Shrieker

F shrieker
Difficulty	2
Attacks	None

F shrieker
Difficulty	2
Attacks	None
Base level	3
Base experience	28
Speed	1
Base AC	7
Base MR	0
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	100
Nutritional value	100
Size	Small
Resistances	Poison
Resistances conveyed	Poison (20%)
A shrieker: does not breathe. cannot pick up items. has no eyes. has no limbs. has no head. is mindless. does not eat. (*) is neither male nor female. is normally generated hostile.
Reference	monst.c#line1327

A shrieker, F, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The shrieker is a type of fungus that is one of the few monsters to lack an attack of any kind, including a passive attack (even those that trigger on death, as with the gas spore).

In lieu of attacking, a shrieker will shriek intermittently when adjacent to the hero or to a monster attacking them, which can aggravate and wake up monsters and interrupts any occupation: the shriek has an additional ¹⁄₁₀ chance of summoning a monster on the level, which has a ¹⁄₁₃ chance of being a purple worm and will otherwise be a random monster appropriate for the level. Shrieking does not use up a turn.

Eating a shrieker corpse or tin has a ¹⁄₅ chance (20%) of granting poison resistance.

Chatting with a shrieker will also cause it to shriek, which aggravates monsters but cannot summon any.

Purple worms will attack any shriekers they encounter, and a hero in the form of a purple worm is warned of shriekers.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Per commit cf1c7251, baby purple worms now appear in place of adult purple worms if a shrieker would summon the latter in an area where it is out of depth. Baby purple worms will also attack shriekers, and a hero in the form of a baby purple worm is also warned of shriekers.

Generation

Randomly generated shriekers are always created hostile.

Three shriekers are generated on the goal level of the Caveman quest at level creation.

Strategy

Shriekers are not an active threat on their own, though their shrieking can be inconvenient and wake up monsters that a hero wants to leave undisturbed, and introduces the low-but-possible chance that an out-of-depth purple worm will generate and cause YASD. Fortunately, shriekers are weak and move at minimum speed, so they are generally easy to take out before the possibility can come up. Ranged attacks of any kind can help remove the possibility of a shriek summoning or awakening an unwanted monster, and shrieker corpses are a decent source of poison resistance for early heroes.

The most dangerous shriekers are likely to be the ones that Cavepeople encounter on their quest, since they can potentially wake the Chromatic Dragon prematurely.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Monsters can gain intrinsics from eating corpses, so a shrieker can be useful for giving poison resistance to a pet pony (e.g. as a Knight).

Baby purple worms are much slower and less dangerous than their adult forms, and a cunning hero can take advantage of one being summoned to gain a lot of experience early on, or even tame and raise the baby worm into an adult.

History

The shrieker first appears in NetHack 3.1.0.

Origin

The shrieker originates from Dungeons & Dragons, where they debut in the 1st Edition Monster Manual. Shriekers are large and human-sized mushrooms that resemble violet fungi, but lack their poisons and tentacles, though they are immune to the fungi's poisons themselves; the 1st Edition material describes them as ambulatory, though later editions make them sessile. Shriekers are poisonous to most creatures as food, though they can be eaten by purple worms, hook horrors, shambling mounds, and medusae - this is the basis for the ability of shriekers in NetHack to summon purple worms, as well as the worm's ability to attack shriekers.

Shriekers live in dark underground environments such as the Underdark (the dwelling of the drow) and the homeworld of the illithids, and react to nearby motion or light with their namesake shriek. The sounds last between 5 and 15 seconds, and is meant to attract other beings to the area as prey: shriekers gain nourishment from breaking down nearby organic matter, and cannot attack on their own, so they are reliant on violet fungi to fatally poison the prey they attract. Inhabitants of the Underdark sometimes intentionally use shriekers as a form of intruder alarm.

The encyclopedia entry is an excerpt from a series of campaign writeups for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games done by Thomas Miller. In the excerpt, an adventuring duo attempts to infiltrate a lake-town inhabited by troglodytes; as the human huntress Songa walks past a tall, skinny mushroom-like fungus, it begins quivering before squealing loudly. Songa kills the shrieker, but not before the troglodytes had already begun swarming to their position. While escaping the troglodytes, Songa and her partner Rillen the human warrior-monk eventually encounter a massive black worm - the worm itself is described as being reminiscent of the purple worm species.

Messages

<The shrieker> shrieks.

You are not deaf and either chatted to a shrieker, or the shrieker got a turn while in melee range of an applicable target. This has gained a reputation as being one of the most memorable lines in NetHack.

You smell mushrooms.

A monster polymorphed into a shrieker.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, shriekers are given death resistance and have a ⁹⁄₁₀ chance of reviving from their corpses like other non-lichen fungi and molds. A shrieker has an overall 1.85% chance of generating from a corpse that reach 51 turns of age, is not acidic, and is not located within or on top of a square of water, ice or lava.

Shriekers can be generated in fungus farms.

The shrieker shares its shrieking ability with the squealer and mobat: it can no longer summon purple worms, but has a ¹⁄₈ chance of summoning a random monster.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, shriekers have a roughly 1% chance to grow from old corpses similar to SLASH'EM, and can revive from their own corpses.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, shriekers and other fungi and molds take extra damage from copper items, and similar to SLASH'EM they can grow from old corpses, though with much lower odds.

SpliceHack

In SpliceHack, shriekers and other fungi and molds take extra damage from copper items, and similar to SLASH'EM they can grow from old corpses. A shrieker can grow up into a screamer.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, tame monsters can gain intrinsics from eating corpses, so a shrieker can be useful for giving poison resistance to a pet pony or other herbivore.

SlashTHEM

In SlashTHEM, shriekers are slightly less likely to generate from old corpses due to the addition of some new fungi and molds. All other SLASH'EM details apply.

Hack'EM

In Hack'EM, shriekers and other fungi and molds take extra damage from copper items, and similar to SLASH'EM they can grow from old corpses. As in SpliceHack, a shrieker can grow up into a screamer.

Monsters eating corpses functions as in EvilHack, allowing the hero to feed shrieker corpses to applicable pets so they can potentially gain intrinsics.

Encyclopedia entry

With a single, savage thrust of her spear, the warrior-woman impaled the fungus, silencing it. However, it was too late: the alarm had been raised [...]
Suddenly, a large, dark shape rose from the abyss before them, its fetid bulk looming overhead...The monster was some kind of great dark worm, but that was about all they were sure of.

[ The Adventurers, Epic IV, by Thomas A. Miller ]