed my mind when one of my dwarves became a carp god adept. Well, being highly militarized I hadn't much of a trouble in dealing with him.
"Oh, fuck. What a damn coward. Can't believe he possessed a dwarf instead of coming himself." I didn't have enough troops to spare going underground. There were a lot of scary monsters, I couldn't fight them all and defend my fortress at the same time. "Time to sela those wells." And so I did.
Even with the wells sealed, the strange reports continued. Eventually, two dwarves became adepts of the Carp God. They were easily struck down, and were kinda useless dwarves anyways, so no worries. "But it could have been my legendary mason, or my accomplished crossbowman", I thought.
"Time to kill that fish. Let's go see if that carp god tastes good. Maybe his skin will be a good armor." So I sent my miners to dig around the underground lake. To lower the water level, you know. While they were digging, a thunderbird attacked my fortress. I had to defend the fort, so I delayed the Killing-the-carp-god project. to the next season. Meanwhile, I lost other two dwarves.
In the next season, with the project restarted, my miners finally dug around the lake. When the water level went down to 1~2, no Carp God appeared. I was kinda frustrated. "Where'd he go?"
Nonetheless, I sealed every tunnel that would lead to that cavern/well. That hopefully would stop my dwarves from becoming adepts. Too bad a few weeks later other two dwarves became adepts. I killed them. One of them was a great miner. I kept playing, hoping that eventually I would catch the evil force. And so my dwarves started to die. First two useless dwarves. Then a talented hammerdwarf. Then my professional crossbowdwarf, and that was enough for me. Time to look for help in the forums.
When I finally came here, I realized that it was a damn dwarf who was doing creating adepts.
You see, I really enjoyed when a vampire appeared in my fort the second time I played DF. I felt like Sherlock Holmes when I uncovered the vampire without consulting the wiki.
This time, however, I hated with all my strenght the Carp God cult. I was looking for a war, not an investigation. And the circumstances made me believe the threat was outside my fortress, deep in the caverns. I stupidly destroyed my wells and lost two wounded dwarves to dehydration. The Secret !FUN! wasn't funny.
I enjoy losing dwarves in a war, killing thunderbirds, werewolves, undeads, goblins, and things like that. But I hate when they start to randomly go berserk and leave me thinking the cause was black magic coming from a deep cavern when the true cause is a infiltrated dwarf.
Now I'm starting a new fort because I have no clue on how to build wards.
Anyways, this is a really great mod. I loved the invaders. I'll try again tomorrow without the Secret !FUN!.