Slime mold
- For the tree-bound comestibles known as fruit, see apple, banana, eucalyptus leaf, melon or pear.
- For other uses of the term, see fruit.
"Slime mold" is the default name for the customizable fruit that appears in NetHack.
Contents
Generation
In addition to random generation, health food shops and delicatessens often stock nameable fruit.
If you leave a bones file with any custom fruit in it, the name will be preserved for the player who finds it; in turn, fruit with names other than what you have chosen can occur in bones levels that you encounter.
A game where Orctown is generated may give the named orc-captain that leads the invading horde some fruit in their inventory, named either "paddle cactus" or "dwarven root".[1][2]
The horn of plenty has a 6.9% overall chance of dispensing one or more nameable fruits when applied.
Description
The nameable fruit is a comestible that gives 250 nutrition and is consumed in a single turn; this fruit is always vegan for conduct purposes. It can be thrown at any horse to tame them.
In addition to messages from you or a monster eating a nameable fruit, the fruit's name is also used for messages related to the following:
- The potion of fruit juice, made from the nameable fruit
- The potion of see invisible, which uses the same messages as fruit juice
- The potion of sickness, which is stated to be stale or contaminated fruit juice
- The effect of quaffing contaminated water from a non-magic fountain
- The ring of poison resistance, if dropped down a sink
Naming
You can use the fruit option to change the name of the fruit to almost anything you like. If you change the fruit option with a game in progress, existing fruit will keep their name, while newly generated fruit will use the new name. The name you choose has no impact on gameplay, except that differently-named fruits do not stack. If you want to wish for a nameable fruit, you must wish for a "fruit" regardless of its current name.
The game will properly parse phrases such as "slice of pizza", "bowl of gruel", and "leg of ham" and return the appropriate output for relevant messages (e.g., "This tastes like ham juice" when quaffing fruit juice with your fruit being named "leg of ham"). However, NetHack will prevent you from naming your fruit after a corpse or tin, or with a word indicating beatitude status - you will instead be given a candied corpse, tin, or blessed/cursed/uncursed fruit.[3]
You may find silly suggestions for fruit names on nethack.alt.org. A fairly common form of usually-harmless griefing is to name fruits after highly desirable items, or end the name with "You die... --More--".
History
The nameable fruit first appears in NetHack 3.0.0, where it replaces the slice of pizza as a food item; from NetHack 3.0.1 to NetHack 3.1.3, the nameable fruit was a compile-time option, with the slice of pizza appearing instead if the option was disabled. Nameable fruit fully replaces the slice of pizza in NetHack 3.2.0.
The possibility for an Orc Town orc-captain to generate with named fruit is introduced in NetHack 3.6.2.[4]
Origin
"Slime mold" or "slime mould" is an informal name given to several kinds of life forms; their informal name refers to the life cycle stages where they can appear as gelatinous "slime". More than 900 species of slime mold occur globally and can be found in tropical and forest biomes, as well as any habitat with sufficient conditions, including soil and even air conditioners or rain gutters. Slime molds spend part of their lives as isolated amoeboid and haploid cells; when a chemical signal is released, they aggregate and fuse to form a multicellular organism (or plasmodium) which reproduces and makes spores.
Slime molds slither over the ground and fallen tree trunks to feed on microorganisms that live in dead plant material, and scatter spores like plants and fungi, which grow into new slime molds; formerly classified as fungi, they have since been grouped with protists as far back as 1995. Most slime molds are smaller than a few centimetres, but some species may reach sizes up to several square metres and masses up to 20 kilograms.
Angband also features edible slime molds, but has no option to rename the item. Because slime molds are defenseless living creatures in the game, some players do not eat them–this has lead to the tradition of naming individual slime molds and keeping them as pets.
Paddle cactus
The prickly pear or pear cactus, also known as the paddle cactus, is a group of flowering cacti under the genus Opuntia,. The genus is named for the Ancient Greek city of Opus, where the philosopher Theophrastus claimed an edible plant grew that could propagate by rooting its leaves. The most common culinary species is the Indian fig opuntia (O. ficus-indica): a large, trunk-forming, segmented cactus that may grow to 5–7m (16–23 feet) with a crown of over 3m (10 ft) in diameter and a trunk diameter of 1m (1 yard).
Dwarven root
"Dwarven root" is the informal name for a type of food that appears in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, a collection of stories and alternate narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien that were not completed in his lifetime, but edited and concluded by his son Christopher and first published in 1980; these stories are the source of the encyclopedia entry used for the name.
While in the company of Mîm the dwarf, the human Túrin Turambar is introduced to a meal made of roots that Mîm shares with his band of men. When asked about them, Mîm states that their names are only known in dwarven languages, and that dwarvenkind keeps their location a secret to prevent mankind from taking the root for themselves; conversely, Mîm claims that "wild" woodland Elves are largely unaware as well, whereas Grey-elves have sought but not found them, and High Elves were too prideful to even consider the notion. The "dwarven root" is described as filling and somewhat like bread when cooked and eaten.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, slime molds can be generated in the fungus farm special room.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, named fruits can occur in the various alignment quests:
- In the Mithardir variant of the Chaos Quest, Elshava (where the portal from the main dungeon leads) may contain a fishery shop run by a deep one shopkeeper or a sea garden run by a Yurian shopkeeper, both of which sell named slime molds; fishery fruits can be called "salted fish", "pickled fish", "fried squid", "baked clams", "live oysters", or "sea cucumbers", while sea garden fruits can be called "algae mats" or "seaweed".
- One of the Outlands rings map inclusions is a "fishing village" inhabited by deep ones that has a 1⁄9 chance of generating a fruit named "salted fish" on each square.
- The Law Quest may generate Valavi shepherd's mounds as map inclusions in Arcadia - these are special shops that sell fruits named "mutton roast" and "lump of wood" among other goods.
Encyclopedia entry
Slime mold
Slime mold or slime fungus, organism usually classified with the fungi, but showing equal affinity to the protozoa. Slime molds have complex life cycles with an animal-like motile phase, in which feeding and growth occur, and a plant-like immotile reproductive phase. The motile phase, commonly found under rotting logs and damp leaves, consists of either solitary amoebalike cells or a brightly colored multinucleate mass of protoplasm called a plasmodium, which creeps about and feeds by amoeboid movement.
Paddle cactus
Opuntia, commonly called prickly pear, is a genus in the cactus family, Cactaceae. Prickly pears are also known as tuna (fruit), sabra, nopal (paddle, plural nopales) from the Nahuatl word nopalli for the pads, or nostle, from the Nahuatl word nochtli for the fruit; or paddle cactus.
Dwarven root
But when they were cooked these roots proved good to eat, somewhat like bread; and the outlaws were glad of them, for they had long lacked bread save when they could steal it. "Wild Elves know them not; Grey-elves have not found them; the proud ones from over the Sea are too proud to delve," said Mim.
"What is their name?" said Turin.
Mim looked at him sidelong. "They have no name, save in the Dwarf-tongue, which we do not teach," he said. "And we do not teach Men to find them, for Men are greedy and thriftless, and would not spare till all the plants had perished; whereas now they pass them by as they go blundering in the wild. No more will you learn of me; but you may have enough of my bounty, as long as you speak fair and do not spy or steal." Then again he laughed in his throat.
"They are of great worth." he said. "More than gold in the hungry winter, for they may be hoarded like the nuts of a squirrel, and already we were building our store from the first that are ripe."
See also
- Notable ascensions includes a few cases of slime mold ASCII art.
