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Necromancer

2015-03-19T13:36:35Z

AVEM 39:

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'''Necromancers''' {{Tile|Ñ|5:1}} are immortal beings blessed with the secrets of life and death. These [[night creature]]s are [[magic]] users who raise legions of [[undead]] and seclude themselves in [[tower]]s.

==The Origin of Necromancers==

Necromancers initially begin as normal historical figures who are [[creature token|mortal, can speak and can learn]] and are also part of an [[civilization|entity]]. In unmodded games these are [[dwarf|dwarves]], [[human]]s, [[olm man|olm men]], [[serpent man|serpent men]], [[ant man|ant men]], [[rodent man|rodent men]], [[reptile man|reptile men]], [[bat man|bat men]], [[cave fish man|cave fish men]] and [[cave swallow man|cave swallow men]]. At one point in its life, one of these creatures may suddenly become "obsessed with his/her/its own mortality" and [[goal|seek]] to become immortal. Shortly afterwards, it will begin (if it does not do so already) worshiping a [[deity]] (or a creature with the [SUPERNATURAL] tag) who has a DEATH [[sphere]]. Once the deity/supernatural creature becomes an object of ardent worship to the figure, it will award the worshiper with an artifact [[slab]] containing the secrets of life and death. The worshiper will then claim the slab and learn its secrets, thus becoming a necromancer. This original necromancer may then take up an apprentice (another creature seeking immortality), who will obtain the knowledge of its master. A Necromancer can take more than one apprentice.

==Description==

Having mastered the secrets of life and death, necromancers have reached their goal of immortality in that they do not [[age]]. They also don't need to [[food|eat]] or [[thirst|drink]], and they do not require [[sleep]] as they [[No Exert|never get tired or exhausted]]. They have the [[interaction token|power]] to animate [[corpse]]s of organic creatures, as well as any body parts which have a [GRASP] token or are attached to body parts which do. Corpses must be within the necromancer's line of sight-about 15 tiles-to be animated. Necromancers do this by gesturing; raising of the dead is reported in the [[reports|combat log]]:

{{gametext|[Necromancer] gestures!|3:1}}
{{gametext|[Corpse] shudders and begins to move!|3:1}}

Once a dead being is animated, it will become [[Adventure mode#Companions|enslaved]] to the necromancer, regardless of previous allegiances.

During world generation, necromancers who have a sufficient following may use their undead minions to build dark [[tower]]s, a task that requires at least 50 followers; younger necromancers may take over [[town]]s or camps instead. The building of a tower is carried out by the original necromancer of a group (the one who was given the slab) as apprentices join the group after the tower is built. Therefore each necromancy group has one tower.

Since the secrets of life and death are generated with a [MUNDANE_RECORDING_POSSIBLE] tag, necromancers will often write numerous [[book]]s during world generation. Some of these books concern the secrets of life and death, so that anyone who reads them will become a necromancer. Like the slab, all books, even those that do not contain secrets, are considered [[artifact]]s and as such can be viewed in the artifacts list in [[legends|legends mode]]. Books containing the secrets of life and death will include any of the following words in their title: Annihilation, Bereavement, Death, Demise, Departure, Doom, Dying, Eternal Rest, Expiration, Extinction, Mortality, Immortality, Loss, Oblivion, Parting, Ruin, Ruination, Sleep, the Afterlife, the End, the Grave.

Alone, necromancers do not pose much of a threat, but their undead servitors are hostile to all life and will be reanimated each time they are struck down until the necromancer itself is dealt with. Because of this, direct [[combat]] against undead whilst they are in view of a necromancer is generally ineffective.

It is possible to ensure that a world is generated devoid of necromancers by setting the '''Number of Secret Types''' to '''0''' in [[advanced world generation]]. To the contrary, creating a world with a high number of secret types will increase the probability of there being multiple necromancers in the world. Since necromancers in unmodded games are usually humans or dwarves, having a large amount of neutral plains and/or mountains will further increase this probability, as it means that these civilizations will have more space to expand, and thus the amount of historical figures eligible for necromancy will increase.

==Fortress mode==
===Sieges===
''The dead walk. Hide while you still can!''
{{main|Siege#Necromancer sieges}}

Necromancers can lay [[siege]] to your fortress at any stage, including before the first [[immigration|migrant wave]], but only if their tower or town is within 20 tiles of your fortress. As such, picking a location within such a distance of a tower is regarded as a sure way to have an extra helping of [[fun]], and can be checked with {{k|tab}} during world gen. Note that if no tower is present during embark, no necromancers will ever arrive. The sieges are structured much like normal sieges, except that the numbers tend to be much larger and much more disorganized, consisting not of individual squads but of masses of zombies coming from every side. The necromancer (or necromancers, if he has an apprentice) himself may or may not arrive with their siege; if they do, and are captured or killed, you can expect to see no more activity from that particular tower. Undead are hostile to everything that breathes as well as to enemy necromancer hordes, meaning that other sieges or [[ambush]]es (or, indeed, caravans) that happen to arrive when a necromancer siege is milling about will always result in a battle.

The easiest way to deal with a zombie siege is through the application of [[dwarven atom smasher|particle physics]] to grind them into nothingness. Anything that obliterates any trace of the zombie will prevent raising; a drop into [[magma]] or [[semi-molten rock]] or encasing in [[obsidian]] are more creative alternatives. The jury is still out on whether slashing weapons are better or worse against necromancer sieges; although they tend to separate zombies into many parts, these parts can all be raised, leaving the question of whether the whole zombie or an arm here and a leg there are more dangerous. The undead that they will bring will be sapient creatures, but if you killed some [[elephant]]s in a combat exercise and they happen upon them, the danger is magnified.

If you have a [[vampire]] and haven't walled him in yet, you can draft him and take a leisurely walk through town, as undead will ignore him (unless attacked), and the necromancer is easy, valid game for a clobbering, if you can find him.

Necromancers that are idle during a siege will occasionally start [[campfire]]s.

===Ambushes===
Necromancers can arrive under cover, alone, in [[ambush]]es, and raise the dead without being seen. This is much more difficult, as you cannot see the necromancers in question, only their products. Potential necromancer ambushes can be dealt with by internalizing all corpse/remains stockpiles behind heavily trafficked areas, and posting sentries if possible.

===Applications===
Necromancers can be made useful by applying them in [[training]] schemes. Necromancers trapped in a room with line of sight to, say, the contents of corpse stockpile can be used to generate an infinite amount of hostile creatures to fight; when you get tired of the sport (or your dwarves start getting beat up), simply block their line of sight with a bridge and put down the remaining enemies, and your military can walk out of training with more experience.

Capturing necromancers is simple: build a tunnel near them, link floodgates or bridges within so that it can be sealed off, and then poke a hole into the surface. Assuming the necromancer was the nearest creature to where you opened the tunnel, he'll be the first one in, and you can then seal off the tunnel and trap him inside. It's difficult to get them in there alone, without a few zombies following them, but it shouldn't matter. [[Cage trap]]s will work too; In v0.34, caged necromancers do not appear to revive stuff. You must put them on a restraint instead if you want them to be able to.

They can also be weaponized. Replace the militia training room with a room full of goblins, and fun will result. Upright spike [[trap]]s can "kill" the corpses after each use so that the resulting [[goblinite]] can be gathered and the trap reused. Given enough time and enough bodies, such a trap can even best the [[HFS|circus]].

Much like [[vampire]]s, necromancers may seize control of a [[civilization]] and become its [[monarch|king/queen]]. In that case, the dwarf in question must be isolated from any corpses, as they may be friendly, but the zombies they tend to create will be of the dwarven-arm-ripping variety. They should be either isolated from the dead with a [[burrow]], or applied to training/killing. Either way, they are very [[fun]].

Necromancers may occasionally arrive with their slab in hand. These cannot be used to make your dwarves into necromancers, as creative water management can do for vampires, but it is nonetheless a good idea to stick it in a bin someplace safe, for use by a future adventurer once the fortress falls.

==Adventurer Mode==
In [[adventurer mode]], necromancers are most commonly found in towers {{Tile|I|5:0}}, but can very rarely be found in towns and camps, due to reasons explained earlier in this article. Towers will contain all the necromancers that are part of the necromancer group to whom the tower belongs, as well as a horde of undead. Towers require abundant human populations (low savagery, large tracts of neutral land) and a high number of secrets to be generated in world generation, as necromancers cannot be elf or goblin.

It is possible to become a necromancer yourself in adventurer mode by [[reader|reading]] the slab or one of the books containing the secrets of life and death. Both will be found on the tables scattered around the tower, often amongst a pile of other, less useful books.

So, becoming an immortal being who doesn't need to worry about petty things like eating, drinking and sleeping and can also raise and control an undead army merely requires you to read some slab or book. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it isn't. The tower is stuffed with undead monstrosities who would probably like nothing better than to tear your poor adventurer to shreds. If that isn't bad enough, the necromancers to whom the slab and books belong will raise their
servants each time you strike them down, if they can see the corpses.

So, what can we do to get at those secrets? Well, there are 3 main methods:

* '''1. Storm the tower'''
This is probably the most obvious solution, and is also the most likely to get inexperienced adventurers killed. Once you have become powerful enough, attack the tower head-on, preferably bringing with you an army of <s>meatshields</s> soldiers (who will likely get themselves killed, but will provide a distraction for you). It is advisable for you to lure the undead out of the tower first, away from the necromancers' gaze. This will make dealing with them far easier, and will give you a lot more space to dodge (or run if things get bad). If a necromancer is in the midst of the horde, try to move around so that the necromancer is exposed, then go in for the kill. Proceed until everyone (excluding yourself) is dead. Alternatively, just run into the tower and begin hitting everything like a madman. Eventually, either you or all of the tower's occupants will be dead. Then just take the slab/a book and do what you will with it.

* '''2. Sneaking'''
Since [[ambusher|sneaking]] in the current version basically makes you invisible, sneaking into the tower with a high enough skill and [[thrower|throwing]] stuff will allow you to kill everyone with minimal damage done to yourself. There is, however, the risk of being spotted, in which case you are advised to run away as quickly as you can. Alternatively, you could try to sneak around the tower and steal the slab/a book without killing anything, but, because of the high density of enemies in a tower, it is extremely likely that you will be spotted, swarmed and killed.

* '''3. Being a Night Creature'''
Visiting the tower as a [[night creature]] [[Faction#Faction relative hostility|to whom undead are friendly]], such as a [[vampire]], [[undead|husk/thrall]] or, of course, a necromancer is by far the easiest way to obtain the slab/a book. Seriously. The undead are [OPPOSED_TO_LIFE], but these night creatures are [NOT_LIVING], so they will ignore you completely. Since undead will not attack necromancers, making a mad dash for the slab/book is also a viable option, but you will risk being killed/severely wounded before you get the chance to become a necromancer. If you are already one of these night creatures, you can just skip gleefully past the undead, read the slab/book and get out. You may also want to have a chat with the necromancers, who are actually quite friendly once you get to know them. In fact, night creatures who are shunned by society will often still be accepted by necromancers, who you can even ask for [[Adventure mode#Quests|quests]]! That is, of course, unless you are an enemy of their group, in which case they will attempt to kill you.

* '''4. Fire. A lot of fire.'''
The undead hordes will not cross small fires. The aspiring adventurer can outrun undead, leading them away from the tower, then run for the entrance. If there are more undead inside, run away. Repeat this until the undead have emptied from the tower, outrunning them and herding them. Run to the tower entrance and light fires around it, sealing them out. Take your time, enjoy the books, maybe mess with a necromancer. When you're ready to leave, scale the wall or jump over the fire. Bonus points: completely enclose the undead in a fire circle they cannot escape from. Side note: while running from undead, igniting the grass in clever places will slow them down even further.

Another strategy, which may not always be available but can work well, is recruiting a vampire. Undead creatures and vampires won't bother each other, but the vampire will attack any hostile necromancers present. Once the necromancers are all dead, you will be left with the far simpler task of killing the undead without having to worry about any of the corpses reanimating.

===Playing as a necromancer===

As a necromancer, you:

*don't need to eat or drink, so you don't need to worry about running out of food/water and can get rid of the extra weight such objects produce.
*don't need to sleep, and you can't get tired or exhausted during, so you'll never again feel the negative effects of these statuses.
*are immortal, as necromancers do not age. This will ensure that your adventurer will not die of old age if your world goes on until its natural [MAXAGE] is reached (such as if you retire an adventurer and play fortress mode for a while).
*can reanimate corpses to create undead companions. This can be done as many times as you want, with a small [[time]] limit between each reanimation, and only requires a corpse/body part.

Becoming a necromancer also freezes your [[attribute]]s so that they cannot rust or be increased. Therefore, it might be wise to raise your attributes to a high level before becoming a necromancer. (However, this does not seem to be happening in the current version, probably due to a bug).

==== Reanimating dead creatures ====
1.Open the actions menu by pressing {{k|x}}. 
2.Press {{k|p}} or scroll to "acquired power". 
3.Select ({{k|→}} {{k|Enter}}) "Animate corpse". 
4.Now move the cursor onto the corpse(s) you wish to animate, press the letter that they are represented by on the items screen (such as {{k|a}}) and press {{k|Enter}}. Note that you can animate more than one corpse at a time, and that you can also animate corpses that are in your inventory. 
[[File:Animatecorpsemenu.jpeg]]

It is worth noting that you can only raise corpses with intact heads. That is, if the creature's head explodes into gore, collapses into gore, or otherwise is pulped via blunt trauma to the head, then that corpse cannot be raised. It is still possible, however, to raise a corpse that has had its head completely severed.

Besides acting as reusable and easily replenishable soldiers, undead hold potential usage as training dummies for weapons and wrestling. However, note that if you attack one of your own undead slaves, ''all'' of your reanimated companions will become neutral and will no longer follow you. This can be useful if you want to interact with civilized society - while a necromancer can still be friendly to mortals, its minions will attack everything in sight. This attack will cause the civilization to label you as an enemy for your undead minions' actions.

==Modding==

It is completely possible to create a unique secret class, with powers ranging from material emission (fireballs, firebreath, syndrome inducing material) to turning corpses into thralled creatures, such as a giant lion, by creating an "interaction_secretnamehere" note document.

{{category|humanoids}}

[[ru:Necromacer]]

Vampire

2015-03-19T13:11:21Z

AVEM 39:

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'''Vampires''' {{Tile|Ñ|4:0}} are [[night creature]]s that feed on blood, cursed during [[world generation]] by profaning against their [[Deity|gods]]. In [[fortress mode]], they occasionally appear in migrant waves and hide themselves amongst your dwarves. Vampirism can be further spread by [[thirst|drinking]] either vampire [[blood]] or [[water]] contaminated by said vampire blood.

==Description==
Vampires, like other [[night creature]]s, are created during [[world generation]]. Every once in a while a deity will curse a worshiper who smites their temple or otherwise offends them, cursing them to become either a vampire or [[werebeast]]. By far most vampires will be human or dwarven, but since civilizations can have members not of their foundation race, the occasional vampiric [[goblin]] or [[elf]] will also occur. The amount of vampires created during world generation is closely related with world size, population, and history.

Vampires are much more powerful than normal humanoids, possessing enhanced speed, strength, stamina, and pain resistance in combat, don't need [[food|food]], do not need to breathe (and thus cannot drown), and never get [[sleep|drowsy]]. They do, however, get thirsty, albeit not in the normal way; vampires thirst for warm fresh [[blood]], and will suck [[unconscious]] [[creature]]s (usually others of their own kind) dry given the chance, usually killing them. In the rare case that the victims survive and recover, they will not remember what happened to them, and may very well fall victim once more. It appears that when a vampire feeds successfully they receive a large happiness boost.

Vampires do not [[age]], and most vampires live for hundreds or even thousands of years. Thus all but the youngest vampires are more [[skill]]ed and more experienced than their peers, spurred on by the countless lives detailed on their [[kill list]]s and they are hiding their true identities. This makes them natural candidates for leadership, and thus vampiric [[monarch]]s are a not uncommon sight atop [[civilization]]s, which do not seem to wonder as to how their king has been alive for so many centuries.

Younger vampires stalk the streets of towns and cities, indistinguishable from the average mortal, and drink the blood of unsuspecting innocents. Elder vampires, those with power and ambition, mislead the gullible and power-hungry into forming vampire cults dedicated to worshipping and feeding their master. Should a vampire rise to a position of power in mortal society, it may deign to expose itself and impose a rule of tyranny upon the subjects who so unknowingly elevated it to power.

None of your seven starting dwarves will ever be vampires, nor will [[child]]ren or babies, [[caravan]]s, [[siege]]s{{verify}}, [[ambush]]es{{verify}}, or [[thief|thieves]]{{verify}}, but any of the rest of your dwarves can be. (Foreign diplomats can be vampires, and will be labeled as such.)

== Habits ==
Vampires are secretive and, for better or for worse, a fairly common occurrence. Many fortresses can expect to see a vampire resident by the time they hit a population of 80, and some may see two or more. Vampires arrive with a false name and hide their true name and kill list until they are discovered. They act as do any other dwarves, except for differences too small to notice easily in any sizable population[which?], performing jobs which are assigned to them and generally acting as expected. They can be [[military|drafted]], assigned to [[burrow]]s, be given [[room]]s (but do not claim them{{verify}}), and own items. They do not, however, eat, drink or sleep.

The most important difference is that when they go [[on break]]s they will use them for drinking the blood of dwarves that they catch sleeping. If any tame animals somehow fall asleep (for instance, via a syndrome), vampires will drink their blood as willingly as they will a dwarf's. If a vampire is in the military and has current station orders he may ignore them and search out a victim, still displaying 'station'. If the orders are canceled they will switch to 'on break'.

If vampires are caught in the act of draining a victim, their crime will be reported in the [[justice]] [[menu|screen]] as murder (they will not, however, stop drinking when caught). If only the corpse is discovered, the crime will be labeled as a murder sans suspects, and the player can accuse dwarves of the act. Even in the case that someone is accused, be aware that the deceitful vampire is capable of framing others for its crimes to send suspicion away for a time.

If a vampire is killed, the corpse will bear the original name of the creature rather than that of the dwarf who was seen to die, which might lead to some confusion among managers of such things. A [[coffin]] will be designated for burial of the vampire's cover identity, with the corpse bearing the original name entombed in it. Memorial slabs will be dedicated to the vampire's original name.

== Identification ==
It might be smart to scan the [[thoughts and preferences]] screens of incoming migrants before welcoming them to their new home, as a safety measure; it really sucks when you don't discover you have a vampire until ''after'' they've drained your only legendary [[armorsmith]] of blood.

A dwarf who is suddenly pale or faint for no explained reason is a good but rare indicator that a vampire is around. He was most likely fed upon by a vampire, but survived. Dwarven [[corpse]]s being discovered "drained of blood" are more common; a vampire fed upon them and killed them, and their body was discovered. These dwarves should be buried well, lest an axe-crazy [[ghost]] arise from their death. Dwarves inexplicably going missing for more than a week are another indicator, although this might be the result of dwarven stupidity (e.g. falling down a [[well]], walking off a [[waterfall]], etc.) as well.

Once you suspect you have a vampire, you probably want to know who it is. There are a number of good indicators of a vampire and the more points a dwarf hits, the more likely he is, indeed, a vampire. The difficult vampires to identify are young ones, as they have not had time to build up the indicators that are obvious on older bloodsuckers.

Firstly, there are the consequences of their age. Vampires tend to be high in multiple (4-5+) [[social skill|social]], high in at least one [[military]] [[skill]], and "great" or better in at least one domestic skill. The biggest indicator of a vampire in this version{{verify}} is that they will almost always have more skills (10-15+ easily) at Novice or better than any of your other dwarves. If your new Great Hunter is also a Novice Milker, Shearer, Farmer, Tanner, Carpenter, Stonecrafter, Furnace Operator, Soap Maker, Fisherdwarf, Fish Cleaner, and Fish Dissector... they're almost certainly a vampire. They also tend to have very long lists of [[Thoughts and preferences#Civilization membership|group associations]], on the order of dozens, far more than your normal dwarves. They have abnormally long lists of [[relationships|relations]] and often many, many children, but none of them are present in the fortress (in stark contrast to the spouses, children and siblings whom most dwarves will share their home with). If they are married to a dwarf that is not present in the fortress, this should be treated as especially strong evidence. Note, however, that lacking relatives within the fortress is not a good indicator of being a vampire.

In addition to the brevity of surface thoughts, if you were unfortunate enough to have a dwarf die to a vampire, the culprit will have the "took joy in slaughter lately" thought.

Their [[Personality trait|personality]] can also be scrutinized for abnormalities. Their biographies may indicate that they "have the appearance of somebody who is (x) years old," a very good indicator of a vampire in cases where they have too many children or too many civilization associations to be that young. As vampires do not eat, sleep, or drink, they will never have recent thoughts about meals, drinks, beds, dining rooms, or chairs, leaving their thoughts especially bare and suspicious. In the case of vampires who have been in the fort for a while, a comment may be added to the effect that "s/he could really use a drink," "s/he has not had a drink in far, far too long," or "can't even remember the last time s/he had some." This is an indicator that they need blood. In any case, if alcohol is available, it makes an excellent distinguishing mark.

There are two "normal" ways to be absolutely sure a dwarf is a vampire. The first is to catch them in the act; the dwarf will be clearly marked for the duration of the attack (i.e. Urist McUrist, Vampire on the [[unit list]], in red). A vampire does not mind if the player is currently "watching" or even following it. The second is to have a dwarf witness the event happening. This will permanently uncover their identities, but almost always results in a dead dwarf first. More arcane are indicators based on their physical abilities; vampires with injured guts do not [[vomit]], vampires with injured lungs have no problem "breathing", and submerged vampires will not [[drown]] (evoking the concept of an olden witch test for finding vampirism). Technically being undead, animated corpses will not evoke cancellation spam when a vampire sees them. An easy (albeit, [[exploit|cheap]]) way of screening migrants is to send them through a hallway with a zombie on the other side of fortifications/windows in clear sight. Normal dwarves will run away from the horrible sight of a harmless zombie but vampire dwarves will walk right through.

Feeding is treated as a job by the game, and thus appears in the Job List with the text 'On Break' in cyan. It is possible that the genuine 'On Break' (teal) and the fake 'On Break' (cyan) occupy different positions in the Job List.

Looking at the [[deity|deities]] that the dwarf believes in (in the {{k|r}}elationships screen) can be quite helpful. As long as only "cursed" vampires immigrate (and not blood drinking ones), one of the deities of a vampire should have a "cursed the dwarf [untrue alias] . . ." Lacking this clause in their deities seems to be a clear sign that you do ''not'' have a vampire. This non-bugged way of checking a vampire is linked to the "cheap" bugged way of checking of vampires, which is described in the final paragraph.

Then there are the (in Dwarf Fortress, inevitable) bugged ways. As mentioned in the [[#Bugs|bugs]] section, vampires can be discovered and identified in [[statue]]s and [[engraving]], through their refusal to claim [[bed]]rooms, through [[pet|adoption events]], and through [[weapon]] [[kill list]]s. Additionally, if you have the vampire on follow, their title will change from their usual one ("Dwarf A") to "Dwarf A Vampire" when they are doing certain activities.

There are a few "cheap" ways as well. If you use [[DF2012:Utilities#Dwarf Therapist|Dwarf Therapist]], dwarves will be listed by their true name there, and if you find a dwarf on the games' unit screen that is not in the Dwarf Therapist list, or the other way round, you know you've got a vampire. [[DF2012:Utilities#DFHack|DFHack]] has a special command, "cursecheck," which returns the count of cursed creatures on a tile, and will report vampires. Checking out a drained dwarf in [[Legends]] mode will tell you that "In the year Z X was drained of all blood by Y."

To see if a vampire was cursed by a deity that it worships, look under the <s>vampire's</s> dwarf's relationships and view the deities that are listed. Give the dwarf a nickname and, when viewing the deity relationship, it will say: "In the [season description] of [year], [deity] cursed the dwarf vampire [nickname you chose] [dwarf's original name] to prowl the night in search of blood in [original location]". Since the nickname applies retroactively, this is a sure way to identify a vampire that happens to worship the deity that cursed it. This method is very tedious when looking at many suspects, and may apply to only a small fraction of vampires, so you should probably use it after trying the more obvious signs (like many former associations, or tags after "needs alcohol to get through the working day").

Finally, a suspected vampire will have an unusually large amount of kills, if you are using a utility such as [[DF2012:Utilities#Dwarf Therapist|Dwarf Therapist]] and you go to the military tab and filter by kills, they will have a very high amount of kills

== Defense ==
Vampires attack and drink from dwarves who are sleeping, so one defense is to force all dwarves to sleep and meet in the same room, increasing the likelihood of eyewitnesses catching the monster in the act. Curiously, even if convicted of a vampiric murder, a vampire will not necessarily be killed, but given a normal justice penalty such as temporary imprisonment. If you want to get rid of him/her you will have to take [[justice]] into your own hands and introduce the leech to a pit of lava, bottomless pit, arena fight, dropping tower, or other elimination method of your choice. Take note that vampires do not breathe, so using drowning chambers will not work. Using burning chambers(like drowning chambers, but with magma instead of water), however, will work. This can be facilitated through the use of burrows, but you will need to be fast when using those because vampires do ''not'' respect burrow restrictions if they decide to get another [[Blood|drink]]. However, one must take care that the vampire is properly memorialized because even the ghosts of vampires will seek out your sleeping citizens and kill them.

== Uses ==
If you can correctly identify a vampire and isolate it from the rest of your population, you can make use of them without fear of blood feedings. A lone vampire in a sealed room will never die of hunger or thirst, doesn't need to sleep, and will never age. The only way a vampire can die (without your vengeful intervention) is in combat or through syndromes. Sealing it somewhere prevents those. The only remaining risk is that the vampire may turn mad eventually, which without access to other dwarfs to [[relationships|relate to]] shouldn't be very likely. Even [[insanity]] is not the end for a vampire - since they remain physically needless, an insane vampire can still live forever, and non-berserk insane vampires remain citizens of your fort. They will be completely unusable for any work, but a locked-up melancholic or stark raving mad vampire is just as immortal as a sane one and can't be elected mayor. If they get loose, they will not drain your citizens of blood, but melancholic vampires may attempt to end their own existence, given the opportunity.

Once you have your sealed vampire, your fortress becomes effectively eternal, since the vampire will always be alive even if the infamous [[Losing|fun]] claims your entire population. Be wary of [[ghost]]s, though, as they are the only being capable of reaching your vampire's eternal prison. Simply wait for the fun to pass and new immigrants to repopulate your otherwise abandoned fort.

Consider placing a chair and table in your vampire's sealed room and making them an undead accountant. As they have nothing to do but sit around for eternity, once they get their skills up, they may make exceedingly effective [[manager]]s/[[record keeper]]s. Work orders and stockpile updates currently seem to be psychically transmitted from the desk of the dwarf assigned to those labors, so entombing them in their office isn't an issue. However, vampire dwarves are still alcoholics, yet cannot drink anything but blood; the resulting job performance penalty from the "can't even remember the last time he/she had some" level of [[Drink|alcohol withdrawal]] significantly reduces the usefulness of vampires in this sort of role.

A cloistered vampire can also be used as a sleepless, un-eating and drinking dwarf who is always ready for some [[pull lever|lever pulling]], even if the rest of your dwarves die. With all that said, having an eternally cloistered vampire is not without drawbacks. As vampires do not drink, yet are still alcohol-dependent, they will eventually suffer performance penalties and take longer breaks. This can have fatal consequences if you need the lever to keep the goblin siege outside pulled ''now''. Since dwarves get unhappy [[thought]]s from having their clothes rot away, a vampire that's been naked for years is quite prone to [[tantrum]]ing or going [[insanity|insane]], which can lead to [[Fun|even worse outcomes]] should he be assigned to the lever room. Of course, you could drop him some clothes from a chute, but what fun is that when there are [[cave-in|other]] [[dwarven atom smasher|things]] [[Magma|to]] [[Goblin|drop]] [[Kobold|from]] [[Noble|above?]] Or you could assign the vampire to a squad and supply him with a set of armor, as armor doesn't wear out. Another way to mitigate cloistered vampire unhappiness is to convict them of one or more of their murders after they've been sealed in; they will eventually derive happiness from having their punishment "delayed".

Vampires do increase their stats like other dwarves, so that a weak vampire may be easily upgraded into a mighty one by using him as a miner or easily trained into a legendary swimmer. A vampire craftsdwarf may be burrow-limited to his workshop plus a stockpile or a miner restricted to specific mining levels, avoiding any other miners. It will be safe, if all of the miners have separate, assigned bedrooms.

If a vampire gets injured enough to lose teeth and control of their limbs, the vampire may be in and out of the [[hospital]] frequently for a long time which gives your medical team lots experience fast. This can be very useful if the [[biome]] and [[surroundings]] make it so the hospital doesn't see too many patients.

If you have no better idea you can use a vampire to explore the caverns; they are usually good fighters with military experience and will not run off to refill their waterskin.

So, in general, when under control, vampires tend to be much more useful and valuable than most of your non-bloodsucking dwarves. Without access to any sleeping places or hospitals, they tend to be totally harmless to other dwarves.

== Unfortunate accidents ==
Although keeping a single vampire in eternal solitary confinement can be a bonus for any fortress, it is always important to be capable of killing them whenever necessary (especially if the peasants unwittingly elect one as their leader and an [[unfortunate accident]] becomes necessary). However, vampires have certain abilities which will make it more difficult to properly take care of them - they cannot drown, and their physical strengths could make them tougher to kill with regular weapons. Fortunately, they are not resistant to [[Dwarven atom smasher|high-tech particle physics experimentation]].

==Playing as a vampire==
By drinking the blood of a vampire in adventure mode, you immediately become a vampire. You will be able to feed on other creatures by using {{k|e}} and choosing the "Feed" option on an unconscious target. On becoming a vampire, Strength, Agility and Toughness are doubled. This is a multiplier effect applied to these attributes and while the effected stats are doubled, the displayed attributes in the statistics menu will not change. As a result, your adventurer can have average strength in the attributes menu but their description will show them as extremely muscular. Physical attributes such as endurance are still able to increase after becoming a vampire.

If you have become a vampire, all warm, blood-bearing bodies that you can't directly see from your position will appear as {{Raw Tile|☼|4:0:1}} tiles. Your {{DFtext|Thirsty}} indicator will also show up as red, instead of blue.

Due to such conditions, it is relatively impossible to quench your thirst (on any member of a civilization) without antagonizing any of your companions, and even if you don't have any, there's still that chance that your victim might wake up in the middle of your feast and effectively set a whole civilization against you. One way to counter this is to raid goblin/bandit camps, concentrating on one lone weak unit far from any comrades, beat them till they give in to pain (but not to death) and then feed on them directly. You can do the same with wildlife, although some of them may be more aggressive and most might die too quickly. You can also try to strangle your foes; they instantly pass out and will not die unless you keep on strangling them for a long time. For instructions on chokeholds, see the [[Wrestler#Chokehold and strangling|relevant article]]. Another solution is finding some indoor place with people inside and Sleep so you wake up while they are sleeping. Your companions go wait outside while you sleep, so you have a brief time-window to suck someone who is asleep.

After becoming a vampire, you become invincible to zombies, since you're now a night creature. It is usually preferred to raid a necromancer tower alone, because bringing companions will only get them killed, and your agility when you become a vampire will rise drastically anyway, causing you to outrun them. This increased agility will also give you better odds against bogeymen and night trolls, since you'll be quicker than both.

Playing as a vampire is a strong advantage, assuming you can manage your bloodthirst. The most convenient method of drinking blood is to wield a blunt weapon such as a mace: as long as you don't strike the head, enemies rarely bleed out or suffocate from blunt damage and it's easy to force them to give in to the pain. Interestingly, your allies don't seem to care if you drink blood from enemies (Actually as of 40.24 it seems companions actually do care and this can cause a loyalty cascade. It doesn't seem to matter if it's an animal or a sentient being), and blood can be drunk in a single turn in combat (occasionally killing the creature, depending on its size and your thirst). Vampire bloodthirst shows up less often than normal thirst, and can usually be sated in a single feeding from a human-sized opponent. Feeding from smaller animals, such as dingos, is possible but multiple feedings may be necessary.

Vampires, as noted before, do not need to eat, nor drink (normal fluids), nor sleep. As an adventurer, this is a huge advantage, as you don't need to stop, or worry about carrying consumables. As long as there's living, pain-feeling enemies, you can feed. Vampires also do not need to breathe and do not tire. They can swim as long as necessary and cannot drown, even to the extent of being able to swim oceans. A sufficiently skilled and armed vampire is essentially immortal for all intents and purposes.

== Adventure Mode ==

=== Finding the Vampire ===

Finding a vampire in Adventure mode is quite simple.

# Get a quest to kill a Vampire. Just keep doing quests and one will come along eventually.
# Get to the village/town where the vampire is said to be.
# Once at the village/town, ask a random villager or citizen about service. He/she will tell you of the vampire and mention where to start looking. Unfortunately, a vampire lurking in a city's sewers may be much harder to find as citizens will only tell you to look in the "sewers", which can get rather large and twisty.
# Use process of elimination to locate the correct house. In each new house ask a villager about service. Pay attention to what direction villagers say to begin looking in each time you ask one about service until you find a villager inside a house that doesn't mention a direction in their service dialogue. That house contains the vampire.
# You may accuse everyone in that house of being a night creature until you find him, but in most cases, you will be able to recognize the vampire by his flashing sprite. He will announce his true name and become hostile to everyone around him.

=== Killing the Vampire ===

Vampires in Adventure Mode that are in hiding always wield the basic knife all villagers wield and basic clothing. They may also wear jewellery. Their lousy weapons make them a lower threat than you might think. Old vampires with large kill lists still may not be all that effective in combat, since most of their kills are likely stealthy, non combat kills a la Fortress Mode vampires.

Vampires don't breathe or feel pain, so don't bother trying to strangle them or trying to use blunt weapons. Instead just slice them up with something edged, so they rapidly bleed to death, try to decapitate them or use wrestling to break their weapon arm and then finish them off at your leisure.

Vampires attack anyone around them once exposed, so if you like you can allow him to begin attacking random civilians and target him while he's busy or even allow them to weaken him.

==Modding==

It is possible to create your own unique vampire strain by editing the raws. These custom vampires can be outfitted with various abilities only limited by your own creativity. An example would be shapeshifting vampires, firebreathing vampires, superfast vampires, and even vampires with the ability to raise corpses are fairly easy to make by creating a custom ''interaction_customvampirenamehere'' note document.

== Bugs ==
* Dwarven vampires remain dependent on alcohol but will not drink anything except blood in fortress mode, so inevitably end up showing symptoms of [[Alcohol#Consequences of a Sober Fortress|alcohol withdrawal]]. This has not been acknowledged as a bug. {{bug|5189}}
* Statues and engravings may identify dwarves as vampires before it is common knowledge, and may even depict them sucking blood.{{bug|5209}}
* Likewise, [[pet]]s adopted by vampires will identify them as vampires in the adoption [[announcement]].{{bug|5942}}
* Vampires do not bother claiming bedrooms, which doesn't help their disguise.{{bug|5642}}
* Weapon kill lists identify vampires.{{bug|5635}}
* Soldiers will not attack vampires caught red-handed, and can be fooled by their counter-accusations.{{bug|5087}}
* Even though vampires do not need to eat, if you abandon a fortress with a vampire citizen, legends mode will still report "In the <season> of <year> the dwarf vampire <vampire's name> starved to death in <fortress name>" (Bug not yet reported due to account creation issues.)

{{category|humanoids}}

v0.34:Vampire

2015-03-19T13:08:05Z

AVEM 39:

{{quality|Masterwork|03:44, 22 June 2012 (UTC)}}{{av}}
{{buggy}}
{{minorspoiler}}

'''Vampires''' {{Tile|Ñ|4:0}} are [[night creature]]s that feed on blood, cursed during [[world generation]] by profaning against their [[Deity|gods]]. In [[fortress mode]], they occasionally appear in migrant waves and hide themselves amongst your dwarves. Vampirism can be further spread by [[thirst|drinking]] either vampire [[blood]] or [[water]] contaminated by said vampire blood.

==Description==
Vampires, like other [[night creature]]s, are created during [[world generation]]. Every once in a while a deity will curse a worshiper who smites their temple or otherwise offends them, cursing them to become either a vampire or [[werebeast]]. Only [[human]] and [[dwarf|dwarven]] civilizations worship gods, and thus only their members can become vampires. By far most vampires will be human or dwarven, but since civilizations can have members not of their foundation race, the occasional vampiric [[goblin]] or [[elf]] will also occur. The amount of vampires created during world generation is closely related with world size, population, and history.

Vampires are much more powerful than normal humanoids, possessing enhanced speed, strength, stamina, and pain resistance in combat, don't need [[food|food]], do not need to breathe (and thus cannot drown), and never get [[sleep|drowsy]]. They do, however, get thirsty, albeit not in the normal way; vampires thirst for warm fresh [[blood]], and will suck [[unconscious]] [[creature]]s (usually others of their own kind) dry given the chance, usually killing them. In the rare case that the victims survive and recover, they will not remember what happened to them, and may very well fall victim once more. It appears that when a vampire feeds successfully they receive a large happiness boost.

Vampires do not [[age]], and most vampires live for hundreds or even thousands of years. Thus all but the youngest vampires are more [[skill]]ed and more experienced than their peers, spurred on by the countless lives detailed on their [[kill list]]s and they are hiding their true identities. This makes them natural candidates for leadership, and thus vampiric [[monarch]]s are a not uncommon sight atop [[civilization]]s, which do not seem to wonder as to how their king has been alive for so many centuries.

Younger vampires stalk the streets of towns and cities, indistinguishable from the average mortal, and drink the blood of unsuspecting innocents. Elder vampires, those with power and ambition, mislead the gullible and power-hungry into forming vampire cults dedicated to worshipping and feeding their master. Should a vampire rise to a position of power in mortal society, it may deign to expose itself and impose a rule of tyranny upon the subjects who so unknowingly elevated it to power.

None of your seven starting dwarves will ever be vampires, nor will [[child]]ren or babies, [[caravan]]s, [[siege]]s{{verify}}, [[ambush]]es{{verify}}, [[outpost liaison]]s{{verify}}, or [[thief|thieves]]{{verify}}, but any of the rest of your dwarves can be. (Foreign diplomats can be vampires, and will be labeled as such.)

== Habits ==
Vampires are secretive and, for better or for worse, a fairly common occurrence. Many fortresses can expect to see a vampire resident by the time they hit a population of 80, and some may see two or more. Vampires arrive with a false name and hide their true name and kill list until they are discovered. They act as do any other dwarves, except for differences too small to notice easily in any sizable population[which?], performing jobs which are assigned to them and generally acting as expected. They can be [[military|drafted]], assigned to [[burrow]]s, be given [[room]]s (but do not claim them{{verify}}), and own items. They do not, however, eat, drink or sleep.

The most important difference is that when they go [[on break]]s they will use them for drinking the blood of dwarves that they catch sleeping. If any tame animals somehow fall asleep (for instance, via a syndrome), vampires will drink their blood as willingly as they will a dwarf's. If a vampire is in the military and has current station orders he may ignore them and search out a victim, still displaying 'station'. If the orders are canceled they will switch to 'on break'.

If vampires are caught in the act of draining a victim, their crime will be reported in the [[justice]] [[menu|screen]] as murder (they will not, however, stop drinking when caught). If only the corpse is discovered, the crime will be labeled as a murder sans suspects, and the player can accuse dwarves of the act. Even in the case that someone is accused, be aware that the deceitful vampire is capable of framing others for its crimes to send suspicion away for a time.

If a vampire is killed, the corpse will bear the original name of the creature rather than that of the dwarf who was seen to die, which might lead to some confusion among managers of such things. A [[coffin]] will be designated for burial of the vampire's cover identity, with the corpse bearing the original name entombed in it. Memorial slabs will be dedicated to the vampire's original name.

== Identification ==
It might be smart to scan the [[thoughts and preferences]] screens of incoming migrants before welcoming them to their new home, as a safety measure; it really sucks when you don't discover you have a vampire until ''after'' they've drained your only legendary [[armorsmith]] of blood.

A dwarf who is suddenly pale or faint for no explained reason is a good but rare indicator that a vampire is around. He was most likely fed upon by a vampire, but survived. Dwarven [[corpse]]s being discovered "drained of blood" are more common; a vampire fed upon them and killed them, and their body was discovered. These dwarves should be buried well, lest an axe-crazy [[ghost]] arise from their death. Dwarves inexplicably going missing for more than a week are another indicator, although this might be the result of dwarven stupidity (e.g. falling down a [[well]], walking off a [[waterfall]], etc.) as well.

Once you suspect you have a vampire, you probably want to know who it is. There are a number of good indicators of a vampire and the more points a dwarf hits, the more likely he is, indeed, a vampire. The difficult vampires to identify are young ones, as they have not had time to build up the indicators that are obvious on older bloodsuckers.

Firstly, there are the consequences of their age. Vampires tend to be high in multiple (4-5+) [[social skill|social]], high in at least one [[military]] [[skill]], and "great" or better in at least one domestic skill. The biggest indicator of a vampire in v0.34.11 is that they will almost always have more skills (10-15+ easily) at Novice or better than any of your other dwarves. If your new Great Hunter is also a Novice Milker, Shearer, Farmer, Tanner, Carpenter, Stonecrafter, Furnace Operator, Soap Maker, Fisherdwarf, Fish Cleaner, and Fish Dissector... they're almost certainly a vampire. They also tend to have very long lists of [[Thoughts and preferences#Civilization membership|group associations]], on the order of dozens, far more than your normal dwarves. They have abnormally long lists of [[relationships|relations]] and often many, many children, but none of them are present in the fortress (in stark contrast to the spouses, children and siblings whom most dwarves will share their home with). If they are married to a dwarf that is not present in the fortress, this should be treated as especially strong evidence. Note, however, that lacking relatives within the fortress is not a good indicator of being a vampire.

Their [[Personality trait|personality]] can also be scrutinized for abnormalities. Their biographies may indicate that they "have the appearance of somebody who is (x) years old," a very good indicator of a vampire in cases where they have too many children or too many civilization associations to be that young. As vampires do not eat, sleep, or drink, they will never have recent thoughts about meals, drinks, beds, dining rooms, or chairs, leaving their thoughts especially bare and suspicious. In the case of vampires who have been in the fort for a while, a comment may be added to the effect that "s/he could really use a drink," "s/he has not had a drink in far, far too long," or "can't even remember the last time s/he had some." This is an indicator that they need blood. In any case, if alcohol is available, it makes an excellent distinguishing mark.

There are two "normal" ways to be absolutely sure a dwarf is a vampire. The first is to catch them in the act; the dwarf will be clearly marked for the duration of the attack (i.e. Urist McUrist, Vampire on the [[unit list]], in red). A vampire does not mind if the player is currently "watching" or even following it. The second is to have a dwarf witness the event happening. This will permanently uncover their identities, but almost always results in a dead dwarf first. More arcane are indicators based on their physical abilities; vampires with injured guts do not [[vomit]], vampires with injured lungs have no problem "breathing", and submerged vampires will not [[drown]] (evoking the concept of an olden witch test for finding vampirism). Technically being undead, animated corpses will not evoke cancellation spam when a vampire sees them. An easy (albeit, [[cheating|cheap]]) way of screening migrants is to send them through a hallway with a zombie on the other side of fortifications/windows in clear sight. Normal dwarves will run away from the horrible sight of a harmless zombie but vampire dwarves will walk right through.

Feeding is treated as a job by the game, and thus appears in the Job List with the text 'On Break' in cyan. It is possible that the genuine 'On Break' (teal) and the fake 'On Break' (cyan) occupy different positions in the Job List.

Looking at the [[deity|deities]] that the dwarf believes in (in the {{k|r}}elationships screen) can be quite helpful. As long as only "cursed" vampires immigrate (and not blood drinking ones), one of the deities of a vampire should have a "cursed the dwarf [untrue alias] . . ." Lacking this clause in their deities seems to be a clear sign that you do ''not'' have a vampire. This non-bugged way of checking a vampire is linked to the "cheap" bugged way of checking of vampires, which is described in the final paragraph.

Then there are the (in Dwarf Fortress, inevitable) bugged ways. As mentioned in the [[#Bugs|bugs]] section, vampires can be discovered and identified in [[statue]]s and [[engraving]], through their refusal to claim [[bed]]rooms, through [[pet|adoption events]], and through [[weapon]] [[kill list]]s. Additionally, if you have the vampire on follow, their title will change from their usual one ("Dwarf A") to "Dwarf A Vampire" when they are doing certain activities.

There are a few "cheap" ways as well. If you use [[DF2012:Utilities#Dwarf Therapist|Dwarf Therapist]], dwarves will be listed by their true name there, and if you find a dwarf on the games' unit screen that is not in the Dwarf Therapist list, or the other way round, you know you've got a vampire. [[DF2012:Utilities#DFHack|DFHack]] has a special command, "cursecheck," which returns the count of cursed creatures on a tile, and will report vampires. Checking out a drained dwarf in [[Legends]] mode will tell you that "In the year Z X was drained of all blood by Y."

To see if a vampire was cursed by a deity that it worships, look under the <s>vampire's</s> dwarf's relationships and view the deities that are listed. Give the dwarf a nickname and, when viewing the deity relationship, it will say: "In the [season description] of [year], [deity] cursed the dwarf vampire [nickname you chose] [dwarf's original name] to prowl the night in search of blood in [original location]". Since the nickname applies retroactively, this is a sure way to identify a vampire that happens to worship the deity that cursed it. This method is very tedious when looking at many suspects, and may apply to only a small fraction of vampires, so you should probably use it after trying the more obvious signs (like many former associations, or tags after "needs alcohol to get through the working day").

== Defense ==
Vampires attack and drink from dwarves who are sleeping, so one defense is to force all dwarves to sleep and meet in the same room, increasing the likelihood of eyewitnesses catching the monster in the act. Curiously, even if convicted of a vampiric murder, a vampire will not necessarily be killed, but given a normal justice penalty such as temporary imprisonment. If you want to get rid of him/her you will have to take [[justice]] into your own hands and introduce the leech to a pit of lava, bottomless pit, arena fight, dropping tower, or other elimination method of your choice. This can be facilitated through the use of burrows, but you will need to be fast when using those because vampires do ''not'' respect burrow restrictions if they decide to get another [[Blood|drink]]. However, one must take care that the vampire is properly memorialized because even the ghosts of vampires will seek out your sleeping citizens and kill them.

== Uses ==
If you can correctly identify a vampire and isolate it from the rest of your population, you can make use of them without fear of blood feedings. A lone vampire in a sealed room will never die of hunger or thirst, doesn't need to sleep, and will never age. The only way a vampire can die (without your vengeful intervention) is in combat or through syndromes. Sealing it somewhere prevents those. The only remaining risk is that the vampire may turn mad eventually, which without access to other dwarfs to [[relationships|relate to]] shouldn't be very likely. Even [[insanity]] is not the end for a vampire - since they remain physically needless, an insane vampire can still live forever, and non-berserk insane vampires remain citizens of your fort. They will be completely unusable for any work, but a locked-up melancholic or stark raving mad vampire is just as immortal as a sane one and can't be elected mayor. If they get loose, they will not drain your citizens of blood, but melancholic vampires may attempt to end their own existence, given the opportunity.

Once you have your sealed vampire, your fortress becomes effectively eternal, since the vampire will always be alive even if the infamous [[Losing|fun]] claims your entire population. Be wary of [[ghost]]s, though, as they are the only being capable of reaching your vampire's eternal prison. Simply wait for the fun to pass and new immigrants to repopulate your otherwise abandoned fort.

Consider placing a chair and table in your vampire's sealed room and making them an undead accountant. As they have nothing to do but sit around for eternity, once they get their skills up, they may make exceedingly effective [[manager]]s/[[record keeper]]s. Work orders and stockpile updates currently seem to be psychically transmitted from the desk of the dwarf assigned to those labors, so entombing them in their office isn't an issue. However, vampire dwarves are still alcoholics, yet cannot drink anything but blood; the resulting job performance penalty from the "can't even remember the last time he/she had some" level of [[Drink|alcohol withdrawal]] significantly reduces the usefulness of vampires in this sort of role.

A cloistered vampire can also be used as a sleepless, un-eating and drinking dwarf who is always ready for some [[pull lever|lever pulling]], even if the rest of your dwarves die. With all that said, having an eternally cloistered vampire is not without drawbacks. As vampires do not drink, yet are still alcohol-dependent, they will eventually suffer performance penalties and take longer breaks. This can have fatal consequences if you need the lever to keep the goblin siege outside pulled ''now''. Since dwarves get unhappy [[thought]]s from having their clothes rot away, a vampire that's been naked for years is quite prone to [[tantrum]]ing or going [[insanity|insane]], which can lead to [[Fun|even worse outcomes]] should he be assigned to the lever room. Of course, you could drop him some clothes from a chute, but what fun is that when there are [[cave-in|other]] [[dwarven atom smasher|things]] to drop from above? Or you could assign the vampire to a squad and supply him with a set of armor, as armor doesn't wear out. Another way to mitigate cloistered vampire unhappiness is to convict them of one or more of their murders after they've been sealed in; they will eventually derive happiness from having their punishment "delayed".

Vampires do increase their stats like other dwarves, so that a weak vampire may be easily upgraded into a mighty one by using him as a miner or easily trained into a legendary swimmer. A vampire craftsdwarf may be burrow-limited to his workshop plus a stockpile or a miner restricted to specific mining levels, avoiding any other miners. It will be safe, if all of the miners have separate, assigned bedrooms.

If a vampire gets injured enough to lose teeth and control of their limbs, the vampire may be in and out of the [[hospital]] frequently for a long time which gives your medical team lots experience fast. This can be very useful if the [[biome]] and [[surroundings]] make it so the hospital doesn't see too many patients.

If you have no better idea you can use a vampire to explore the caverns; they are usually good fighters with military experience and will not run off to refill their waterskin.

So, in general, when under control, vampires tend to be much more useful and valuable than most of your non-bloodsucking dwarves. Without access to any sleeping places or hospitals, they tend to be totally harmless to other dwarves.

== Unfortunate accidents ==
Although keeping a single vampire in eternal solitary confinement can be a bonus for any fortress, it is always important to be capable of killing them whenever necessary (especially if the peasants unwittingly elect one as their leader and an [[unfortunate accident]] becomes necessary). However, vampires have certain abilities which will make it more difficult to properly take care of them - they cannot drown, and their physical strengths could make them tougher to kill with regular weapons. Fortunately, they are not resistant to [[Dwarven atom smasher|high-tech particle physics experimentation]].

==Playing as a vampire==
By drinking the blood of a vampire in adventure mode, you immediately become a vampire. You will be able to feed on other creatures by using {{k|e}} and choosing the "Feed" option on an unconscious target. On becoming a vampire, Strength, Agility and Toughness are doubled. Physical attributes such as endurance are still able to increase after becoming a vampire.

*Note: The game does not give you any confirmation that you have become a vampire. {{version|0.34.11}} The only way to make sure that you have transformed is to wait for twenty-four hours (enough time for any regular mortal to hunger for food.) until you get thirsty, which should show up eventually. To get rid of the thirsty tag, you MUST drink directly from another living knocked out, unconscious or sleeping creature. This could lead to hazardous mishaps if you're discovered/if the victim awakes, unless you beat your victim senseless first. Once you have fed on an unsuspecting victim, you will have a red icon denoting you are a vampire next to your name.

Due to such conditions, it is relatively impossible to quench your thirst (on any member of a civilization) without antagonizing any of your companions, and even if you don't have any, there's still that chance that your victim might wake up in the middle of your feast and effectively set a whole civilization against you. One way to counter this is to raid goblin/bandit camps, concentrating on one lone weak unit far from any comrades, beat them till they give in to pain (but not to death) and then feed on them directly. You can do the same with wildlife, although some of them may be more aggressive and most might die too quickly. You can also try to strangle your foes; they instantly pass out and will not die unless you keep on strangling them for a long time. For instructions on chokeholds, see the [[Wrestler#Chokehold and strangling|relevant article]]. Another solution is finding some indoor place with people inside and Sleep so you wake up while they are sleeping. Your companions go wait outside while you sleep, so you have a brief time-window to suck someone who is asleep.

After becoming a vampire, you become invincible to zombies, since you're now a night creature. It is usually preferred to raid a necromancer tower alone, because bringing companions will only get them killed, and your agility when you become a vampire will rise drastically anyway, causing you to outrun them. This increased agility will also give you better odds against bogeymen and night trolls, since you'll be quicker than both.

Playing as a vampire is a strong advantage, assuming you can manage your bloodthirst. The most convenient method of drinking blood is to wield a blunt weapon such as a mace: as long as you don't strike the head, enemies rarely bleed out or suffocate from blunt damage and it's easy to force them to give into the pain. Interestingly, your allies don't seem to care if you drink blood from enemies, and blood can be drunk in a single turn in combat (occasionally killing the creature, depending on its size and your thirst). Vampire bloodthirst shows up less often than normal thirst, and can usually be sated in a single feeding from a human-sized opponent. Feeding from smaller animals, such as dingos, is possible but multiple feedings may be necessary.

Vampires, as noted before, do not need to eat, nor drink (normal fluids), nor sleep. As an adventurer, this is a huge advantage, as you don't need to stop, or worry about carrying consumables. As long as there's living, pain-feeling enemies, you can feed. Vampires also do not need to breathe and do not tire. They can swim as long as necessary and cannot drown, even to the extent of being able to swim oceans. A sufficiently skilled and armed vampire is essentially immortal for all intents and purposes.

== Adventure Mode ==

=== Finding the Vampire ===

Finding a vampire in Adventure mode is quite simple.

# Get a quest to kill a Vampire. Just keep doing quests and one will come along eventually.
# Get to the village/town where the vampire is said to be.
# Once at the village/town, ask a random villager or citizen about service. He/she will tell you of the vampire and mention where to start looking. Unfortunately, a vampire lurking in a city's sewers may be much harder to find as citizens will only tell you to look in the "sewers", which can get rather large and twisty.
# Use process of elimination to locate the correct house. In each new house ask a villager about service. Pay attention to what direction villagers say to begin looking in each time you ask one about service until you find a villager inside a house that doesn't mention a direction in their service dialogue. That house contains the vampire.
# You may accuse everyone in that house of being a night creature until you find him, but in most cases, you will be able to recognize the vampire by his flashing sprite. He will announce his true name and become hostile to everyone around him.

=== Killing the Vampire ===

Vampires in Adventure Mode that are in hiding always wield the basic knife all villagers wield and basic clothing. They may also wear jewellery. Their lousy weapons make them a lower threat than you might think. Old vampires with large kill lists still may not be all that effective in combat, since most of their kills are likely stealthy, non combat kills a la Fortress Mode vampires.

Vampires don't breathe or feel pain, so don't bother trying to strangle them or trying to use blunt weapons. Instead just slice them up with something edged, so they rapidly bleed to death, try to decapitate them or use wrestling to break their weapon arm and then finish them off at your leisure.

Vampires attack anyone around them once exposed, so if you like you can allow him to begin attacking random civilians and target him while he's busy or even allow them to weaken him.

==Modding==

It is possible to create your own unique vampire strain by editing the raws. These custom vampires can be outfitted with various abilities only limited by your own creativity. An example would be shapeshifting vampires, firebreathing vampires, superfast vampires, and even vampires with the ability to raise corpses are fairly easy to make by creating a custom ''interaction_customvampirenamehere'' note document.

== Bugs ==
* Dwarven vampires remain dependent on alcohol but will not drink anything except blood in fortress mode, so inevitably end up showing symptoms of [[Alcohol#Consequences of a Sober Fortress|alcohol withdrawal]]. This has not been acknowledged as a bug. {{bug|5189}}
* Statues and engravings may identify dwarves as vampires before it is common knowledge, and may even depict them sucking blood.{{bug|5209}}
* Likewise, [[pet]]s adopted by vampires will identify them as vampires in the adoption [[announcement]].{{bug|5942}}
* Vampires do not bother claiming bedrooms, which doesn't help their disguise.{{bug|5642}}
* Weapon kill lists identify vampires.{{bug|5635}}
* Soldiers will not attack vampires caught red-handed, and can be fooled by their counter-accusations.{{bug|5087}}
* Even though vampires do not need to eat, if you abandon a fortress with a vampire citizen, legends mode will still report "In the <season> of <year> the dwarf vampire <vampire's name> starved to death in <fortress name>" (Bug not yet reported due to account creation issues.)
* Drinking blood permanently lowers one's speed, due to uninhibited tooth and muscle growth.{{bug|5231}}

{{category|humanoids}}

v0.34:Night creature

2015-03-19T12:43:49Z

AVEM 39:

{{Quality|Superior|23:49, 12 May 2013 (UTC)}}
{{av}}

:''Now you will know why you fear the night.''

A '''night creature''' is a member of a class of hostile creatures. Many of them are generated procedurally, whether as a full creature, through an [[interaction token|interaction]] changing a normal creature, or a mixture of both. [[Night troll]]s, which are themselves only a type of night creature, are sometimes also referred to as night creatures.

Each type of night creature is depicted in the game as either a '''ñ''' or '''Ñ''' of a different color. Some night creatures flash between the Ñ and a basic creature tile, especially undead. The currently existing night creatures are the following:

* {{Tile|Ñ|2:0}} [[Night troll]]s, which abduct certain civilized creatures of the opposite gender, transform them into a spouse, and mate with them.
* {{Tile|ñ|0:1}} [[Bogeyman|Bogeymen]], which ambush lone travelers at night, chasing them relentlessly until the victim can retreat indoors or manages to survive until daylight. Unlike other night creatures, bogeymen do not have individual histories — rather, they are generated when needed in adventure mode.
* {{Tile|Ñ|7:1}} [[Ghost]]s, the restless spirits of the dead that weren't properly memorialized. Depending on circumstances, they can interact with the living in various ways.
* {{Tile|Ñ|3:0}} [[Undead|Animated dead]] are the walking corpses and corpse parts that arise in evil regions or under the thrall of a necromancer or mummy. Particularly evil regions may also transform living creatures into thralls or husks via their unusual weather. They flash between their night creature tile and their basic creature tile.
* {{Tile|Ñ|5:1}} [[Necromancer]]s are historical figures that have found secrets of life and death, becoming immortal and gaining the ability to animate the dead.
* {{Tile|Ñ|6:1}} [[Mummy|Disturbed dead]] are the dead rulers of civilizations, interred in [[tomb]]s. They will arise if disturbed and lay curses on the trespasser.
* {{Tile|Ñ|6:0}} [[Werebeast]]s are people cursed by the gods for profaning their temple, or those to whom they transferred that curse. At the full moon, they will transform into a ravenous monster based off a random creature, for example, a werelizard or a werebadger.
* {{Tile|Ñ|4:0}} [[Vampire]]s are undead blood drinkers that can pass for living, moving on when suspicion on them grows too much. Occasionally they might start immortality cults instead, and might make a bid to seize power over a whole civilization.

In addition to the existing night creatures, and plans to expand them, [[Main:Dwarf Fortress Talk|Dwarf Fortress Talk]] #14 reveals future plans for other types of night creatures, which are as follows:

* {{Tile|Ñ|5:0}} Stalkers, undead that arose from brutal killings and executions, taking on aspects related to their death.
* {{Tile|Ñ|3:1}} Intelligent undead - undead creatures that do not fit into the other categories of undead.
* {{Tile|Ñ|4:1}} Constructed creatures. These are creatures like Frankenstein's monster, with mismatched limbs, sutures, and grafted weapons.
* {{Tile|Ñ|7:0}} Animated furniture, to be found in certain haunted houses, making sounds, moving about, and attacking the unwitting soul entering them. They will flash between their night creature tile and their basic item tile.
* {{Tile|Ñ|2:1}} Various sorts of evil beasts, such as evil rotten cabybaras or evil animated trees.
* {{Tile|Ñ|1:0}} Monsters of the sea, including aquatic hags and trolls such as Grendel.
* {{Tile|Ñ|1:1}} Cursed people of the sea, such as undead pirates or seafarers.

{{Creatures}}

[[ru:Night creature]]