Altar

Introduction

An altar, represented by an underscore _, is a place where you may worship gods. Altars are either lawful, neutral, or chaotic. An altar with a priest in the same room is a temple.

Altars are located in temples or scattered randomly throughout the dungeons. The Valley of the Dead has an unaligned altar located in the temple of Moloch. Minetown is also guaranteed to have a temple altar.

Altars can be used to detect the BUC status of items. This is done by dropping the item onto the altar. A dark glow marks a cursed item and an amber glow a blessed one. You can not detect the BUC status if you are blind or hallucinating.

Sacrificing corpses

Altars of any alignment other than your own can be converted by #offering a fresh corpse to the gods. If you are lucky, the power of your god increases and the altar is converted. If you are unlucky, the altar may resist, or you might be converted to another alignment yourself. Trying to convert the altar in a temple will anger the priest.

You have to touch the corpses you are offering. This means that if you are going to sacrifice cockatrice corpses, you must be wearing gloves.

The tougher the monster you offer the more your god will appreciate it.

Sacrificing your own race

It is considered bad for a human or an elf to sacrifice corpses of their own race. Doing so will cause wisdom, luck, and alignment to be abused. However, chaotic characters can do this safely. Doing so will cause a peaceful demon lord to be summoned while luck and alignment are exercised.

Sacrificing unicorns

Sacrificing Unicorns is tricky because the altars alignment, your alignment, and the unicorns alignment all factor into the outcome. A unicorns alignment is represented by its color. The white is lawful, grey neutral, and black chaotic. The points to remember are:

• Never sacrifice a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment.
• Never sacrifice a unicorn of your alignment.

The rest of the effects are summarized in the following tables:

You are Lawful

	Lawful Altar	Neutral Altar	Chaotic Altar
White Unicorn	bad	you become neutral	you become chaotic
Grey Unicorn	good	bad	altar becomes lawful
Black Unicorn	good	altar becomes lawful	bad

You are Neutral

	Lawful Altar	Neutral Altar	Chaotic Altar
White Unicorn	bad	good	altar becomes neutral
Grey Unicorn	you become lawful	bad	you become chaotic
Black Unicorn	altar becomes neutral	good	bad

You are Chaotic

	Lawful Altar	Neutral Altar	Chaotic Altar
White Unicorn	bad	altar becomes chaotic	good
Grey Unicorn	altar becomes chaotic	bad	good
Black Unicorn	you become lawful	you become neutral	bad

Praying

If you drop a potion of water or several potions of water onto the altar and #pray, the potions are blessed once if the altar was aligned with you and cursed once if the altar was not aligned with you. For example, on an altar aligned with you, a cursed potion of water (unholy water) becomes an uncursed potion of water, and an uncursed potion of water becomes a blessed potion of water (holy water). On a cross-aligned altar the effects are reversed.

Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars. If you pray too often your God will become angry and you shift your alignment status.

Praying on an altar may also make your god reward you by fixing your problems, such as lycanthropy, or with a spellbook, an artifact or an intrinsic. Praying on the altar of some other god will anger your god, decrease your luck, and you might be punished in some other way.