Kathryn the Ice Queen
Kathryn the Ice Queen, @, is the boss of the Ice Queen's Realm branch in EvilHack. She is a powerful sorceress under an evil curse, and cannot truly be killed - upon her defeat, the curse is lifted and she becomes the much more powerful Kathryn the Enchantress, @, and also turns peaceful. Kathryn is unaligned in her Ice Queen form and lawful in her Enchantress form, and cannot be tamed or genocided in either form.
Descriptions
| @ Kathryn the Ice Queen File:Kathryn the Ice Queen.png | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 36 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 3d4, Touch 8d8 cold, Spell-casting 3d8 (clerical), Spell-casting 3d8 |
| Base level | 32 |
| Base experience | 1561 |
| Speed | 15 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 80 |
| Alignment | A_NONE |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | petrification, sleep, cold |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
Kathryn the Ice Queen:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack - monst.c, line 3123 |
Generation
Kathryn the Ice Queen is always found inside her castle on the third and final floor of the branch, and resides within the left inner chambers. She will always generate hostile, and is guarded by Bourbon and Ozzy; they generate peaceful, but will become hostile and protect her once she is attacked.
Kathryn the Ice Queen's monster starting inventory includes: an enchanted, erosion-proofed athame of frost, a pair of gloves, a pair of high boots, an amulet of reflection, a ring of slow digestion, and one of either a cloak of magic resistance or a cloak of displacement. If encountered on her birthday, she will additionally generate with roughly 4 times her usual HP and a potion of full healing.
Strategy
In addition to ascension-level gear, the Ice Queen has the full range of monster spells to cast at her disposal, with her spellcasting geared towards a cold-based offense; this includes temporarily weakening the player's resistances, including to cold in particular. In short, cold resistance is especially important here (as well as for the branch overall), along with acid resistance to blunt the worst damage from her acid blast spells.
| @ Kathryn the Enchantress File:Kathryn the Enchantress.png | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 104 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 10d10, Spell-casting 10d10 (clerical), Spell-casting 10d10 |
| Base level | 47 |
| Base experience | 2856 |
| Speed | 9 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 100 |
| Alignment | 15 (lawful) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | petrification, sleep, cold, fire, electricity, poison, acid, disintegration, psychic |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
Kathryn the Enchantress:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack - monst.c, line 3136 |
Generation
Kathryn the Enchantress always appears after her Ice Queen form is defeated, and will be generated peaceful unless you are an Infidel. She retains whatever inventory she still possessed in her previous form.
Strategy
In this form, Kathryn has almost every resistance available in the game, alongside attacks and spells that can easily cleave through most of an ascension-worthy character's full healing, nurse dance-bolstered HP. As such, she is orders of magnitude more difficult than any other monster in the game, and is considered impossible to defeat in normal play; even if somehow defeated, she will immediately resurrect at full HP.
Due to her generation method, she is not typically a threat and setting her off is easily avoidable with careful play. However, she does not like Infidels in the slightest: if you defeat her previous form as an Infidel, you will free her from the curse as normal, but this incurs a -2 alignment penalty and she will remain hostile. She will then stand in place for 75 turns, and will attack you if you have not left in that time frame - you should have just enough time to loot the crystal chests, free and saddle the trapped pegasus, and beeline for the stairs before you risk meeting with certain death.
Origin
Kathryn is the daughter of EvilHack's developer, and her companions Bourbon and Ozzy are based on the family's German Shepherd dogs. The Ice Queen is loosely based off of Elsa from the movie Frozen, who was Kathryn's favorite movie character at the time (she was seven years old when work began on the Ice Queen branch), and had watched the movie with her father so many times, the number is too large to be represented here. As implied by the encyclopedia entry, she is also somewhat based on the White Witch from the Chronicles of Narnia books by C. S. Lewis.
Encyclopedia Entry
"The White Witch? Who is she?"
"Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb.
It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and
never Christmas; think of that!"
"How awful!" said Lucy.
Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches
of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees
shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked,
instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the
black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms.
Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared
away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on
to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky
between the tree tops.
[ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
by C.S. Lewis ]
