Houchou
( Houchou | |
---|---|
Base item | spoon |
Affiliation | chaotic |
When carried | (none) |
When wielded | instakill |
When invoked | (none) |
Base price | 50000 zm |
Weight | 1 |
Houchou is a chaotic-aligned artifact spoon in SLASH'EM. It is thrown at a target, and if it hits, it instakills the victim. There is no defense against Houchou, but if it hits a target, the tool itself is always destroyed in the process.
Save Houchou for a dangerous or difficult opponent. (Or, alternatively, ascend with it. With a price of 50000, it equals to about 28 dilithium crystals in score points.)
If thrown upwards, Houchou will kill you. Monsters will not throw Houchou, as they are not programmed to throw (weapon-)tools.
Origin
"Houchou" - both long o sounds - is Japanese for "kitchen knife" (包丁).
In the Japanese RPG Final Fantasy IV, there was a kitchen knife that could be thrown to instantly kill or severely damage almost any monster. At the time of the first English localization, Nintendo of America was well known for having an absurdly draconian and strongly anti-violence censorship policy; many, many localized games had to be sanitized first, at the expense of the developer, and of course adherence to Nintendo's policies superseded all other concerns, including logic and reason. The Houchou item in Final Fantasy IV was renamed "Spoon," though its effect when used - instant, violent death - was paradoxically, and humorously, maintained. It is thus that SLASH'EM's Houchou is a spoon.
Variants
In variants with both Houchou and Cthulhu, Houchou should definitely be saved for him.