Bay 12 Games Forum

For an alternative, I'll quote my ideas from that previous thread:

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I think priests should have some 'mystical' effects, but they should be so subtle and slight that the player can't really be sure that they're there at all. For instance, undead might just shy away from a priest from time to time, and even demons might slow down a little bit as they charge one. Not enough to actually save them, of course, but the effect would be neat.
Later, if hauntings and so forth were brought in, a priest could help avert and dispel them. If a poltergeist took up residence in one of your rooms, a priest could run in to do the old bell-book-candle routine.

Priests could, in general, serve more as the player's way of fighting back a little against magic and magical creatures, rather than a way of using it themselves.

...oh, they would also have to attend to weddings and funerals, of course. That goes without saying. Having a skilled priest attend to a funeral might help reduce the unhappy thoughts associated with the death, the same way it helps people come to terms with it in the real world.

And they'd collect tithes. I would imagine any sort of dwarven religion would be big on tithes.

And mandate the creation of religious junk and the establishment of more temples. Although they might let you sell some of that junk if they think it'll earn them converts.

I don't think we need to be too specific about the religion's details... although for some reason when I think of dwarves, I'd expect their religion to be akin to Judism. Maybe it has to do with the beards. Lots of big sacred scrolls covered with religious text in an ancient language would fit dwarves, too. And Tolkien also had them mourning for their lost homeland.

Perhaps the noble who covers religion would just be a sort of high priest, and the player would have to assign other dwarves as lesser priests under them. When the high priest arrives, they'd bring with them a big sacred scroll which would form the center of the main temple the same way an anvil is brought in for your first forge; if anything happens to that scroll (like, say, water damage), every religious dwarf in your fortress would probably freak out. The death of the high priest would send them all into mourning, too.

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Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>Dragon's blood should be blood out of a dragon as far as alchemy is concerned. Wizards might have something to do with the blood of magical animals, but alchemy doesn't. It should be about acids and explosives and extracting phosphorus from goat urine. Not mixing dragon's blood with newt's eyes and the galstone of a yak.

The nuclear fusion of a single milligram of hydrogen into helium yields approximately seven quintillion, eight hundred thirty-six quatillion, four hundred sixteen trillion, six hundred billion joules of energy. A log is alot more than 1 milligram in mass. Where is all that energy going? I'm ok with having magic turn one thing into another and explain away the mountain melting amounts of heat that would logically be released, but alchemy is not magical in nature. It's chemistry.</STRONG>

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If you mix sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate and light it on fire it will explode; if you mix dragon's blood, demon's fangs, and gnomeblight together, they will cause a thunderstorm, or turn lead to gold, or cause a thunderstorm.  Certainly, it may be that in the underlying metaphysics, one is relying on "chemical" laws and one is relying on "magical" laws.  The alchemist knows nothing about this.  As far as he's concerned, black powder is every bit as magical and natural as the solution of dragon's blood, and any stab-in-the-dark alchemic theories he proposes are likely to attempt to encompass both.

The alchemists of our world were obsessed with mysticism and the supernatural; they used a supernatural, 'magical' framework to try and understand everything they did, and sought to use alchemy as a spiritual medium, trying to contact deities and conjure up angels.

You seem to have mistaken "alchemist" for "chemist".  These are not people who know what they're doing.  These are people who conceal the very, very little amount they know (mostly rotes and formulas that themselves or others discovered by accident, with zero understanding of why they behave the way they do) under endless layers of absolutely absurd mystical theory.

Alchemy and magic are totally inextricable; indeed, the primary difference between alchemy and chemistry is mystical thinking.  What possible reason could you have to suggest that an alchemist would not experiment like mad with dragon's blood?

For that matter, as a scientist, how could you possibly suggest that a real-world chemist in the Dwarf Fortress world would not dutifully attempt to map the magical properties of dragon's blood, determining how they work, how they can be harnessed, and so forth?

I accept that science is outside the realm of magic; I do not accept (and I cannot see how any alchemist would, even if it cost him his life), in the Dwarf Fortress universe, that magic is outside the realm of science.  One of the most basic definitions of an alchemist is someone who approaches the mystical with a scientific eye; the only reason we have a distinction between this mysticism-oriented alchemical approach and true chemistry here is that, in our world, magic does not exist, making alchemy's efforts to understand the universe through a supernatural framework futile.  In a world where it did, though, it is absurd to suggest that any scientist, chemist, or alchemist would ever -- even for an instant -- be willing to accept to the slightest degree that magic is outside the scrutiny of science.  It would be akin to saying, in our world, that the sky and the clouds are beyond the eye of science -- it is not only flatly absurd, but insulting to anyone who has devoted their life to scientific study.

Now, they could be wrong, certainly.  It may be that in the Dwarf Fortress universe there are things that cannot be explained by reasoned observation and the scientific method.  (This would explain why alchemists would be so good at blowing themselves up, or causing other forms of trouble.)  And the few scraps an alchemist knows can't compare to the power of a wizard (whether that's innate or based on a wizard's far-more-advanced understanding of magic's theoretical underpinnings is an open question.)  But to suggest to an alchemist -- or a scientist -- that they should ever stop in the study of Dragon's Blood and say, "Here there is magic; my reason can go thus far, and no further" would be a deadly insult.

Why dragon's blood?  Why lead to gold?  Why does it do this and that, when both violate all natural laws?  For that you would have to understand the magical framework of the Dwarf Fortress universe; perhaps as gold is the king of metals, and dragons are the king of beasts, so can dragon's blood, properly-used, transmute lesser metals to greater.  Certainly it makes no sense by the chemical laws of our world, but alchemists in Dwarf Fortress don't know that; if anything, their understanding of those laws is going to be complicated by the existence of inextricable magical laws overlaying them.  The magical laws, needless to say, don't have to make any sense according to any others...  and with them there, no Dwarf Fortress alchemist has even the slightest hope of understanding the "pure" chemical laws of our world.  How could any Dwarf Fortress chemist ever propose the conservation of energy, for instance, if within their world there are formulae and clearly-observable, replicable phenomena that blatantly violate it?  How would you propose a Dwarf Fortress alchemist -- working with only experiments within the mixed, dual laws of their world, and without any knowledge that our separate magic-less world is even possible -- how would you propose they begin to work out which reactions are "magical" and which are purely "chemical?"

I submit that, at least if the Dwarf Fortress alchemists are anything like our own, that they have no chance at all (our real-world alchemists couldn't even distinguish between what was chemical and what was mythical, never mind the problems that having functional magic within your experiments would cause.)  Any theoretical framework that a Dwarf Fortress alchemist devises will therefore encompass both magic and chemistry equally, without distinguishing between the two.

[ June 11, 2008: Message edited by: Aquillion ]

So, why not give us the option to set up Dungeon Keeper 2-style guard rooms?  Guard rooms are places where your military dwarves are required to stay on patrol.  They would contain beds, barrels of drinks, and food; other dwarves would keep them supplied via hauling tasks (and there could be options in the room for how much food and drink you want to keep there.)  Guards would even sleep there, so if there's an attack the guard on watch could wake them up and they can leap to defense quickly.  Dwarves will actively try to keep guard rooms manned at all times, even putting off sleeping, going off-duty, and so on if there's nobody else available to replace them (although of course this will make them uphappy.)  The player could also select whether they want a guard room to be manned by melee dwarves, ranged dwarves, or both.  Or even siege operators.

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Originally posted by Tahin:
<STRONG>You know how dwarves will literally sleep anywhere until you get a barracks set up? Now imagine if all your important military dwarves did the same because you gave them bedrolls. I say we keep bedrolls on hold until dwarves are smart enough not to lie down and go to sleep in front of an approaching band of goblins. Assuming, that is, that goblins ever actually approach...</STRONG>

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There could also be a fortress-wide option to let them sleep anywhere...  maybe they could be taught to set up 'camps' and set one dwarf to keep watch while the others sleep, so he can wake them up if an enemy arrives.  That would certainly help defense.

Oh, I just had an idea for another thread:  Guard rooms.  But I'll post it there.