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. 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.)
2. 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.)

Sacrifice Rules

The Black Mother has a series of checks before a sacrifice is accept. These are as follows:

• 1. She does not eat her own minions. These are any goat spawn, any centaurs, any nymphs, any unicorns, any mi-go, dark young, blessed, swirling mist, dust/ice/thunder/fire storm, or goat mouths.
• 2. Attempting to feed a Rider to her angers her and revives them.
• 3. She will not eat the true Amulet of Yendor ("The Amulet proves inedible")
• 4. She WILL eat 'old' corpses, unlike other gods.
  • Old corpses do have a much lower value, but still function
• 5. Same race sacrifice applies as normal for sacrificing, except: this does not summon a demon if chaotic, and Anachrononauts and Binders have no penalty for sacrificing despite not being chaotic.
• 6. For non-chaotic, non-Binder/Anachrononauts, hurt their align record, increment their gods anger by 1, reduce wisdom by 1, and reduce luck by 1.
• 7. First attempts to mollify the Goat, then reduce prayer timeout. If you sacrifice while she is mollified and prayer timeout is good, pacifies all goat minions on the level and begins checking for gifts and blessings.

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.

Blessings of the Black Mother

The following are possible results from sacrificing to the Black Mother that do not depend on the gifts counter, like blessings from normal gods, on a roll of roughly 1/(30+lvl), biased by luck.

• First, the Black Mother may gift a tame minion, which will be a goat minion in this case.
• Otherwise, one of the following effects occurs:
  • Blessed remove curse and remove punishment
  • Fully maximizes your luck ("You feel very lucky")
  • Grants the Acrid property to a wielded weapon if it is not an artifact, is a weapon, and does not have the sizzling/acrid properties already. Also fixes erosion and erodeproofs the weapon.
  • Cures sterility if sterile
  • Triple chance to gift d8 Goat Milk potions

Goat Milk

Potions of Goat's Milk are fairly common rewards for interacting with the Black Goat, and have a number of effects.

• They appear 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.

Sacrifice Gifts

The following results from sacrifice depend on the number of gifts received, with a chance to receive equal to 1/(10+gifts generated), though not all increase the gifts counter.

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 in the open inventory permits you to receive further gifts from the Black Mother.

Drooling Equipment

When sacrificing to the Black Mother, she may apply a special object property to some of your equipment. This property is unique, complicated, and will be explained fully here.

When a gift is given, the game will check for a wielded main hand weapon, worn gloves if the player has skill in martial arts, and worn boots if the player has skill in martial arts, in that order. If an item is found, it will remove erosion, erodeproof the item, remove the 'Acrid' object property if it is on the item, and apply the 'Drooling' object property.

An item with this object property has the following effects:

• Every turn, the item will change appearance to 'drooling', 'staring', 'lashing', or 'stormwrapped', with it's abilities changing as it does.
• Drooling
  • Deals 2x acid damage
• Staring
  • Adds study to the target (reducing it's AC) by the base damage rolled that turn, plus the enchantment of the item
• Lashing
  • Deals 2x poison and 4d4 physical damage
• Stormwrapped
  • Picks a random element of fire, acid, cold, and lightning, dealing a variable amount of damage of that type.
    • Fire is 3d10 damage
    • Acid is 4d4 damage
    • Cold is 3d10 damage
    • Lightning is 3d8 damage
• When a monster is killed by a drooling weapon and leaves a corpse, your item will automatically sacrifice it to the Black Mother, angering your god if you are not chaotic, an Anachrononaut, or a Binder.
  • This has none of the normal effects from sacrificing except for reducing the Black Mother's anger.

The Red Word of Knowledge

If the Black Mother cannot provide a blessing, she will provide a slab containing the Red Word of Knowledge, a word of creation. This has the following effects:

• Once read, gives a permanent +2 to Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, surpassing racial maximums but not exceeding 25.
• Applies a passive bonus of +3 to your pet cap, on top of the Charisma bonus.
• Provides an active ability to speak the Word of Knowledge, attempting to scare and craze all monsters within sight
  • Monsters make an MR check (no bonuses from item class), on a fail they attempt to flee, are permanently crazed, and try to disrobe.