Zookeeper

The Zookeeper is a role that first appeared in NetHack-- 3.0.10, an ancestor of SLASH'EM, and re-appears in SlashTHEM.

Zookeepers start with various items that make it easy for them to acquire and maintain pets, including tripe rations, scrolls of taming, and leashes.

Skills

NetHack-- 3.0.10 was based on NetHack 3.0.10, which predated the skill system, so Zookeepers could use any weapons.

SLASHTHEM gives the Zookeeper a weapon skill set that is slightly restricted, but still broad and nuanced, and removes spell skills:

Zookeeper skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: knife, broad sword, scimitar, hammer, quarterstaff, crossbow, dart Combat: two weapon combat
Skilled	Weapons: club, short sword, firearms, sling, unicorn horn, boomerang Combat: bare hands
Expert	Weapons: dagger, whip, spear

The Zookeeper's special spell is charm monster. Spell success is determined by intelligence.

Intrinsics

• XL 1: Warning
• XL 10: Poison resistance

Starting equipment

• A +1 bullwhip
• 5 tripe rations
• 3 scrolls of taming
• 3 leashes

The Zookeeper starts with a pet platypus.

Rank titles

The status line shows you to be one of the following ranks when you reach the specified experience level:

• XL 1-5: Feeder
• XL 6-13: Tamer
• XL 14-17: Trainer
• XL 18-21: Chief Tamer
• XL 22-25: Vet
• XL 26-29: Zookeeper
• XL 30: Curator

Quest

The quest sees the Zookeeper fighting Fearful Triceratops for the Golden Whistle of Nora, a lawful magic whistle which grants warning, half physical damage, and ESP, and can be invoked for taming. Liontamer is the first sacrifice gift for Zookeepers.

Gods

The Zookeeper's pantheon comes from Norse mythology:

• Lawful: Balder
• Neutral: Edda
• Chaotic: Hagen

History

The Zookeeper's first appearance was in SLASH'EM precursor NetHack-- 3.0.10 as one of nine new roles in addition to the twelve in NetHack 3.0.10. The discussion thread in which the authors first announced the variant suggests that some of the new roles were taken from a list proposing a role for every letter of the alphabet. See here for the relevant post.

After the release of NetHack 3.1.3 in 1993, NetHack-- was updated to NetHack-- 3.1.3 by porting some of the changes from NetHack-- 3.0.10 into a patch for the newest version. Due to some changes in the vanilla code, however, particularly NetHack 3.1's addition of the Quest branch, the Zookeeper and other roles were simply left out of the patch to maintain compatibility.

The DAT folder for SLASH 6 contains unused maps for quest levels for the removed roles; the Zookeeper nemesis would have been a Y named "The Great Black Ape", and the quest artifact would have been a magic whistle called The Golden Whistle. The code for the maps indicates that the quest would feature numerous felines and other apelike creatures.

The Zookeeper role reappeared in the variant Slash'EM Extended alongside the other eight new NetHack-- 3.0.10 roles, and were carried over with many tweaks into SlashTHEM, which retooled the role to more closely resemble the proposed changes above.

References

• NetHack-- 3.0.10 attrib.c line 117
• NetHack-- 3.0.10 u_init.c line 215
• SlashTHEM u_init.c line 2318 in v. 0.8
• SlashTHEM role.c line 1660 in v. 0.8
• SLASHTHEM u_init.c line 256 in v. 0.8
• SLASHTHEM artilist.h line 601 in v. 0.8