Doom knight
| @ doom knight (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 14 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 1d8 physical, offhand weapon 1d8 physical, spellcast 0d4 mage |
| Base level | 10 |
| Base experience | 269 |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 10 |
| Base MR | 1 |
| Alignment | -3 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 1450 |
| Nutritional value | 400 |
| Size | medium |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A doom knight:
| |
| Reference | dNAO 3.26.0 - src/monst.c, line 9557 |
A doom knight, @, is a type of monster that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The doom knight is a strong human monster that is part of the human or elf monster class—they possess catsight, can be seen via infravision, and will pick up weapons and food among other items.
A doom knight has a weapon attack, an offhand weapon attack and the ability to cast one arcane-style monster spell during each of their turns: 1⁄2 of the time, they will cast blind, flare, vulnerability, or drain life with an equal probability for each spell. As "dark knight" monsters, doom knights gain intrinsic speed at a minimum of level 7, and they also gain bonuses to AC from worn shields and wielded silverknight spears. Doom knights boast expert prowess in martial combat and gain a full base attack bonus of +1 to-hit per monster level, and inflict extra damage against unholy-hating monsters.
Generation
Doom knights are not randomly generated on normal levels, and normally-created ones are always hostile and can appear in small groups. They are not a valid polymorph form or genocide target, and corpses, figurines and statues of doom knights cannot be generated or wished for.
Doom knights are exclusively found in the Chaos Temple Quest: four hostile doom knights are generated just outside the west and east doors of the temple structure on the Ancient Temple floor at level creation, and 1⁄80 of the monsters randomly generated on the Air Temple floor will be doom knights.
A doom knight is always generated with a gray pair of armored boots, a gray pair of gauntlets, a black leather cloak, gray plate mail, a gray helmet, a black kite shield, and a runesword that has a cumulative 1⁄40 chance of being given an object property: a 1⁄80 chance of the desecrated property, a 1⁄160 chance of the unholy property, and a 1⁄160 chance of the life-drinking property. If they are generated during level creation, or with a 1⁄20 chance otherwise, they are also given 3 each of random offensive items, defensive items and miscellaneous items.
History
The doom knight first appears in dNetHack 3.21.4, where it is added as part of commit 63dcc92d to make the Chaos Temple Quest more flavorful—doom knights replace the four player monster knights that are used in previous versions.
Origin
The doom knight is primarily based on the Black Knight enemy from the 1988 video game Final Fantasy II, whose famous opening sequence has a party of four player characters–Firion, Maria, Guy, and Leon–fleeing after being orphaned by the Empire of Palamecia's attack on Fynn, only to be cornered and cut down by four of the Palamecian army's Black Knights. This sequence is the first battle of the game, and is designed to be unwinnable: while Firion, Maria, and Guy are rescued by forces belonging to the Wild Rose Rebellion led by Princess Hilda and taken to Altair to be revived, Leon has gone missing, and the trio set off for Fynn in search of him as their first objective. The initial quartet of Black Knights are the basis for the quartet of guaranteed doom knights encountered within the Chaos Temple Quest in dNetHack.
The "Black Knight" or "dark knight" is a literary stock character who masks his identity by not displaying heraldry and wearing armor that is dark in color (if not actually black, hence the color of the doom knight's equipment). Portrayed as the opposite of the "white knight" or knight-errant, they are usually villains associated with death and/or darkness who use their anonymity to commit misdeeds, and are generally derived from at least one of the various Black Knights of Arthurian legend. Black knights frequently appear in various forms of literary and fantasy media with medieval aesthetics, naturally including the Final Fantasy franchise: in addition to FFII, doom knights have some traits of other enemies such as the Black Knights and Death Knights from the original Final Fantasy—both can be found in the Flying Fortress area that the Air Temple floor of the Chaos Temple Quest branch is analogous to, and the doom knight uses a somewhat toned-down version of the Death Knight's spell list.
