Tamash
| Religion in NetHack |
|---|
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, Tamash is the chaotic god of the Madperson pantheon.
Description
Tamash is a chaotic god of neutral holiness, and his minions consist of homunculi, Coure Eladrin, chaotic Angels, Warden Archons, and Caillea Eladrin. His crowning gift is The War-helm of the Dreaming, an artifact bird-like faceless helm that is chaotic, intelligent and favors Madpeople, and grants magical breathing and walking nightmares while worn. Invoking The War-helm of the Dreaming refills half of the hero's energy needed to reach their maximum, up to a cap of 400.
Origin
Tamash is a deity from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, where he first appears in the 1920 short story The Doom That Came to Sarnath. Tamash dwells on the mountain of Kadath along with Zo-Kalar, Lobon and the other "Great Ones", who are the dream-gods of Earth - he was one of the three chief gods of Sarnath (not to be confused with the historical Sarnath of India), which was founded by humans some ten thousand years ago.
Sarnath was a mighty city that stood by a lake in the remote land of Mnar; not long after its foundation, the people of Sarnath attacked the ancient city of Ib, home to non-human creatures known as the thuum'ha who were hideous but otherwise peaceful. They destroyed the city of Ib, killed all of its inhabitants, and took their idol of Bokrug - a strange god known as the "Great Water Lizard" - as a trophy to be placed in Sarnath's main temple. The next night, the idol mysteriously vanished, and the city's high-priest Taran-Ish was found dead, having scrawled a single word onto the empty altar before expiring: "DOOM".
Over the next thousand years, Sarnath prospered and grew in size, splendor and beauty, and became resplendent with palaces, gardens and temples of immense size; princes and kings alike traveled many miles to marvel at Sarnath's beauty and pay it homage. On the thousandth anniversary of the destruction of Ib, nobles from distant cities were invited to a feast; that night, however, the revelry was disrupted by strange lights over the lake and heavy greenish mists, and the tidal marker was mostly submerged. Soon, many of the visitors were maddened by fear and fled, with it being unclear what happened to those who stayed behind: some of the survivors that were even willing to say what they had seen reported seeing the long-dead thuum'ha peering from the windows of the city's towers, and all that remained of the city otherwise was empty marsh and the idol of Bokrug, which had suddenly reappeared - since then, the city was never re-settled.
