10 Astounding Tales Which Exemplify Dwarf Fortress' Insanity

3. The Untrusting Undead - Misfortunes Of A Necromancer

This one is not so much a single tale as to the misfortunes and unexpected consequences on the development side of things, a series of stories displaying the unfortunate habit of necromancers developing the strangest of bugs. While this is to be expected for anything which can bring the dead back to life, some of these things need to be read to be believed. Just for starters, a particularly unexpected issue the Toady One took a liking to was their ability to resurrect severed limbs Evil Dead style, bringing back hands, legs and missing parts rather than whole people. This yielded some especially amusing results after Toady realised certain abilities were not tied to specific bodyparts: "My adventurer fought through around sixty zombies in the tower, killed the necromancer, learned the secrets of life and death, and then raised various limbs (not my own). Then I talked to one of them, and it told me that it was a peasant. It was flattered but had no need of my services. I imagine its little fingers were shaped into the form of a mouth and they flapped back and forth while it spoke with a high-pitched voice. I guess there's still work to do." Of course, that wouldn't be the end of it, oh no. Next necromancers developed the ability to separately resurrect parts of the same body. No, not limbs. Apparently one went to resurrect a corpse, but upon targeting it got a skeleton and an empty shell of skin moving about the place attacking everything in sight. While its lack of internal organs could have easily resulted in another Giant Sponge tier menace, thankfully instead the latter un-living horror proved to be more of a nuisance, merely terrorising any nearby dwarves and interrupting their assigned tasks. These would both be good, but were immediately overshadowed by one particular bit of news which made the life of any necromancer especially difficult, one big one which briefly turned them from a mighty threat to a self-defeating force of failures: "In bug news, the zombies in a necromancer's tower became suspicious after the necromancer failed to age, and he fled into the hills." You'd be hard pressed to find a more apt example of just how gloriously nuts the game's bugs can often be.