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[jcochran]

I currently have a dwarf who was pushed into a map edge fortification by water flow. The dwarf has a baby and is currently showing signs of thirst and hunger. Since it's a carved fortification on the map edge, I obviously can't disassemble it. So, is the dwarf effectively dead and I should simply monitor the situation in order to order a slab? Or is there some method of rescuing the dwarf?

[pisskop]

Stop the water flow.

If its a river-edge or such (esp streams) they often path along the edge of it because drainage makes it 'safe' to.  They should be able to get out eventually.
If they haven't drowned by now there's 'hope'.  Maybe make a few spare slabs?

[jcochran]

The water flow stopped quite some time ago.

I've read in the wiki, that the mother needs to drop the baby in order to get out and she's clinging to the little beard. The baby I understand is trapped unless it somehow manages to grow up before it dies.

[slothen]

congratulations on acquiring a haunted sewer system.

[AfellowDwarf]

Perhaps if you tried killing the baby with projectiles, so that the mother could leave?

[pisskop]

heh.  Order the mother into a squad and tell her to kill her baby.

[AfellowDwarf]

Hmm.. You could try to supply the dwarves with food and drink by putting food in front of them, and temporarily turning the water stream back on.(I don't know if she'd pick them up, but it's worth a shot.) I suggest building a waterfall nearby, since the mother's clothes will eventually rot off and cause her to go insane with misery. Providing her with her favorite food is also a good idea.

If the mother doesn't eat, but does drink, hydrate her for as long as possible and try to find a vampire migrant to bleed in her drinking water. It'll solve her eating and drinking problems forever, and stop her from getting bad thoughts over sleeping on the floor.

[Telgin]

heh.  Order the mother into a squad and tell her to kill her baby.

Pretty sure you can't do that, unfortunately.  The only friendly dwarves you can kill order are traders and, I think, diplomats.  It might be worth putting her in a squad and try to station her somewhere else, but frankly I'd be surprised if it worked.

Along the lines of amusing and pointlessly cruel ways to get her out, you could try shooting ballista bolts or other projectiles in her direction.  She might be able to dodge out of the fortification if through some miracle the shot hits her, she succeeds in dodging, and chooses a square outside of a fortification to dodge to.

Afellowdwarf does give me an idea though: can you build a waterfall to pour down on top of her?  That might be able to wash her out.

[Loci]

Afellowdwarf does give me an idea though: can you build a waterfall to pour down on top of her?  That might be able to wash her out.

No. At the map's edge you can't channel the tile above (if you could, you could just channel the fortification itself). However, with the dfhack liquids command, you can spawn a tile of 6/7 water on top of the trapped dwarves, and hope the flow pushes them back into the fortress proper. For best results, channel a drain on the tile(s) next to the fortification and install a grate or floor bars. Repeat as necessary until they are pushed in or out of the map.

[jcochran]

Interesting set of suggestions on how to be cruel and evil here...
In any case, the two dwarves are dead and slabbed.
The fortification they got trapped in was part of a drain system for my "Welcome center"
The welcome center had a total of 3 levels.
1st level. Entrance room and goblin grinder.
2nd level. Cage trap corridor.
3rd level. water drainage.

One option I had was if needed, I could flip a lever which would seal the entrances to the welcome center, close the drain at the bottom level, and finally open a floodgate to completely flood the welcome center. And of course, when the lever if flipped again, the reverse happens. Since the drainage level is below everything else, the upper 2 levels of the welcome center fairly rapidly drains to 3/7 or lower on all the tiles. The trapped dwarves unfortunately fell down to the 3rd level via water flow and got trapped in the engraved edge tile that everything drained out through. Couldn't really pour water on top of 'em since there were 2 tiles above the carved one that were both quite solid. And frankly, engraving those tiles wouldn't work since the topmost tile was a soil layer.

But knowing dwarf fortress, any problems that have happened are likely to happen again. So I asked for how I could free a trapped dwarf in an edge fortification. But it looks like rescue isn't an option so perhaps next time it happens, I'll see about keeping the flow going and at least drown the dwarf or dwarves rapidly.

[Telgin]

Good point about not being able to channel above the fortification, I hadn't thought about that.

Of course, if you're going to use DFHack it's simpler to just move the dwarf directly.  I don't think anyone has made a command to move things safely yet, but it's simple enough to do in the Lua interface.  I'm pretty sure the following commands would do it after selecting her:

Code: [Select]

lua
dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit().pos.x = dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit().pos.x - 1
quit

Replace pos.x with pos.y if you need to move her vertically instead of horizontally, and add 1 instead of subtracting if you need her to go the second way.

Bear in mind that doing this is in general not completely safe (it doesn't set some movement flags and doesn't check if you're moving a creature somewhere that's valid), but in this case none of that should ultimately matter.

[Broken]

Good point about not being able to channel above the fortification, I hadn't thought about that.

Of course, if you're going to use DFHack it's simpler to just move the dwarf directly.  I don't think anyone has made a command to move things safely yet, but it's simple enough to do in the Lua interface.  I'm pretty sure the following commands would do it after selecting her:

Code: [Select]

lua
dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit().pos.x = dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit().pos.x - 1
quit

Replace pos.x with pos.y if you need to move her vertically instead of horizontally, and add 1 instead of subtracting if you need her to go the second way.

Bear in mind that doing this is in general not completely safe (it doesn't set some movement flags and doesn't check if you're moving a creature somewhere that's valid), but in this case none of that should ultimately matter.

You can just use superdwarf or fastdwarf and give her teleport powers.

[Telgin]

Does that really work?  I would expect that to just allow a dwarf to move every frame but still require that a path be available.

[Aspgren]

They're dead already? That's a shame. I wanted to know if a cave-in would generate enough dust to knock them loose.

[jcochran]

I don't know if a cave in would have worked, but given the location where they were, it would have been impractical. Making major "readjustments" to the welcome center in general is a "bad idea". The two major possible results would have been to either isolate the fortress from the map edge so that caravans (at least those on foot and not on wagons) couldn't get to my fortress (this would include the liaison). Or the effect would have been to grant access to the fortress of unfriendly creatures such as ambushes, or sieges. The way that I play, by the end of the 1st year, I have complete unfettered access to the surface of the embark, and only flying creatures are capable of getting anywhere other than the 3 or 4 tiles next to the map edge unless they go through the welcome center. So sieges are a mere inconvenience while they grind themselves to death on the welcome center. Traders just come wandering in, trade, and leave. In fact, the only ground bound "hostile" that's capable of reaching my fortress are Kobolds. But they get discovered before they get to anything valuable, so they're just a nuisance. And now with a fairly large number of crossbow armed dwaves, those kobolds are a rather short lived nuisance. Kinda of like the stock scene of a robber coming into a bar and attempting to hold it up, only to find out that the bar is a favorite hangout of the police....

And just in case that I get a surface hostile that can fly, I do have the capability to pull a lever and close off the entrance of the fortress entirely.