Dirge

)   Dirge
Base item	long sword
Damage vs. small	1d8 x2
Damage vs. large	1d12 x2
To-hit bonus	+1d5
Bonus versus	not poison resistant
Weapon skill	long sword
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	chaotic
When carried	(none)
When wielded	drain resistance
When invoked	(none)
Base price	3000 zm
Weight	40
Material	iron

Dirge is an intelligent artifact weapon that appears in SporkHack, EvilHack and Hack'EM. It is chaotic-aligned, and its base item is a long sword.

Generation

Chaotic knights who sacrifice a member of their own race on a chaotic altar while wielding a long sword will have it turned into Dirge. It can also be given to chaotic characters as a sacrifice gift.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, the sword a chaotic Knight uses to create Dirge can be a normal long sword, elven long sword, or orcish long sword - it will always be converted to a normal mithril long sword with all object properties will be removed, and the sword will be blessed, repaired, and erodeproofed, with its enchantment set to +0 if it was negative. The character must also be in good standing (alignment record above 0 and deity not angry) and permanently chaotic - a helm of opposite alignment will not work.

Description

Sporkhack

Dirge has +5 to-hit and is permanently poisoned: it deals an extra 1d6 of damage as all poisoned weapons do, but also doubles the base and enchantment damage against non-poison resistant monsters, resulting in incredible amounts of damage versus the right targets.

Average damage calculation

The average damage calculations in the following table do not include bonuses from weapon skills, strength, or from using a blessed weapon against undead or demons. It also does not include the ¹⁄₁₀ chance of instantly killing non-poison resistant monsters.

When fully enchanted, to non-poison resistant creatures it deals almost as much damage as a fully enchanted Graywswandir versus silver-hating creatures.

Weapon	Poison-resistant		Not poison-resistant
	Small monster	Large monster	Small monster	Large monster
+0 Dirge	$\frac{1+8}{2}=\bold{4.5}$	$\frac{1+12}{2}=\bold{6.5}$	$\left (\frac{1+8}{2} \right )\times 2+3.5=\bold{12.5}$	$\left (\frac{1+12}{2} \right )\times 2+3.5=\bold{16.5}$
+7 Dirge	$\frac{1+8}{2}+7=\bold{11.5}$	$\frac{1+12}{2}+7=\bold{13.5}$	$\left (\frac{1+8}{2}+7\right )\times 2+3.5=\bold{26.5}$	$\left (\frac{1+12}{2}+7\right )\times 2+3.5=\bold{30.5}$

EvilHack

In EvilHack, Dirge is now acidic instead of poisonous, and is made of mithril. It trades the ability to instantly kill monsters for the ability to deal double acid damage versus non-acid resistant monsters, and also grants acid resistance when wielded.