Center of All
" Center of All 
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|---|---|
| Difficulty | 22 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 2d8 physical, Weapon 2d8 physical (24+ insight), Weapon 2d8 physical (32+ insight), Magic 0d6 mage spell (16+ insight), Arrow 1d1 loadstone |
| Base level | 18 |
| Base experience | 616 |
| Speed | 15 |
| Base AC | -8 |
| Base MR | 100 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 4500 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | large |
| Resistances | fire, cold, sleep, shock, poison, acid, petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | |
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Center of All:
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Center of All, ", is a monster that appears in dNetHack. He is a powerful unique Rilmani that guards the First Key of Neutrality.
Center of All is permanently invisible, and has nearly every form of resistance property available alongside magic resistance and reflection. Center of all always has a weapon attack and can throw cursed loadstones that deal d30 damage and have a 1⁄3 chance of adding that loadstone to the target's inventory instead of it dropping to the floor.
Generation
Center of All's stats, hostility, and the overall likelihood of encountering him depend on the PC's insight.
Each turn, Center of All may decide to visit your current dungeon level: this will cause him to be generated if he has not been created yet, and otherwise he will depart his current level and arrive at your current level. With zero insight, the odds of this occurring are 1⁄10,000, becoming more frequent as your insight increases.
When first created, Center of All's hostility is determined as follows:
- Otherwise, if you have not entered the Sum of All when Center of All is generated, he will be peaceful towards you.
Center of All is generated with armor and weapons similar to those of Aurumach Rilmani: his equipment consists of +0 large concordant gear, including a golden bardiche, leather armor, a golden war hat, a pair of low boots, leather gloves, and a robe.
Departure
Each turn, Center of All may decide to depart from your level if he is peaceful, you are too weak and lacking in insight, or you have been sufficiently weighed down with loadstones.
Other insight effects
While you have low insight, Center of All gains bonus AC and DR. As you gain insight, Center of All will gain additional attacks, but lose his bonus AC and DR - these extra attacks are noted in the stat block above.
Strategy
Center of All can easily surprise players who do not have the ability to see invisible, and its access to the Aurumach Rilmani spell list can be quite lethal for characters without the proper resistances. The concordant property on Center of All's armor doubles that item's DR when hit by a non-neutral monster, but halves DR versus neutral monsters.
Though Center of All is slow, he can still deal serious damage in melee and with his thrown loadstones, which can quickly weigh down and immobilize you.
Origin
The Center of All originates from the Planescape setting of Dungeons & Dragons, which is said to be governed by three principles (or heuristics):
- The first principle, the Rule-of-Three, says simply that things tend to happen in threes. The principles which govern the planes are themselves subject to this rule.
- The second principle, the Unity of Rings, notes that many things on the planes are circular, coming back around to where they started. This is true geographically as well as philosophically.
- The third principle (per the Rule-of-Three above) is the Center of All: wherever a person happens to be is, from their own perspective, the center of the multiverse; as most planes are functionally infinite, disproving anyone's centricity would be impossible. For Planescape, this is meant philosophically just as much as in terms of multiversal geography - this also implies that nowhere can be said to be the only absolute true center, and is the source of much argument and violence.
Planescape also has characters named for each of the principles: Center of All is an Aurumach, the most powerful and rare of the Rilmani. Rilmani are outsiders who are the living embodiment of pure neutrality, with the golden-skinned Aurumachs serving as diplomats, primary strategists and organizers of rilmani society. The encyclopedia entry is based on a post from the Planescape Haiku thread on Planewalker, an old official fansite for the Planescape setting - the haiku in question is the third of a set of three, and is fittingly titled "Center of All".
Encyclopedia entry
Compass all the planes,
and yet you will never find
creation's heart
[ riff on a Planescape Haiku, originally by Ecco-Mono ]
