Maraoke

A while back I decided to create a Medusa, and mused for some time on how to create the turn-to-stone effect, which wasn't in the game. And in the end I found a clever (read: insane) workaround.

I couldn't get the medusa to turn people into statues, but I could make a custom effect that let it transform people into different animals. And some creatures leave stuff behind on death - bronze colossi leave statues behind, for example...

So I created a placeholder creature called 'petrification victim' which was utterly biologically nonviable and would die the second it came into existence, like the bug which let historical figures survive decapitation in worldgen only to die the second they appeared on your map. And I gave it the tag that would turn its corpse into a stone statue upon death. Voila! Turn-to-stone effect. You transform, you die, you become a statue, you show up in Legends mode and carvings as a "petrification victim". Sounds perfect, right?

It was not perfect.

The issues were as follows.

One, while you can set a creature to become a statue after death, and even define the material, you can't decide what the statue is. Therefore my medusa would petrify an elf and instead of a stone elf statue, you'd get a stone statue of a dog. Or mackerel. Or a spade.

Two, my initial method of instakilling the petrification victims was by giving them an unlivable body temperature. Unfortunately I...misjudged the intensity. As a result, early basilisk effects did not transform the victims into statues.

It transformed them into explosions, into chunks of molten granite and literally evaporated rock which spread fiery devastation across the landscape and left nought but superheated rubble in their wake. This often killed the medusa itself, which even when fireproofed would like, choke or suffocate or something. I never quite figured the CoD out.