Whats the priority for punishments?

[rat]

Have a hammerer, captain of the guard, dungeon, chains, and dungeon master.

2 vampires convicted of 5 murders each. 200 hammerstrikes 1000 days imprisonment each. 1 vampire gets 193 hammerstrikes first, the other vampire is simply imprisoned first, despite my hammerdwarf being available for jobs.

Skip to the bottom for tl;dr

Story time;

Caught 2 vampires by simple luck, two grey dwarves walking around on the surface who'd lived for 100+ years and had about ten siblings and twenty niblings each. Of course, this is only after they killed a combined total 15 dwarves at night. I wasn't paying too close attention and honestly had just given up on finding them so it was on me.

Anyways, I'm over here throwing the book at them, opening up the cold cases and convicting them (they didn't want to confess, oh well) and at a certain point the two of them rack up 200 hammerstrikes (seems to be the maximum) and about 1000 days imprisonment.

After being convicted, my hammerer (I think? Might have been the dungeon master. I don't remember) promptly brought both vampires to the dungeon, left to go to my barracks, and came back with an iron warhammer. I'm not going to lie to you and say that I wasn't watching while the hammerer meted out his punishment against the first vampire. She killed about 5 children and a bunch of legendary dwarves, so I was just about as pissed as everyone else in the fort by this point.

Ok, so he finished with her. By the end literally every bone in her body is broken and she can't breathe (that part doesn't matter because she's undead ofc), great. She dies 10 days later after what I can only imagine was 10 days of constant agonizing pain, great. But that wasn't enough for me. As much as I thought it was badass to break nearly every bone in this vampire's body and then leave them imprisoned for the rest of their (un)natural life, I also realized that if they weren't killed right then and there, their toughness and regeneration speed could mean that they walk out of the prison after the hammerstrikes are delivered. And I didn't want that (I also didn't want to be forced to cause "accidents" to get rid of them afterwards.)

So, I fired the hammerer because they had no hammerdwarf skill (they had gone back upstairs to go to the bar or something, they weren't in the process of punishing the other vamp), and then I melted the only iron warhammer and built 2 new steel ones (so only high quality hammers remained). I also assigned a hammerdwarf already serving in one of my squads as the new hammerer. They were scheduled to train and patrol for about 7 months before they'd finally go off duty, so I figured the vampire would have plenty of time to think about what they did.

Come 1st Malachite, my hammerer is just chilling out in the tavern socializing... I check the convicts tab and see the vampire is still due to be on the receiving end of 200 hammerstrikes, but I don't want to wait 900 days just to see this scum earn her just desserts. I fired her and assigned another. Hammerer is still no-jobbing.

TL;DR - Is there another issue going on, or does hammering come after imprisonment? If so, why did the first vampire get the hammerstrikes first, and was *then* imprisoned?

[McFuzz]

I've heard it depends on the personality of your guard captain. And mood. And so sometimes he says prison, sometimes he says smacky smacky. If you want consistant prison, try testing with a kind, forgiving captain with a nice and friendly personality. Though this is still a theory. Do some testing :D

[whit]

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Justice#Punishments

[rat]

Originally posted by whit:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Justice#Punishments

"Dwarves who misbehave can receive punishments if a sheriff has been assigned. In increasing order of severity (at least that's what the dwarves think):

3 Beating by a fortress guard (more dangerous than it sounds, see below)
2 Imprisonment for a period of time.
1 Hammering by the Hammerer."

Soo hammering is the most severe. Understood, and I figured as much. It doesn't say which order they are carried out in, however.

"If the crime calls for imprisonment, then the guard will try to put the prisoner in jail; if no jails are available, the guard will "downgrade" the punishment to a beating, giving the criminal a happy thought and the injured party (i.e. the dwarf injured by the criminal, if one exists) an unhappy thought. If the crime calls for hammer strikes, then the Hammerer will attach the prisoner to a restraint before carrying out the sentence; if no justice restraints are available, the punishment will be downgraded to a beating."

This doesn't really answer my question. Dwarf #1 got hammered first, then imprisoned. Dwarf #2 got imprisoned (they were actually brought to the cell first.)

I guess maybe it was that since I convicted both of them at the same time, there was some sort of queue to immediately get them both into prison, so the first dwarf was set to serve imprisonment first, while the second got the hammering first? That's the best I can think of.

I have 16 chains in my dungeon, by the by.