Houchou

(   Houchou
Base item	spoon
Affiliation	chaotic
When carried	(none)
When wielded	instakill
When invoked	(none)
Base price	50000 zm
Weight	1

Houchou (actually pronounced hōchō, both long o sounds) is a chaotic-aligned artifact spoon in SLASH'EM. It is thrown at a target, and if it hits, it instakills the victim. There is no defense against Houchou, but if it hits a target, the tool itself is always destroyed in the process.

Save Houchou for a dangerous or difficult opponent. (Or, alternatively, ascend with it. With a price of 50000, it equals to about 28 dilithium crystals in score points.)

If thrown upwards, Houchou will kill YOU.

Origin

"Houchou" is Japanese for "kitchen knife"(包丁). The spelling and pronunciation follows the most frequent romanization rules for Japanese.

In the Japanese RPG Final Fantasy IV, there was a kitchen knife that could be thrown to instantly kill or severely damage almost any monster. In the original English localization, it was censored to a spoon, hence the item being a spoon in SLASH'EM.

Variants

In variants with both Houchou and Cthulhu, Houchou should definitely be saved for him.