Dem Bones/Quotes

"The skeleton. This fearless set of bones needs neither sleep nor nourishment, it's only urge to kill, and when in battle marches forth and slays without remorse."

—Dungeon Keeper II

A walking skeleton, the basic frame of the human body, can inspire more fear in the common man than an excessively armed soldier or knight.

—Jacob Deegan (journal), Dominic Deegan

The first issue was tackling the sever problem with skeletons. The issue here is that when a skeleton is created, it strips away all of their rottable tissues, but that leaves the head completely empty (things like the skull are sub-parts), and this means the skull is essentially floating separate from the spine (which is also floating). Handling it correctly is a bit of project, so I just stuck the slightest bit of totally rotten muscle on them for now to hang things together. The only downside here is that you'll occasionally see muscles in the combat text for skeletons. It all raises the question of exactly how the bones are moving and supporting their weight in the first place, which I suppose will start to be answered when I get to the curse entry on dev_next. For now, they are held together by wisps of very strong rotten muscle that inexplicably work. In terms of mods, for each part that is completely rottable, it selects the deepest non-subordinate tissue marked as a connector and keeps it. For a dwarf, legs and arms just use bone, while the head and body have to cheat. It should work for rotting away any undead creature to a "skeleton". I haven't tested them, but "skeletal" insects should end up being hollow exoskeletal husks with this method.

—Tarn Adams, on the Dwarf Fortress devlog

Skeleton. Noun. A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.

—First entry on Urban Dictionary for "skeleton"

Send in your skeletons

Sing as their bones come marching in again

—Foo Fighters, "The Pretender"

Pierce: "Those floating Mexican skeletons are right! My life is over!"

Jeff: "Well, when we go to floating skeletons with our problems, we get what we pay for, don't we?"

—Community, "Introduction to Statistics"