Homunculus
i homunculus 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 3 |
| Attacks |
Bite 1d3 sleep |
| Base level | 2 |
| Base experience | 19 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 6 |
| Base MR | 10 |
| Alignment | -7 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 60 |
| Nutritional value | 100 |
| Size | Tiny |
| Resistances | sleep, poison |
| Resistances conveyed |
poison (7%), sleep (7%) |
|
A homunculus:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line504 |
A homunculus, i, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It is one of the earliest minor demons that you may encounter, as well as one of the earliest flying monsters. Homunculi can move as fast as an unburdened and unhasted player, and their tiny size lets them fit through iron bars.
A homunculus corpse is poisonous and has a small chance of conveying poison or sleep resistance.
Contents
Generation
Homunculi can generate as early as the second or third floor, and often generate as peaceful for chaotic characters.
Breaking an expensive camera has a 2⁄9 chance of creating a homunculus; the homunculus will be peaceful unless the camera was cursed.[1]
Strategy
Homunculi are a fairly hazardous monster to meet early on - while their sole bite attack is not as dangerous as the floating eye's gaze, it can put unwary adventurers to sleep. Thankfully, they are not particularly strong and can be brought down fairly quickly. Cautious players can use whatever ranged attacks they have at their disposal or the assistance of a pet; wand charges can usually be saved for much tougher enemies unless the situation is dire. Sleep resistance makes it much safer to fight homunculi hand-to-hand; roles and races that start with or obtain early poison resistance can safely eat the corpse for a potential source.
History
The homunculus first appears in the bestiary of "Hack for PDP-11", an early variant of Jay Fenlason's Hack based on a leaked early draft of Hack 1.0 by Andries Brouwer.
Homunculi were represented by the h glyph until NetHack 3.0.0, where they would be made part of the minor demon class (represented by i).
Origin
The homunculus is a folkloric artificial being that is created in the shape of a miniature fully-formed human, and is often heavily associated with the practice of alchemy. They first appear in sixteenth-century writings attributed to German alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus, and have been compared to the golem of Jewish folklore and the mandrake, whose roots often resemble the human figure in shape - these were also related to each other through the theme of "man as divine".
The homunculus also figures into the theory of preformationism, which posties that humans and other animals developed from miniature versions of themselves into fully formed beings - it was later used in discussions of conception and birth as human understanding of reproduction developed. The homunculus also lends its name to the modern cortical homunculus, a distorted miniature scale model of the human body that represents the relative space each part occupies in the brain.
The idea of a homunculus inhabiting a camera is derived from the Discworld novel "The Color of Magic", which reveals that the iconoscope (the Discworld equivalent of a camera) contains a "picture-painting demon".
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, the homunculus hits as a +1 weapon.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, the lesser homunculus and greater homunculus are introduced, with the homunculus being an intermediate growth stage between them; the Infidel role will always start with a pet lesser homunculus.
Encyclopedia entry
A homunculus is a creature summoned by a mage to perform some particular task. They are particularly good at spying. They are smallish creatures, but very agile. They can put their victims to sleep with a venomous bite, but due to their size, the effect does not last long on humans.
"Tothapis cut him off. 'Be still and hearken. You will travel aboard the sacred wingboat. Of it you may not have heard; but it will bear you thither in a night and a day and a night. With you will go a homunculus that can relay your words to me, and mine to you, across the leagues between at the speed of thought.'"
