The Black Mother

The Black Mother, also called Shub-Nugganoth or the Black Goat, is a chaotic-aligned cult deity that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack.

Location

The Black Mother may be offered to at any mouth of the goat. These can be found randomly in garden special rooms, but two are guaranteed in the Lost Cities. One is found in the upper left room of the 6th level of the Lost Cities, with many goat spawn wandering around near it, on top of an altar to the Black Mother. Another is located in the bottom right on the 7th level, on a tile with a gain energy potion & 2 potions of full healing.

To actually see the mouths directly, you must have 60 insight. Otherwise, they will occasionally drip acidic spittle onto the floor, which can be perceived even with no insight. This is audible and visible from a distance as a 'viscous liquid dripping onto the floor'. If you can see the space the mouth occupies, it will be marked with a white I like an invisible monster. The messages can change depending on if there are monsters or the player standing on their space, but are unmistakable.

Sacrificing

The mouths of the goat will accept your sacrifices on behalf of the Mother. To offer to them, you must stand adjacent (if you can perceive the mouths directly) or more commonly on their square (if you can't perceive them), and #offer corpses. To join the cult formally, you must #offer corpses until you receive a holy symbol of the black mother (a tarnished triple goat-head when unidentified). This item serves as your connection to the goat, and has a 10% chance of being gifted for each corpse offered. After the first holy symbol is acquired, subsequent offerings without a holy symbol in open inventory have a 25% chance of a holy symbol being gifted. A mouth of a goat will attempt to eat any corpse that is dropped or offered within range, but a corpse eaten in this way only counts for cult favor if you carry a holy symbol in open inventory.

The Black Mother has unique rules for accepting offerings:

1. She does not eat her own minions. She will reject any goat spawn, any centaurs, any nymphs, any unicorns, any mi-go, dark young, blessed, swirling mists, dust/ice/thunder/fire storms, or mouths of the goats themselves. Attempting to sacrifice one intentionally, including killing them on a sacrifice-eligible square, will anger her and cause the sacrifice to revive adjacent to you.
2. Attempting to feed a Rider to her angers her and revives the corpse.
3. She will not eat the true Amulet of Yendor ("The Amulet proves inedible.") Cheap plastic imitations cannot be offered.
4. She WILL eat 'old' corpses, unlike other gods, but with minimal corpse value.
5. The Black Mother frowns upon same-race sacrificing with the same rules as normal sacrifice. However, no demons will ever be summoned as a result of the offering.

If the corpse has not been revived at this point, the sacrifice is accepted. This will earn favor, but anger any non-chaotic deities. Additionally, a successful sacrifice will pacify all of her minions (the same list as the rejected corpses) on the same level as you.

Burying a holy symbol, possibly via dropping it into a pit and covering it with a boulder, will begin a timer for 250+d250 turns. When the timer runs out, the floor will "boil to a black mist" and a hoofprint will be burned into on the floor. This summons a mouth of the goat at that spot, allowing you to continue your worship there.

The Black Mother's Boons

Every sacrifice increases your standing with the Black Mother in the form of favor, which is not reported to the player directly. You can consult the Black Mother by applying your holy symbol. If you have less than 50 favor, nothing happens and a message is printed. Otherwise, a menu of boons is displayed for you to select. When you have at least 50 favor (the minimum required to claim a minor boon), the mirror will appear as "glistening" — when you have enough devotion (lifetime favor) to claim a major boon, this will change to "drooling". Major boon eligibility is exclusively determined by devotion, and major boons do not actually cost significantly more favor than the minor boons. Note that even though some minor boons cost less than 50 favor, you must still have 50 favor to select any.

The base favor gained from a sacrifice to the Black Mother is equal to the monster's difficulty. This is modified by three factors: the amount of favor you currently have, whether you've partook in any of the Black Mother's mutagenic milk, and whether you're sacrificing at a mouth of the goat or if the sacrifice happened automatically via a drooling weapon. If you are sacrificing at a mouth of the goat, diminishing returns do not apply. Otherwise, the favor gained is equal to (value * 50)/(50 + current favor). If you previously drank from the Black Mother's milk, and have the goat-ridden madness as a result, the 50s are replaced with 100.

This means if you are sacrificing by directly offering corpses to a mouth, you do not need to worry about diminishing returns. However, if you have already claimed a drooling weapon and are using it to earn favor, you must spend all of your favor as fast as you can to continue earning more.

Making offerings to the Black Mother and receiving her boons does not break the atheism conduct.

If you are holding a holy symbol in open inventory, any time you kill a monster on an eligible sacrifice spot, they are considered sacrifices even if you didn't #offer the corpse.

List of minor boons

Boon	Cost	Description
Healing	25	You imbibe the milk of the Black Mother, which functions as a blessed full healing potion - with caveats. Drinking the milk will lower your sanity by 4d4 points, and permanently give you the goat-ridden madness.
Vitality	15	Cures sterility. If you are not sterile, instead acts as a blessed potion of restore ability (but without improving your sanity).
Blessing	10	Acts as if you had read an uncursed scroll of remove curse.
Fortune	20	Removes any negative luck, and then increases your luck by +3. If you are eligible for a major boon, your luck is increased by +7 instead.
Intervention	25	Temporarily summons up to 1d3 tame dark young minions of the Black Mother. They last for rnz(current favor) turns. If you are eligible for a major boon, you always summon 3.

List of major boons

This only becomes available once your devotion (lifetime total accumulated favor) reaches a specific level.

Boon	Cost	Description
Bite	25	Applies the acrid object property to the selected weapon, tool, or armor. This makes it deal +2d6 acid damage when used as a weapon.
Hunger	40	Applies the drooling object property to the selected weapon, tool, or armor, granting it special effects when used as a weapon.
Knowledge	40	Gifts you a slab containing the Red Word, teaching it to you upon reading.
Presence	40	Grants you the Presence of Shub-Nugganoth intrinsic, upgrading your explosive spells.
Mutate	50	Does not require lifetime devotion, but instead requires increasing amounts of mutagen (goat's milk) consumed.

Drooling object property

The drooling object property serves as the proof of a truly devout cultist. This property grants a significant offensive improvement for the item in question, but also feeds slain foes to the Black Mother.

Each turn, the bonus that a drooling item gains change, and the appearance changes to match the current bonus. The bonuses are:

• Drooling: Deals 2x acid damage
• Staring: Deals +1x damage as study on the target
• Lashing: Deals 2x pure poison damage and an additional 4d4 physical damage
• Stormwrapped: Picks a random elemental damage type and deals a variable amount of damage of that type. It has even odds of 3d10 fire damage, 3d8 cold damage, 3d8 shock damage, or 4d4 acid damage.

However, drooling weapons can also be a double edged sword. When a monster is killed by a drooling weapon and leaves a corpse, it will be automatically sacrificed to the Black Mother. This can build favor, but does suffer diminishing returns. It can also mollify the Black Mother if she is agnry - but can anger the Black Mother just as easily, if you accidentally kill a a minion of hers (or a Rider).

Red Word of Knowledge

The Red Word is one of the Words of Creation, but the knowledge drives the weak-willed. Learning the word by reading the slab has the following effects:

• Gives a permanent +2 to your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, surpassing racial maximums but not exceeding 25.
• Applies a passive bonus of +3 to your pet cap, on top of your Charisma bonus to pet cap
• Provides an active ability to speak the Red Word on an rnz(100) timeout. Priests receive a -20% discount to this timeout. Speaking the Word causes all monsters you can see to make an MR check (no bonuses from item class). On a fail they attempt to flee, are permanently crazed, and try to disrobe. Peaceful and tame monsters are still subject to the effects.

Madness & Mutations

Accepting the Goat's healing is double-edged similarly to the drooling property. Drinking goat's milk functions identically to a potion of full healing, but damages your sanity by 4d4 and gives you the goat-ridden madness when you first drink one. The Healing minor boon always has the effects of a blessed potion of milk, but actual goat's milk potions can be very rarely found if monsters die on a mouth of the goat without your intervention. Note that cursed potions, unlike cursed full healing, are spoiled - damaging you for 40 damage and giving you food poisoning.

If you have the goat-ridden madness, your brain occasionally sprouts writhing masses of tentacles. The madness can trigger when you have any hostile monsters adjacent to you, and you subsequently fail a sanity check. When the madness triggers:

• You lose 4d4 hp, scaled by your HP percentage (if you're at ¹⁄₂ of your maximum HP, you will take ¹⁄₂ of the rolled damage). This will always deal at least 1 damage to you, and can be lethal.
• You lose 4d4 hunger (scaled by your size, like normal hunger).
• You lose 4d4 sanity (if you're already below 50 sanity, you only lose 1)
• Horrific tentacles erupt from your head, dealing damage to all adjacent hostiles. Peaceful monsters are ignored, and anything that would petrify you on contact is also ignored. These tentacles deal 4d4 physical damage with a chance of applying strength-draining poison.

Having the goat-ridden madness does improve your diminishing returns from drooling property sacrifices, but has no effect on offerings made directly to mouths.

However, in addition to the other effects, each potion of goat's milk consumed (including Healing boons received) will count as a single instance of mutagen consumed. After consuming enough mutagen, you may spend favor to claim a mutation from the list of mutations. Mutations can not normally be claimed twice. The amount of mutagen needed for each mutation will increase with mutations taken, starting at 3 mutagen for your first two mutations and increasing by 1 for each mutation after. The available mutations are:

• Abhorrent Spore: Intrinsic lifesaving, but at the cost of permanently being polymorphed into a dark young (you gain intrinsic Unchanging). This mutation is lost when the lifesaving triggers, but can be repurchased if desired. This lifesaving also triggers after any other potential sources.
• Crawling Flesh: Improves your natural healing. Every turn, you have a 1/3 chance of making a madness check - if you fail (as in, you are sufficiently insane that the madness triggers) you regain 1 hit point. When below ¹⁄₂ maximum HP, you also have an insight-dependent chance (increasing at higher insight) to instantly heal back ¹⁄₂ of your maximum HP. This costs 40-400 nutrition (4d10*10) and can drive nearby monsters insane at the sight.
• Tendril Hair: Prevents mundane item theft attacks & gives you a minor bonus to resisting seduction attacks (both theft and extended seduction).
• Mindstealing tongue: Adds an extra melee tongue attack to your attack routine, which if successful can cause the target to lash out at an ally within reach (ala conflict).
• Radiance: Decreases your maximum HP by your missing Sanity, but increases your maximum energy by your missing Sanity. This is applied before diminishing returns from maximum HP bonus effects.
• Shifting Mind: Un-allocates all of your existing skill points. This mutation can be selected multiple times.
• Claws: Increase your unarmed die size multiplier by 1. For most characters, this will increase bare handed damage from 1d2 to 1d4, or martial arts damage from 1d4 to 1d8. This stacks additively, so a half-dragon character will go from 1d6 to 1d8, or 1d12 to 1d16.