Center of All

" Center of All
Difficulty	22
Attacks	Weapon 2d8 physical, Weapon 2d8 physical (24+ insight), Weapon 2d8 physical (32+ insight), Magic 0d6 mage spell (16+ insight), Arrow 1d1 loadstone

" Center of All
Difficulty	22
Attacks	Weapon 2d8 physical, Weapon 2d8 physical (24+ insight), Weapon 2d8 physical (32+ insight), Magic 0d6 mage spell (16+ insight), Arrow 1d1 loadstone
Base level	18
Base experience	616
Speed	15
Base AC	-8
Base MR	100
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	0 (Not randomly generated)
Genocidable	No
Weight	4500
Nutritional value	0
Size	large
Resistances	fire, cold, sleep, shock, poison, acid, petrification
Center of All: can survive underwater. does not breathe. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. has a thick hide. can see invisible creatures. is poisonous to eat. does not eat. (*) is not a valid polymorphable form. is male. is normally generated hostile. is strong. can pick up weapons and food. never leaves a corpse.

Center of All, ", is a monster that appears in dNetHack. He is a powerful unique Rilmani that guards the First Key of Neutrality.

Center of All is permanently invisible, and has nearly every form of resistance property available alongside magic resistance and reflection; like an iron golem, he is slowed by lightning and healed by fire attacks. Center of all always has a weapon attack and can throw cursed loadstones that deal d30 damage and have a ¹⁄₃ chance to add that loadstone to the target's inventory instead of it dropping to the floor.

Generation

Center of All's stats, hostility, and the overall likelihood of encountering him depend on the PC's insight.

Each turn, Center of All may decide to visit your current dungeon level: this will cause him to be generated if he has not been created yet, and otherwise he will depart his current level and arrive at your current level. With zero insight, the odds of this occurring are ¹⁄_10,000, becoming more frequent as your insight increases.

When first created, Center of All's hostility is determined as follows:

• If you are in the endgame or have accumulated 9 or more points of insight, he will be hostile.

• Otherwise, if you have not entered the Sum of All when Center of All is generated, he will be peaceful towards you.

Center of All is generated with armor and weapons similar to those of Aurumach Rilmani: his equipment consists of +0 large concordant gear, including a golden bardiche, leather armor, a golden war hat, a pair of low boots, leather gloves, and a robe.

Departure

Each turn, Center of All may decide to depart from your level if he is peaceful, you are too weak and lacking in insight, or you have been sufficiently weighed down with loadstones.

Other insight effects

While you have low insight, Center of All gains bonus AC and DR. As you gain insight, Center of All will gain additional attacks, but lose his bonus AC and DR - these extra attacks are noted in the stat block above.

Strategy

Center of All can easily surprise players who do not have the ability to see invisible, and its access to the Aurumach Rilmani spell list can be quite lethal for characters without the proper resistances. The concordant property on Center of All's armor doubles that item's DR when hit by a non-neutral monster, but halves DR versus neutral monsters.

Though Center of All is slow, he can still deal serious damage in melee and with his thrown loadstones, which can quickly weigh down and immobilize you.

Origin

The encyclopedia entry originates from a post in the Planescape Haiku thread on Planewalker, an old official fansite for the Planescape setting of Dungeons & Dragons; the haiku is titled "Center of All".

Encyclopedia entry

Compass all the planes,
and yet you will never find
creation's heart
[ riff on a Planescape Haiku, originally by Ecco-Mono ]