Everything was going so well. I had a great food supply, 21 happy dwarves, a thriving fortress and plenty of plans to expand. I just started digging out some more rooms for metal working when my screen suddenly jumped up a few z-layers and this message appeared:
The Wereloris Ellum Budosana has come! A large loris twisted into humanoid form. It is crazed for blood and flesh. Its eyes glow amber. Its brown hair is long and wavy. Now you will know why you fear the night.
From the sound of this lovely message, it would appear that I'm totally screwed. However, I have absolutely no idea what a "wereloris" is, and neither does the DF wiki. Can anyone tell me what I'm about to be faced with? On the screen it is represented by the character Ñ.
Best Answer
A wereloris is... well, it's the were-wolf analogue of this critter:
Dwarf Fortress has the option to turn pretty much any creature it knows of into a were-variant. That is (generally) a dwarf that occasionally turns into a were-form and goes around slaughtering everything, they can also be species other then dwarves.
Were-beings are a tricky problem, if one bites or slashes one of your dwarves (and they survive) they'll become a were-being just like it next time, fun!
On the plus side, they'll also regenerate lost limbs during the transformation so it saves on medical care.
Were-beings not currently on a rampage will be treated like your regular dwarfs... so killing them gives unhappy thoughts and related bad things. However this also means you can draft them in an army, set them to train in a lockable area and block the door with a wall. Sealing them off from the rest of your fort while they do whatever it is were-beings do when changed (were-beings of the same species are not hostile to each other when turned).
Update on when they turn (13 times a year apparently, from Dwarf Fortress wiki):