Nightgaunt (dNetHack)
g nightgaunt 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 17 |
| Attacks |
Claw 1d6 tickling |
| Base level | 15 |
| Base experience | 552 |
| Speed | 13 |
| Base AC | -2 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | medium |
| Resistances | cold, sleep, poison |
| Resistances conveyed | |
|
A nightgaunt:
| |
A nightgaunt, g, is a type of monster that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The nightgaunt is a strong and eyeless humanoid monster that is amphibious, breathless, capable of flight, can see invisible, and can be seen via infravision. Nightgaunts possesses enhanced regeneration, have a tendency to wander while moving, will seek out and pick up magical items and other objects, and can follow the hero to other levels if they are adjacent.
A nightgaunt has a single claw attack that deals damage and inflicts tickling, which causes the hero to become immobilized if it targets them unless they have a source of free action or resist it with magic cancellation - the section below has details on how the attack specifically affects a player character, while monsters hit by the attack are simply paralyzed for up to 10 turns. Nightgaunts possess cold resistance, sleep resistance and poison resistance.
Nightgaunts are poisonous to consume, and eating a nightgaunt's corpse or tin or quaffing its blood grants temporary cold resistance.
Nightgaunts can be warded by the Elder Sign, a heptagram, or an Elbereth engraved by an elven character.
Generation
Nightgaunts can generate in small groups, and may generate as peaceful towards neutral characters.
Strategy
Nightgaunts are somewhat hard to kill due to their base monster level, and the tickling attack is only partially mitigated by magic cancellation, as explained in detail below. Combined with their 13 speed and tendency towards small groups, this can make nightgaunts a serious enough threat to warrant targeting them with a wand of death, the finger of death spell or even genocide.
Tickling
Against a player character, the nightgaunt's tickling attack has effects that are carried out over multiple stages in the order listed:
- The attack rolls versus magic cancellation and checks if the character is already immobilized - if the attack is blocked for either reason, the nightgaunt will attempt to remove one piece of the character's equipment:
- If the character has a cloak, the nightgaunt will attempt to remove it and drop it on the character's square, with a percentage chance of avoiding this equal to the character's dexterity. For a character wielding Tensa Zangetsu while not wearing a cloak, the artifact will block the rest of the unequip effect.
- If the character has an alternate weapon item that is not a chained heavy iron ball, and they are not currently in two weapon combat, the nightgaunt will attempt to steal that item and add it to their inventory, with a percentage chance of avoiding this equal to the character's dexterity.
- If the character is wearing a suit of body armor without a cloak, the nightgaunt attempts to remove it: this has a 3⁄4 chance to fail, and otherwise there is a percentage chance of avoiding this equal to the character's dexterity.
- If the attack succeeds but the character has free action, no effects occur.
- Otherwise, the tickling abuses dexterity and constitution, with a 1⁄3 chance of paralyzing them for up to 10 turns and a 2⁄3 chance of paralyzing them for 1 turn. The character may also drop their wielded weapon, with a percentage chance of avoiding this equal to the lower between their dexterity, and a character that is twoweaponing may also drop their offhand weapon as well.
Losing any items due to the effects of tickling may trigger the effects of the "talons" madness and cause the character to panic for 2-7 turns. As mentioned above, the tickling can be blocked by MC3 and will not remove shirts: this makes Victorian underwear one of the better safeguards against the attack, though it will not provide complete protection like free action does.
Origin
The nightgaunt is a creature that originates from H.P. Lovecraft novella "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", which was completed on January 22, 1927 and left unrevised and unpublished until the story was published posthumously by Arkham House in 1943. In the story, nightgaunts (or "night-gaunts") are thin, black and faceless humanoid creatures that have smooth and rubbery skin, a pair of inward-facing horns on their heads, clawed hands, long barbed tails, and bat-like wings that they use to fly soundlessly. Nightgaunts are described as doing nothing else besides clutching, flying and tickling; they are silent due to lacking facial features, and are often believed to be servants of the malevolent god Nyarlathotep.
When Randolph Carter sees a majestic city known as Kadath in his dreams, but is unable to approach it, he braves the Dreamlands in search of the city - the journey takes him to a mountainside carving that is said to display the gods' features, and recognizes their visage in the traders seen around Celephaïs, surmising that Kadath must be nearby. Before Carter can act on this knowledge, however, nightgaunts capture him and leave him to die in the underworld; fortunately, he is rescued by friendly ghouls, including his friend Richard Pickman. Later, when Carter manages to sneak onto the island of Inganok, but is captured there by a merchant he had previously encountered and brought to a monastery inhabited by the dreaded High Priest Not to Be Described.
Within the monastery, Carter learns among other things that the nightgaunts do not serve Nyarlathotep, as is commonly supposed, but the deity known as Nodens, and that even Earth's gods fear them - Carter deciphers the masked high-priest's true identity from this and recoils in horror, eventually fleeing into the maze-like corridors of the monastery and wandering until he chances on the exit. He eventually rescues several ghouls from the Men of Leng, and obtains the services of a flock of nightgaunts to transport himself and the ghouls to the gods' castle on Kadath.
Encyclopedia entry
"Nightgaunt", "night-gaunt" and "night gaunt" return the following entry:
Suddenly, without a warning sound in the dark, Carter felt
his curved scimitar drawn stealthily out of his belt by some
unseen hand. Then he heard it clatter down over the rocks
below. And between him and the Milky Way he thought he saw
a very terrible outline of something noxiously thin and horned
and tailed and bat-winged. Then a sort of cold rubbery arm
seized his neck and something else seized his feet, and he was
lifted inconsiderately up and swung about in space. Another
minute and the stars were gone, and Carter knew that the
night-gaunts had got him.
[They] were indeed shocking and uncouth black things with smooth,
oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward
toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly
prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and
disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed,
and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with,
but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All
they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way
of night-gaunts.
[ The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, by H.P. Lovecraft ]
