Mail daemon

& mail daemon
Difficulty	26
Attacks	None

& mail daemon
Difficulty	26
Attacks	None
Base level	25
Base experience	1
Speed	10
Base AC	10
Base MR	127
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	Not randomly generated
Genocidable	No
Weight	600
Nutritional value	300
Size	Medium
Resistances	Fire, Cold, Shock, Sleep, Poison, Stoning
Resistances conveyed	None
A mail daemon: can fly. can swim. does not breathe. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. can see invisible creatures. is poisonous to eat. does not eat. (*) is not a valid polymorphable form. is normally generated peaceful. can follow you to other levels. has infravision. can be seen through infravision. never leaves a corpse.
Reference	monst.c#line2773

The mail daemon is ostensibly a monster in NetHack, but has extremely peculiar properties and appears rarely. Its primary function, as its name suggests, is to deliver mail to the player.

When an item of mail needs to be delivered the daemon is placed on a square just out of sight of the player, rushes over to the location of the player (pushing anything in its path temporarily out of its way, exclaiming "Gangway!", "Pardon me!", "Excuse me!", etc.), hands the scroll to the player ("<Hello>, <player>! I have some mail for you." - it will "throw" the scroll to the player with an exclamation of "Catch!" if it can't maneuver next to the player for some reason), rush back to its starting square, and disappear. This all takes place within the space of one turn.

It is possible to create a mail daemon by means of wishing for a statue of it which can then be re-animated by casting stone to flesh. This is largely useless, as the resulting mail daemon will disappear in one turn ("I'm late!") unless you attack it, in which case it will disappear if you step away from it. Killing a mail daemon will automatically (and silently) genocide mail daemons, preventing future mail delivery.

Mail daemons will not appear if MAIL is undefined when compiling the game, or if the mail option is set to false.

Encyclopaedia entry

It is rumoured that these strange creatures can be harmed by
domesticated canines only.

Origin

On Unix-like operating systems, a daemon is a program that runs in the background, performing various tasks such as managing log files, performing timed maintenance tasks or answering incoming network connection requests. The program responsible for receiving mail and dispatching it to the correct location is commonly referred to as the mail daemon.

External links

• Spam — A short story by Virgo Vardja, set in the NetHack universe