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 penalty); if you sacrifice a creature that falls under her dominion (things like Goat Spawn, Dark Young, n, Unicorns, Centaurs, Mi-go), 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. Continue to sacrifice 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.

The following items are viable gifts from the Black Mother:

• A number of potions of Goat's Milk (appears as a black potion when un-id'd, despite there already being a randomized appearance of that name. This can result in a game with two different black potions).
  • When drunk, they function as an advanced Potion of full healing, repairing all lost XP levels if blessed, restores 1 ability if uncursed and all if blessed, and always cures one morgul shard. The downside is that drinking will decrease your sanity by d20 and give you the madness of the Black Mother.
    • Cursed potions do none of the above, instead dealing 40 damage and giving you food poisoning.

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)).

(Note that in order to receive any gift aside from Goat's Milk, you must sacrifice from your inventory. A sacrifice from the ground will not give you a holy symbol or apply the sizzling object property.)

Madness of the Black Mother

When maddened by the Black Mother, your brain occasionally sprouts writhing masses of tentacles. This has the following effects:

• Triggers when a monster (hostile or peaceful, not tame) is adjacent to you, and a sanity roll fails.
  • Prints "lashing tentacles erupt from your brain!", dealing 4d4 damage to you, scaled by your current HP percentage.
  • Drains 4d4 nutrition
  • Reduces sanity by 4d4 if above 50, or 1 otherwise.
  • Makes a 4d4 poison damage tentacle attack against all non-tame monsters adjacent to you.
• Anyone considered to be a minion of the Black Mother (such as Dark Young and Dark Daughters) is afflicted by this madness and has a similar tentacle attack, as well as no head.

Holy Symbol of the Black Mother

The Black Mother provides her devotees with a holy symbol (tarnished triple goat head when un-identified) to prove their faith. These have the following effects:

• Applying a holy symbol will pray to the Black Mother
• Dropping a holy symbol into a pit and covering it with a boulder will begin a timer for 250+d250 turns.
  • When this timer runs out, it will burn a hoofprint on the floor and display a special message on the floor. If you have high enough insight, you will be able to see a Mouth of the Goat has spawned, allowing you to sacrifice to the Black Mother on that spot.
• Receiving your first holy symbol counts as receiving an artifact for the purpose of incrementing the gifts counter
  • Additional holy symbols do not increment this more
• Holding a holy symbol in the open inventory causes any corpses a Mouth of the Goat devours to be considered sacrifices.
• Holding a holy symbol permits you to receive further gifts from the Black Mother.