Bay 12 Games Forum

I had a legacy vanilla fortress. Interrogated a particularly feisty elf with an insane criminal history.

Literally over 100 different aliases, tons of theft plots, several assassination plots, and several more coup plots.

This was all over the course of about 160 years.

In cases like this, where one person seemingly fills the shoes of dozens or hundreds of unique aliases, it might be up to your head lore to determine how one could get away with this. Cunning and disguises? Magic? Alcoholic fugue states? Who's to say. Would love these systems to be fleshed out in a way that allows us access to explanations for things like this beyond dice rolls.

Anyway, my point is that this doesn't seem too out of the ordinary (though certainly uncommon).

Ok, I dug into adventurer mode a bit with a bunch of demigod adventurers who had all their points stuck into persuasion (a bunch, because if you put all points into persuasion you haven't got points into anything else, so a number of them met their ends on bandits and nightcreatures), and got you some images.

Delightful to gain some insight into this - thanks so much for your detailed analysis. I really enjoyed seeing how large organizations can function. Very interesting to see a chain of command going boss -> member -> asset -> member -> thief.

Much appreciated.

It is my understanding that the 'boss' IS the organization. They are the primary schemer of the organization, and if the boss were to be named 'john,' then the organization title would also be 'john.' At least, I have only ever seen organizations that share their name with the boss. Unidentified bosses will lead unidentified organizations, for you do not know their identity yet due to features of the interrogation and justice system.

In this way, a boss who has multiple members is just that - one organization with multiple members.

I do not know if a member of one org can be a boss of another. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can tell us.

It can help to enforce laws on your peasants via the justice menu

Agents (usually or always your own dwarves) can steal artifacts and (as far as I am aware) attempt assassinations.

The only crimes you will typically experience are thefts, but you cannot actually convict or interrogate anyone until the crime has been noticed. You must have a sheriff or capt. of the guard in order to interrogate and beat suspects.

You must have a chain or cage designated as a prison to imprison convicts (if they don't get their head exploded by a guard's punch).

Lastly, you must have a hammerer to execute the most egregious of criminals.

If you, for instance, have no prison, I believe that all crimes that require imprisonment will instead result in flat out execution by the hammerer (if you have one). It is crucial to have a prison so that any agents lucky enough to survive the initial beating by the sheriff, captain, or guard will be able to survive and continue on being productive.

Wise to note that most non-agent criminals (like members and bosses of organizations) will survive the beating. Vampires will almost ALWAYS survive their sentence, so if you have plenty of spare dwarves, you can try to allow some heavy handed murder - I mean justice.

I am a fairly new player, and I still mostly explore the early to mid game without delving too deep into the late game. I get a nice military together, a nice tavern, a library, and at least a couple temples. I use a basic drawbridge to seal myself away from large threats unless I have the dwarves necessary to deal with it head on.

Anyway, I have recently started paying more attention to the justice tab. It has been my experience that the justice tab will essentially stay empty for the first few years of a fort, and then all of a sudden there are a few thefts or attempts. Interrogate a few visitors and dwarves and it doesn't take long for a pretty serious explosion of uncovered plots, aliases, and confused foreigners.

A recent fort that I have been lovingly caring for has a particularly impressive group of criminal organizations who have taken an interest in my artifacts. In the past, I have simply convicted any potential criminals, but this time I decided that I would interrogate the criminals first - and it led to a TON of plots being uncovered.

Thieves, agents, and bosses (some identified, many not) quickly filled my counterintelligence tab. I began making it a habit to question all visitors about their involvement of every unsolved crime and implication in my cold cases tab. This would then lead to even more organizations being uncovered with their own plots.

Most organizations seem to involve only three people. A 'thief,' A 'member,' and a 'boss,' who will often also share a name with the organization itself.

While a few only included a thief and a boss, there was one organization which included TWO thieves, a member, and a boss. In total, there were probably about 9 organizations that had plots relating to my fort (at least the ones that I found).

One notable criminal was an elven boss (or maybe a member) who was involved in a 165 year long coup attempt of my dwarven government, several theft plots, at least one assassination plot, a coup attempt of my site's local government, and (literally) over 100 aliases... Their interrogation report took up the entire screen, then some.

This got me wondering why it seemed that there were SO MANY rather small orgs rather than several larger ones. Is it uncommon for an organization to include more than one member and one boss?

I had a member of the guard corrupted, countless peasants, even some skilled laborers... EVEN THE OUTPOST LIASON ADMITTED TO EMBEZZLING...

Over the span of about 8 years, I would estimate that there were at least 30 plots (not including misconduct), 20 criminals (not including unidentified bosses) and, again, around 9 criminal organizations.

With my most complex org containing one boss and one member (and 2 thieves), I was wondering if anyone had any stories or explanations about how large orgs form, how they are often discovered, and what they get up to in fortress mode.

EDIT: I play legacy. not steam release.