Clay golem

' clay golem
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Claw 3d10

' clay golem
Difficulty	12
Attacks	Claw 3d10
Base level	11
Base experience	249
Speed	7
Base AC	7
Base MR	40
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	No
Weight	1550
Nutritional value	0
Size	Large
Resistances	sleep, poison
Resistances conveyed	None
A clay golem: does not breathe. is mindless. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. has a thick hide. does not eat. (*) is normally generated hostile. is strong. never leaves a corpse.
Reference	monst.c#line2245

A clay golem, ', is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is one of the stronger golems encountered in the dungeon, but is slightly weaker than the stone golem.

A clay golem that is subjected to cancellation, e.g. from the wand of cancellation or a gremlin attacking it, will be instantly destroyed - this includes you if you are polymorphed into a clay golem, and you are reverted back to your base form even if you have the unchanging property.

Generation

In addition to random generation, clay golems can generate as a result of polypiling if there are enough objects made of copper, silver, platinum, gemstone, or mineral in a given pile of items. Clay golems are always generated with 50 hit points.

Clay golems leave behind several rocks as a special death drop instead of a corpse.

Strategy

Clay golems hit decently hard, but are also very slow like many golems and are not too difficult to defeat if you can maintain your distance.

History

The clay golem first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.

Origin

The gōlem, originating from Jewish folklore, is an animate, anthropomorphic being usually created entirely from clay (or mud). One of the oldest Talmudic stories describes Adam as a golem, initially created when his mud (or "dust") was "kneaded into a shapeless husk" - similar tales and motifs of the creation of the first man and/or humankind from clay exist in several world religions and mythologies.

The most famous golem narrative, "The Golem of Prague", is generally believed to be a product of early 19th-century German literature: in the late 16th century, the rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel reportedly created a golem from clay gathered at the banks of the Vltava River, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks and pogroms. Golems in these and various other tales are inscribed with Hebrew words that animate them; one particular example is the word emét (אמת, "truth" in Hebrew), which could be used to deactivate the golem by removing the aleph (א) from the word, changing the inscription to mét (מת, "dead") - cancellation has this same effect on the clay golems of NetHack, destroying them instantly.

Clay golems appear in the early monster manuals of Dungeons & Dragons. In the 1st Edition, a clay golem can be created by a lawful good cleric of 17th or higher level through the use of several spells on a man-shaped clay statue; lower-level clerics additionally required a magical tome to do so. The clay golem is under the command of that cleric while animated - these golems were only vulnerable to blunt magical weapons and very specific (usually earth-based) spells. However, similar to some of the classic golem tales that inspired it, there is a 1% cumulative chance each round that the golem is imbued by a chaotic evil spirit, causing it to attack any and every living thing until it is destroyed.

Messages

Some writing vanishes from the clay golem's head!

A clay golem was hit with a cancellation spell, beam or attack - this instantly destroys it.

Some writing vanishes from your head!

You were polymorphed into a clay golem and hit with one of the above effects. This will return you to your original form, even with unchanging.

You have a strangely sad feeling for a moment, then it passes.

Your pet clay golem was canceled and destroyed by a gremlin.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, clay golems are always generated with 150 HP.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, the Chaos Temple variant of the Chaos Quest generates six clay golems within the exterior of the Temple of Chaos found in the 'past'.

Encyclopedia entry

It was a warm spring night when a fist knocked at the door so
hard that the hinges bent.
A man opened it and peered out into the street. There was
mist coming off the river and it was a cloudy night. He might
as well have tried to see through white velvet.
But he thought afterwards that there had been shapes out
there, just beyond the light spilling out into the road. A
lot of shapes, watching him carefully. He thought maybe
there'd been very faint points of light...
There was no mistaking the shape right in front of him,
though. It was big and dark red and looked like a child's
clay model of a man. Its eyes were two embers.

[ Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett ]