He died, and now his blood is mixing with the well water. Assuming he wasn't a vampire, what are my options? Is the well still usable, or will I need to empty it and start over? Do I have to build a new cistern?
32 Answers
If his blood has terrible effects (e.g. if he was a vampire), AND your cistern is only one level deep, then the contaminants will become a problem. However, all contaminants (including things like demon ichor) are non-soluble and denser than water, so they will tend to sink to the bottom. Your dwarves use the well to get water from the top, so as long as the top is not the same as the bottom (i.e. the water in the cistern is at least 2 levels deep), having a contaminated well has absolutely no effect.
1I have quite a lot of unintentional experience with blood all over the botton of my wells. So far I've never noticed any unintentional side effects though. Dwarves appear to be fine drinking the blood of their fallen comrades.
I checked the wiki anyway to see if it could cause unhappy thoughts anyway though. The closest two were these:
Complained about the nasty water lately.
Was forced to drink vomit lately.
But the former is for outside stagnant water like murky pools without wells, and the later is only if your dwarf hits his guts and throws up at the bottom. So you should be fine if it's only blood, assuming it isn't vampiric.
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