Spellbook of stone to flesh

spellbook of +   stone to flesh
Appearance	random
Base price	300 zm
Weight	50
Turns to read	2
Ink to write	15–29
Spell type	healing
Level	3
Power cost	15 Pw

The spellbook of stone to flesh is one of the Healer's guaranteed starting spells, and an all-round useful spell to know.

Possible uses

• Turning boulders into huge chunks of meat. These give enormous amounts of nutrition, so beware of choking to death.
• Turning rocks into meatballs. These give little nutrition, but are considered treats by carnivorous monsters, and can thus be used to tame or train pets.
• Turning a stone golem into a somewhat less threatening flesh golem.
• Disposing of boulders blocking your path. If in Sokoban, this carries the standard -1 luck penalty.
• Identifying gems -- valuable gems become meatballs, while glass is unaffected. This does not identify types of gems, either formally or informally, and of course results in the loss of the formerly valuable gems. The best strategy for this method of identification is to type-name all gems in your possession to "valuable" (or append "valuable" to their type-names), then place one representative from each stack in a pile. Cast the spell at the pile, and type-name any remaining gems to "worthless".
• Stopping the stiffening process. Unlike eating a lizard corpse or quaffing a potion of acid, this will turn your stone wands, stone rings, and valuable gems to meat objects; on the whole, however, it's better than being a statue.
• Turning a statue into the creature it depicts. If a tame pet gets turned to stone, this will restore it to its original state. If the creature is of a genocided species, this won't work; the statue will be transformed into an appropriate corpse if possible, or remain unchanged if that monster cannot leave a corpse. Additionally, if the monster is considered vegetarian food (and hence not fleshy) the statue will instead be turned into a single meatball instead. If the statue is of a unique monster or a quest guardian it will reanimate as a disguised doppelganger instead of the real creature, unless the statue was created by stoning that creature.
• Uncancelling or transporting a monster by first stoning it and then stone-to-fleshing the resulting statue. This does not work on nymphs and foocubi, and temple priests will stop tending their altar.
• Getting rid of a carried loadstone.

Other messages

• Casting this spell downwards ('>') while standing on a normal square, sink, fountain or randomly generated grave produces the message "Blood pools at your feet". Casting this while over a bones grave does not produce any message.
• Casting the spell upwards ('<') in a normal level (not as part of the Endgame) produces the message "Blood drips on your <face>" (adjusted for polymorphed body part appropriately) but otherwise has no effect.