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« on: September 06, 2017, 07:45:53 AM »
With a previous character (RIP), I had a really crazy experience with one village. It was a village I had lots of dealings with, and I had noticed wolves on the zoomed out map in their area before. One day, I went to the village and heard fighting sounds... a pack of wolves had jumped their fences and killed every one of their reindeer. When I showed up at the battle lines I managed to kill one wolf before the rest fled, leaving dead reindeer and villagers in their wake. I, ahem, helped clean up the carcasses. I went back a couple days later and found them in the midst of battle again... my arrival caused the wolves to flee but their shaman, and possibly many others, were missing.
I hired an NPC from the village (their only able-bodied man left), as well as another NPC from a nearby village, and started a kind of Iron-Age CSI episode ("who's afraid of the big bad wolf", taking off my sunglasses to a Who song). We set up traps, followed tracks, and generally hung out guarding the village. Almost every night the wolves would attack again, generally luring me one direction, then assaulting another. One night I sent one of my henchmen against a wolf, when two others attacked from the opposite side. The henchman disappeared.
Bit by bit we managed to kill the wolves off, though hilariously two children and a maiden had been horribly crippled in attacks and laid around the south side of the village for the rest of the game. They never got better, but I periodically brought them food ("How's it going?", "Mustn't Grumble. That's what the adults tell me", said the horribly brutalized orphan).
After it was over, I explored a little in the woods a few squares beyond the village, finding stacks of dead villager clothing (and presumably my henchman's), but no bodies.
Has anyone else had an experience like this? How do NPC's react to animals generally? I've chased reindeer into villages, but I don't think the villagers ever reacted. They definitely seemed to take on aggressive animals quite readily, though this is the only time I've seen it.
Edit: Another weird part of the story. Before the attacks I did a message quest for one of their villagers where I took a message to a vagabond village. Shortly after the attacks began. The guy who gave me the message wasn't around any more, so I assumed he had died. Later on, I found him living in the vagabond village... I highly suspect his involvement.