Stranger
The Stranger, @, is a unique monster that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. It is a powerful human-shaped insight monster that normally only appears in the Madman quest: Once a Madperson finds their quest artifact, The Star of Hypernotus, the Stranger will begin harassing them from that point on until they gain enough insight to perceive it directly, at which point it will attack in earnest.
The Stranger is a strong, omnivorous humanoid that is amphibious, breathless and lacks eyes; it can be seen via infravision, can see invisible, will pick up magical items and other objects that it comes across, and is an overlord to its kind. The Stranger is covetous and capable of warping, and desires the invocation items, the quest artifact of the hero's role, and the Amulet of Yendor.
The Stranger has six attacks: two strong weapon attacks, a claw attack that can steal quest artifacts, a second claw attack that can steal the Amulet of Yendor, and two monster spells cast clerically during each of his turns. The Stranger also exhibits other complex behaviors that are described in detail below.
Contents
Generation
The Stranger is generated awake atop the square containing the quest artifact, but will immediately vanish from perception due to the mechanics of the insight system—unlike most quest nemeses, it can appear in bones files as well.
The Stranger always generates with a yellow +5 shepherd's crook, a yellow +5 self-cursing magic-resistant leather robe, and a gold amulet of wound closure with the Yellow Sign ward. If the Stranger is first created under normal circumstances for an elven Madperson, it will also generate with the Star-Emperor's Ring.
The Stranger does not leave a corpse upon death.
The Stranger's stalking
While it is normally invisible to a hero without sufficient insight, the Stranger will continually harass them once it becomes aware of their presence. The Stranger can perform the following actions depending on the hero's insight and the current stage of harassment:
- If the Stranger is dormant, it cannot cross pools of water or other impassible terrain (i.e., any terrain that would block a wand zap).
- If the Stranger becomes active - either from a Madperson touching their quest artifact, or from a hero of another role finding a bones level where the Stranger is present - a 'harassment' counter will begin running, starting from an initial value ranging between 500-555 inclusively. In this state, it has a 1⁄5 chance of moving through water or otherwise-impassible terrain. Once the Stranger is standing on a normally impassible square, other such squares will no longer block its path.
- The harassment counter will decrement by 1 "tick" for each game turn that the Stranger is on the hero's current level; while it is on the same level, monsters killed by the hero that leave behind corpses are likely to revive as fulvous undead. If the Stranger is not visible and would be occupying the hero's square, the counter decrements by an additional 4 "ticks", for a total of 5 per turn that it is on the hero's square.
- If the Stranger would occupy the hero's square in either state, it will perform a studying gaze that increases the hero's study counter by 1d5, with a cap of 5 total study from this gaze.
- If the Stranger is on the same level as the hero in either state, but the hero does not have the required insight to see it and it is not on their square, it will move one step closer to the hero in a straight line.
- If the Stranger is active and in a separate dungeon branch from the hero, it has a 1⁄555 chance of moving to the hero's current branch - the Stranger will remain at its current depth in the new branch rather than moving to the hero's level, making it likely that it will not show up immediately.
- If the Stranger is active and in the same dungeon branch, but not on the hero's level, it has a 1⁄55 chance of moving one dungeon level closer to the hero.
- If the Stranger is on the hero's level and they have 55 insight or more, it finally becomes visible and appears near them in a manner similar to the Wizard of Yendor.
Intervention
The Stranger's "intervention" will occur once the harassment counter reaches zero, and produces one of five effects:
- The hero will "feel vaguely nervous" as with the Wizard of Yendor, and nothing happens.
- The hero is blinded for 50-55 rounds, and "yellow nasties" are generated around you.
- An aggravate effect occurs: All monsters on the level are awakened, unscared and unparalyzed.
- The hero is subjected to a curse items effect.
- If there is a hostile monster that can see the hero on the level, yellow smiting occurs:
- The hero is punished. If they are already punished when this effect occurs, their heavy iron ball has its weight increased.
- The hero is afflicted with illness.
- The drain life spell is cast at the hero, as if from the chosen monster.
- The hero takes 10d5 damage - this cannot kill them, and will always leave them with at least 5 HP.
- The hero is confused, stunned, and begins hallucinating.
- An effect similar to a touch of death occurs: If the hero is under 100 HP, they die instantly, and otherwise they take 8d8 damage, or only 8 damage if they have magic resistance.
- All hostile monsters on the level are given +5 encouragement.
- The poison gas spell is cast as if from that monster.
- The acid rain spell is cast as if from that monster.
- The fire pillar spell is cast as if from that monster.
- The ice storm spell is cast as if from that monster.
The yellow smiting has an equal chance of applying each effect, and after one occurs the chosen hostile monster's level increases by 1, as if it had quaffed a potion of gain level. Once an effect is applied, the harassment counter will reset to a random value from 500-555 inclusively.
Yellow nasties
When "yellow nasties" are generated by the Stranger's harassment or yellow dead spell, an amount of hostile monsters is generated up to 1⁄3 of the hero's current experience level. All monsters will be created at a minimum of level 15, are created next to the hero unless specified otherwise, and are chosen from the list below with an equal probability of each choice:
- B byakhee
- b Coiling brawn
- F Fungal brain, generated randomly on the level
- Z Skeleton
- Either a @ star-elf if the hero is elven, or a @ human otherwise; in both cases, the monster will be created with the dream-leech template
- Either a @ madman or madwoman with the fulvous template
- w Purple worm with the finger template
- w Long worm with the finger template, generated randomly on the level
- W Flaxen starshadow
- @ Bard with the fulvous template
- n Carcosan courtier
Strategy
A Madman does not need to face the Stranger immediately upon retrieving the Star, and it is highly unwise to do so besides: the Stranger has very high damage potential, and its spell repertoire includes various mummy curses, particularly effects that can wipe out your luck, curse items, or even shred your current HP by 2⁄3 and cause you to lose turns by screaming. The ideal approach is to find a way to manage the Stranger's dangers as it stalks the hero throughout the next phase of the game, all the while preparing for when they gain enough insight to directly confront the Stranger and defeat it for good.
Fighting the Stranger
It is best to have a source of teleport control, cursed potions of gain level and/or other escape items ready so you can flee quickly in the event a fight against the Stranger goes off the rails - be sure to make a backup stash in the event you are cut off from your main one. Any armor made yellow by the spell typically cannot be made a different color without transmuting the object's material - a player that reaches 55 insight should ideally have enough resources to swap out cloaks if needed.
Though the yellowing/straitjacket effect of the Stranger's incarcerate monster spell can be potentially game-ruining, it has an effective 1⁄27 chance of occurring per casting: it will take at least five castings of the spell (if not several more) for the Stranger to stick a straitjacket onto a hero that was fully equipped with non-yellow gear prior to the fight. A sufficiently-prepared hero should be able to escape and make it to a cache of replacement armor in the absolute worst case.
Another major obstacle for the fight is the Stranger casting summon alien: the spell can generate armor-shredding bebeliths, level-draining hounds of Tindalos, suction-happy shoggoths, any of the randomized horrors, or even uvuudaums. Somewhat mercifully, uvuudaums will quickly become peaceful, provided you are not yet a demigod or else inside the Anachrononaut quest branch - unfortunately, even a turn or two of hostility may be all an adjacent uvuudaum needs to completely tear through a hero capable of reaching the Elemental Planes. Be prepared to bail out with the aforementioned escape items if any of the above monsters are summoned or else turn the fight against you, and avoid using explosive attacks near uvuudaums in particular.
Spellcasting
The Stranger's full list of available monster spells is as follows:
- Incarcerate - This spell is unique to the Stranger and has a 1⁄3 chance of punishing you, and will otherwise affect your equipment based on what you have worn:
- If you are not wearing any body armor, but can wear armor that fits a humanoid torso, a cursed straitjacket is forced onto you; if you are wearing a straitjacket already, that object is cursed.
- Otherwise, if neither occurs (e.g., you are already wearing a cursed straitjacket) a random piece of worn armor is selected: if the selected armor is not a cursed straitjacket, then it is turned yellow, signified by its glyph becoming yellow as well, and the material of metallic armor is transmuted to gold if possible; artifacts resist 19⁄20 of the time, and all other items resist 11⁄20 of the time. If a yellow piece of armor is selected this way, it is instead stolen and warped directly into the Stranger's inventory.
- If somehow no armor is turned yellow or stolen by this point, the player is instead punished.
- Summon alien - Generates a hostile alien monster near you.
- Plague
- Earthquake
- One of either geyser or acid rain
- One of either fire pillar or ice storm
- Lightning
- Drain life
- Mummy curses:
- You take 1 HP of damage per level of the Stranger, i.e. usually around 60 HP, with a cap of no more than half your current HP rounded down (which will always leave you with at least 1 HP).
- You lose 26 points of Luck, likely setting it to -10.
- Your items are cursed or unblessed similar to the curse items monster spell.
- Your bonus to maximum HP is reduced to the minimum of your current bonus to maximum HP minus 25 or half your current bonus HP, and your maximum HP is recalculated (which will reduce your maximum HP by an unpredictable, but often quite large, amount) - your current HP is then set to 1⁄3 of its current value plus one, which cannot kill you. You are also made to scream for 2 (more) rounds.
- Yellow dead - This spell is also unique to the Stranger and either generates yellow nasties as with the harassment effect, or else raises the dead and generates fulvous undead monsters rather than zombies. It is also the only summon spell that ignores the maximum of one summon spell being allowed per global turn (or round).
- Nightmare
- Vulnerability
- Stun
- Open wounds
- Cure self - This has four times the probability of the Stranger's other spells.
Origin
The Stranger originates from The King in Yellow, a book of short stories by American writer Robert W. Chambers that was first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895—the British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895, and consists of 316 pages. The book contains nine short stories and a sequence of poems: while the first stories belong to the genres of supernatural horror and weird fiction, The King in Yellow progressively transitions towards a more light-hearted tone, ending with romantic stories devoid of horror or supernatural elements. The book itself is named for the eponymous fictional play, which recurs as a motif within the first four stories, and is a forbidden play which induces madness in those who read it.
The fictional play is known to have at least two acts and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla and "the Stranger", who may or may not be the titular King in Yellow. The short story "The Mask" is introduced by an excerpt from Act 1, Scene 2d, which serves as the Stranger's encyclopedia entry, and depicts the character with a seemingly-masked face; when Cassilda and Camilla ask the Stranger to unmask, they respond that they do not wear a mask, inducing terror in Camilla. This portrayal is the basis for the monster in dNetHack and its variants, who is similarly eyeless and pursues the hero through supernatural means.
Messages
- You feel a stranger's gaze on your back!
- The Stranger used its studying gaze on you.
- You are momentarily blinded by a flash of lemony light!
- The Stranger used its blinding, nasty-summoning effect.
- You notice a yellow glow surrounding you.
- The Stranger used its curse items effect.
- You glimpse <the five flaxen sisters/five amber stars> over <monster>'s <head>!
- The Stranger is smiting you. Depending on the effect, it may be followed by one of the below messages:
Yellow smiting
- You are afflicted with jaundice!
- The Stranger's smiting caused illness.
- You hear menacing laughter as the world blurs around you...
- The Stranger's smiting caused confusion, stunning and hallucination.
- You feel a yellow death descend upon you!
- The Stranger's smiting attempted to kill you.
Encyclopedia entry
Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda) No mask? No mask!
[ The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers ]
