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

You can #offer fresh corpses to your god by sacrificing them on an altar. The tougher the monster, the more your god will appreciate it. You can check the experience level of a monster by using a stethoscope on it. Since you have to touch the offering you must be wearing gloves when sacrificing cockatrice corpses. Additionally, sacrificing will give you an indication of your current prayer timeout.

If you are lucky, sacrificing on an altar of any alignment other than your own converts the altar and the power of your god increases. If you are unlucky, the altar may resist, or you might be converted to the altars alignment yourself. Trying to convert the altar in a temple will anger the priest. Altars in Gehennom are unaligned and cannot be converted. Other unaligned altars in the game, found on some quests, however, can be converted.

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

Deduce prayer timeouts from sacrifice

Message	Reason
"You have a hopeful feeling."	You may not pray yet because your prayer timeout hasn't expired.
"You have a feeling of reconciliation."	You may pray because your sacrifice reduced your prayer timeout to zero.
"You glimpse a four-leaf clover at your feet." or no messages other than "Your sacrifice is consumed..."	You may pray.
"An object appears at your feet!"	You may not pray because you received a gift and your prayer timeout has been increased.
"<god> seems slightly mollified."	You may not pray. Your god's anger has been reduced but it is not yet zero.
"<god> seems mollified."	You may pray because your god's anger has been reduced to zero.
"You feel partially absolved."	You may not pray because your alignment was negative, and has been increased, but not necessarily to zero. Sacrifice again to find if it's safe to pray.

Praying on an altar

If you drop a potion of water or several potions of water onto an 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). Praying on a cross-aligned altar reverses the effects. However this will anger your god, decrease your luck, and you might be punished in some other way.

Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars.