The Black Mother

The Black Mother

The Black Mother is an unaligned deity in dNethack who can be sacrificed to in her temple in the Depths (regardless of alignment or current Deity), which exists below the Neutral Quest.

The Black Mother is unique in that she does not have an actual altar, but there is a statue located in her temple which indicates the location where you may offer things to her. She will also consume corpses automatically that are left on the tile, but this is not treated the same as offering the sacrifice yourself.

Sacrificing to The Black Mother, if not Chaotic, will increment your God's anger (you may use a Helm of opposite alignment to skirt this restriction); if you sacrifice a creature that falls under her dominion (things like Goat Spawn, Dark Young, n, Unicorns), you will also increment her anger and the creature will be revived on a nearby tile.

The main reason to sacrifice to the Black Mother is to get access to a number of gifts she provides that cannot be attained elsewhere. She must first be appeased before any gifts will be given, and this is tracked via normal sacrifice messages ("You have a hopeful feeling"). When you sacrifice enough things (or she eats enough off the altar), you will get the "You have a feeling of reconciliation" message. Sacrificing until you receive the Tarnished Triple Goat Head (Holy Symbol of the Black Mother when fully ID'ed), at which point you are now eligible to receive gifts.

When being gifted, you can receive one of three things (not necessarily in this order. The first two items can be given multiple times):

1. You will be given a number of black potions; these are potions of Goat's Milk. They act as a Potion of full healing but decrease your sanity and give you a madness as well.
2. Your mainhand weapon will begin to drip with acid and will have the 'Sizzling' modifier prepended to the name of the weapon. This modifier causes the weapon to deal an additional 1x multiplier of damage. (If it previously dealt 2x damage, it will now deal 3x damage.)
3. You will receive the Word of Knowledge

The chance per sacrifice of receiving a gift is (1/(10+Gift Count)).

It should be noted that the floor her temple is located on in the Depths is host to a number of incredibly dangerous enemies who appear as your insight gets higher, including Hmnyw-Pharoah, The Good Neighbor, and Nictoris (Who is contained in a coffin in the top right of the map).

Som (talk) 15:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)