God

Religion in NetHack
priests alignment alignment record altars atheism anger gods sacrifice prayer turn undead

This article is about NetHack's deities. For the item known as “GoD”, see gauntlets of dexterity.

A god is lawful, neutral, chaotic, or unaligned. In every NetHack game, the role of your adventurer determines the pantheon of gods that the game uses. Each role's pantheon contains one lawful, one neutral, and one chaotic god; your task is to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor for the god of your alignment. To ascend (win the game) you must sacrifice the amulet at your god's high altar. You can sometimes #pray to your god in times of need.

The unaligned god is always Moloch, who holds dominion over prayers and altars in Gehennom. Marduk is described in the introductory text as the Creator, from whom Moloch stole the Amulet of Yendor. Elbereth is the name of an elf-goddess that can be #engraved to frighten most monsters, but not humans or elves.

An atheist character does not believe in gods, and thus tries to avoid actions directly involving religion.

	Lawful	Neutral	Chaotic
Archeologist	Quetzalcoatl	Camaxtli	Huhetotl
Barbarian	Mitra	Crom	Set
Caveman	Anu	Ishtar	Anshar
Healer	Athena	Hermes	Poseidon
Knight	Lugh	Brigit	Manannan Mac Lir
Monk	Shan Lai Ching	Chih Sung-tzu	Huan Ti
Priest	random	random	random
Ranger	Mercury	Venus	Mars
Rogue	Issek	Mog	Kos
Samurai	Amaterasu Omikami	Raijin	Susanowo
Tourist	Blind Io	The Lady	Offler
Valkyrie	Tyr	Odin	Loki
Wizard	Ptah	Thoth	Anhur

The pantheon for a priest(ess) is randomly selected from another single role; if a priest's lawful god is Blind Io, the neutral god is always going to be The Lady.

Mythology

The NetHack pantheons (and related quests) for each role are derived from a mix of real-world and fictional sources:

• Archeologist: Aztec mythology
• Barbarian: Robert E. Howard's Conan works of fiction
• Caveman: Mesopotamian mythology
• Healer: Greek mythology
• Knight: Celtic mythology
• Monk: Chinese mythology
• Ranger: Roman mythology
• Rogue: Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser works of fiction
• Samurai: Japanese mythology
• Tourist: Terry Pratchett's Discworld works of fiction
• Valkyrie: Norse mythology
• Wizard: Egyptian mythology

Other deities

• Marduk: Babylonian mythology
• Moloch: The Bible, Dante's Inferno, D&D (among others)
• Elbereth: J.R.R. Tolkien's works of fiction

Encyclopaedia entry

Goddesses and Gods operate in ones, threesomes, or whole
pantheons of nine or more (see Religion).  Most of them claim
to have made the world, and this is indeed a likely claim in
the case of threesomes or pantheons:  Fantasyland does have
the air of having been made by a committee.  But all Goddesses
and Gods, whether they say they made the world or not, have
very detailed short-term plans for it which they are determined
to carry out.  Consequently they tend to push people into the
required actions by the use of coincidence or Prophecy, or just
by narrowing down your available choices of what to do next:
if a deity is pushing you, things will go miserably badly until
there is only one choice left to you.
[ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones ]