Erinys

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& erinys
Difficulty 10
Attacks

Weapon 2d4 poison (strength; becomes 3d4 at 20+ alignment abuse[1]), weapon 3d4 poison (strength, requires 35+ alignment abuse)[1], spellcast 3d4 mage (requires 50+ alignment abuse)[1]

Base level 7
Base experience 158
Speed 12
Base AC 2
Base MR 30
Alignment 10 (lawful)
Frequency (by normal means) 2 (Quite rare)
Genocidable No
Weight 1450
Nutritional value 400
Size Medium
Resistances fire resistance, poison resistance
Resistances conveyed None

An erinys:

With sufficient alignment abuse, an erinys also[1]:

Reference NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 2950

An erinys (plural erinyes), &, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack.[2] The erinys is a lawful and always-female humanoid major demon that is strong, has infravision, can be seen via infravision, and will collect items such as weapons and food that they come across. An erinys will follow the hero to other levels if she is adjacent.

Erinyes are unique among the demon monster class for several traits that are tied to how much a hero has abused their alignment record (if at all), and these traits will persist even if the hero's alignment record is raised afterward.[1][3][4] Normally, an erinys will have a single weapon attack that can inflict strength-draining poison regardless of whether any weapons (poisoned or otherwise) are actually used, with physical damage occurring instead if the erinys is cancelled or if they are wielding a footrice corpse, Vorpal Blade or Stormbringer (which will apply their normal effects alongside dealing physical damage).[5] They also possess fire resistance, poison resistance, drain resistance, and death resistance like all major demons, and are immune to being polymorphed.[6]

However, erinyes have their monster level and difficulty rating increased depending on the alignment abuse the hero has committed up to a maximum of level 50 and a difficulty of 25 and can even gain further powers as a result:[1] the erinyes gain the ability to see invisible with at least 6 points of alignment abuse; amphibious movement at 11+ alignment abuse; flying at 16+ alignment abuse; an extra damage die for their weapon attack (increasing it to 3d4) at 21+ alignment abuse; the regeneration property at 26+ alignment abuse; teleport control at 31+ alignment abuse; a second 3d4 poisonous weapon attack at 36+ alignment abuse; random teleportation at 41+ alignment abuse; and a 3d4 mage monster spell attack at 51+ alignment abuse. Hostile erinyes will also produce a constant aggravation effect that awakens nearby monsters on each turn that they are able to see the hero.[7]

Erinyes are poisonous to consume, a situation which primarily comes up if they are digested by another monster.

Generation

A normally-created erinys will be peaceful towards a hero that has not committed alignment abuse, and will be hostile otherwise.[8]

Erinyes are not a valid polymorph form or genocide target, and only three erinyes can be generated in a game, after which they will become extinct[9]—the use of figurines respects this special limit.[10]

Though erinyes are designated to only randomly generate in Gehennom and appear in small groups, they will not appear in Gehennom under normal circumstances due to being lawful, and other circumstances will typically only generate one of them at a time.

Erinyes can be generated through normal means, including being chosen among any & that are placed during level creation. Hostile erinyes can be generated as minions of chaotic gods and Moloch, they can be created via the summon nasties spell when it is cast by a hostile lawful spellcaster outside of Gehennom (e.g. a titan) or any spellcaster within Gehennom (e.g. the Wizard of Yendor), and they can also be summoned via demon gating from the melee attacks of other erinyes or lawful demons (i.e. barbed devils, horned devils, Geryon, Dispater, Baalzebub, and Asmodeus).

Furthermore, erinyes can be generated in the following circumstances.

  • A hero that wears a helm of opposite alignment has an alignment abuse-dependent chance of summoning an erinys on an adjacent square, and the act incurs both a penalty to alignment record and an increase to the hero's alignment abuse:[11][12] a roll is made versus the hero's current alignment abuse total, which occurs after the penalties and before the hero shifts alignment, and failing this roll summons an erinys—this means that any summoned erinyes will always be hostile, as well as any erinyes encountered by that hero in the future. If the hero wears a helm of opposite alignment while on the Astral Plane, all remaining erinyes that have not yet been generated will always be summoned adjacent to the hero.
  • Erinyes can appear among the & that are generated in graveyards, with an increased chance for graveyards in Gehennom.[13]
  • A hostile erinys is generated in Moloch's Sanctum during level creation.[14]

Erinyes never leave a corpse upon death.

Strategy

The following information pertains to a recently-released stable version (NetHack 5.0.0) and will be subject to revision as strategy is developed and bugs are discovered and/or fixed.

Erinyes are majorly overhauled from the NetHack 3.6 series.

Erinyes represent a fairly significant threat to any player that is careless about how often they commit alignment record abuse, and they are even bigger hazards for anyone that is either actively planning to use a helm of opposite alignment on the Astral Plane, or even just during the ascension run: even early heroes with the misfortune of wearing one that is non-cursed and unidentified may quickly find themselves in dire straits. Furthermore, wearing the helm induces confusion from switching alignments, making an erinys more difficult to fight or escape if one is summoned. Erinyes that are empowered enough to gain teleport control are even more difficult to get rid of, since they have a 12⁄13 chance of appearing on a square adjacent to you when teleported, much like the Riders.

The table below recaps and details which abilities and behaviors erinyes gain at specific levels of alignment abuse:[1]

Minimum alignment abuse level Monster level[15] Monster difficulty[16] Properties and effects
1[8] 8 10 Erinyes will be generated as hostile.
6[17] 13 12 Erinyes can see invisible.
11[18] 18 13 Erinyes become amphibious and can move through moats and pools.
16[19] 23 15 Erinyes gain flying and can cross over lava, holes and pits.
21[20] 28 17 Erinyes have the damage dice of their poisonous weapon attack increased to 3d4 damage.
26[21] 33 18 Erinyes gain the regeneration property, which grants enhanced HP regeneration.
31[22] 38 20 Erinyes gain teleport control, which has a 12⁄13 chance of causing monsters with the property to move adjacent to the hero whenever they are teleported (including from their own abilities).
36[23] 43 22 Erinyes gain a second 3d4 poisonous weapon attack.
41[24] 48 23 Erinyes gain the ability to teleport at random—in combination with their teleport control, this means that erinyes that are active on the same level as the hero have a chance each turn of teleporting directly to the hero.
51[25] 50 25 Erinyes gain a third attack, casting a 3d4 mage monster spell during each of their turns.

A combination of the erinyes' alignment abuse-powered abilities and the inability to perform sacrifices while confused can completely scupper a player's attempts to ascend from the Astral Plane on a cross-aligned high altar by using a worn helm of opposite alignment: the hero usually takes at least one turn to clear confusion even with a reliable cure, which gives the erinyes and other nearby monsters opportunities to strike, and larger monsters that hit can knock your character off the altar unless they are steadfast. While it is theoretically possible to repeatedly use helms of opposite alignment in order to summon and fight all three erinyes ahead of time, this carries a significant risk of its own—a player is not guaranteed to summon an erinys by wearing the helm, and unsuccessful attempts will still result in their alignment abuse levels being raised, and even if the player has enough foresight to deal with them one at a time rather than risk being overwhelmed by multiple, their constant aggravation and alignment abuse-granted abilities can result in several complications, and escaping an erinys may still prove difficult even at low levels of alignment abuse if the encounter unexpectedly takes a turn for the worse.

A player that has reached the mid-game while not committing significant alignment abuse will typically be capable of fighting off a hostile erinys if their weapons and armor are up to standard—a hero that avoids alignment abuse altogether will never have to fear encountering one. For a hero that is fighting off a single hostile erinys with minimal alignment abuse, poison resistance paired with sources of silver damage and/or speed should be sufficient unless the encounter occurs as a result of aforementioned mishaps involving unidentified helms of opposite alignment in the early game. Even in this scenario, the monster aggravation caused by the erinys has a chance of awakening sleeping monsters that the hero prefers not to deal with—be sure to keep any fights against erinyes far away from treasure zoos and other similar rooms!

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 5.0.1). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit c8b15fe8, a bug is fixed that causes erinyes to effectively become weaker when the hero reaches 43 or higher alignment abuse, due to values of 50 and above being used to denote special fixed HP and monster level calculations.

History

& erinys
Difficulty 10
Attacks

Weapon 2d4 poison (strength)

Base level 7
Base experience 158
Speed 12
Base AC 2
Base MR 30
Alignment 10 (lawful)
Frequency (by normal means) 2 (Quite rare)
Genocidable No
Weight 1450
Nutritional value 400
Size Medium
Resistances fire resistance, poison resistance
Resistances conveyed None

An erinys:

Reference NetHack 3.6.7 - src/monst.c, line 2394

The erinys is introduced in NetHack 3.0.0. From this version to NetHack 3.6.7, including some variants based on those versions, erinyes are always hostile, and possess the same base stats as they do in later versions without the ability to become stronger—alignment abuse does not exist in those versions, and neither do the confusing and erinys-summoning effects of a worn helm of opposite alignment.

As a result, the erinyes of these versions are generally unremarkable monsters that largely pose little threat: they are much weaker than most major demons, and though their weapon attack can be decently strong depending on the circumstances, their base AC of 2 and lack of other abilities make them easy to dispatch unless the hero is incredibly weak or well out of their depth. a hero will typically have poison resistance as well as a source of speed by the time they encounter any erinyes in a significant majority of circumstances, enabling them to outpace and outfight the monsters fairly easily in one-on-one combat, while erinyes that appear in combat situations involving several monsters (e.g. summon nasties) can typically be ignored in favor of more dangerous targets. As erinyes appear in graveyards and can be gated by other demons, it takes relatively little effort to render them extinct through normal play.

NetHack 5.0.0 significantly overhauls the erinyes to be more potent threats: the primary commit, commit f930a12f, grants them their additional attacks and properties depending on how much a hero has abused their alignment throughout the game, with their level and difficulty increasing accordingly, and also establishes their constant aggravation of monsters while they are hostile and have sight of the hero. This commit also makes it so that they are no longer hostile by default. Teleport control is also reworked via commit 10a1befc so that all other monsters with the property besides the Riders are likely to appear next to the hero when teleported. The helm of opposite alignment is also changed via commit 0c9e3483 so that it confuses the hero upon them wearing one, and an erinys will be summoned unless the hero attempts to wear one on the Astral Plane, in which case all three will be summoned—an element of randomness is added to the erinys-summoning effect of the helm via commit cd047809 so that players outside of the Astral Plane are not guaranteed to summon one this way.

Part of the intent behind this set of changes is to make ascension using the worn helm much less reliable, with summoned erinyes on the Astral Plane being difficult foes to escape: to that end, commit 6d29efcf changes sacrifice requirements so that the hero cannot offer corpses or the Amulet of Yendor while they are confused, hallucinating or stunned; this commit is later refined via commit b08fbef7 so that this only applies to confusion and stunning, in order to avoid creating unobtainable messages and unwinnable scenarios for players aiming to ascend with permanent hallucination.

Erinyes are also the subject of various other bug fixes and code changes since their introduction, some of which are tied to their unique three-per-game status.

  • In versions up to NetHack 3.4.3:
    • Applying a figurine or animating it with the stone to flesh spell does not respect extinction of monster types with special limits, i.e. erinyes and Nazgul. This is fixed for NetHack 3.6.0 via commit 846de96a so that figurine use respects extinction in these cases.
    • The grammar of messages used for combat involving Magicbane and a single erinys is incorrect due to the singular case ending in an 's'. This is fixed for NetHack 3.6.0 via commit b3d81613, and later refinements to uncommon singular and plural spelling are made for that version via commit 894e7f02 so that "erinys" and "erinyes" are properly recognized as singular and plural forms of the monster type's name.
    • Bones files only check for extinction and do not take an exact count of monster types that have been created in the current game when loading and populating a bones level, making it possible for a player to encounter more than 3 erinyes by finding bones levels containing the monsters. This is fixed for NetHack 3.6.0 via commit 237a8fbc so that generation counts are respected when loading bones in addition to extinction.
  • In versions up to NetHack 3.6.0:
    • Weapon attacks that use a damage type other than physical damage suppress the additional effects of certain weapons, specifically those of footrice corpses, Stormbringer and Vorpal Blade—this applies to the erinyes and Nazgul, along with a small handful of other monsters such as the barrow wight. This is fixed for NetHack 3.6.1 via commit db9dddc5 so that such attacks always inflict physical damage instead of their normal damage type if the attacker is wielding certain weapons or else they are cancelled. Monsters that have another weapon attack which deals normal physical damage will not be subjected to this effect.
    • The handling of unique monsters is not consistent between monsters that are killed and monsters that are subjected to genocide or made extinct. This is fixed for NetHack 3.6.1 via commit e0537a76 to improve the handling consistency, and makes Nazgul and erinyes immune from being polymorphed into another form to reduce the chances that their kill count does not match the expected number when the game reports them as extinct.
  • In versions up to NetHack 3.6.1:
    • The frequent extinction of erinyes in many finished games forms part of the evidence for the decision to overhaul the mkclass function via commit 0fe6a731 and make monster type distribution much more even—erinyes make up half of all lawful demons that are generated through the old function, compared to roughly 1⁄3 of lawful demons generated with the overhauled function.
  • In NetHack 5.0.0:

Origin

Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:

The Erinyes, more commonly known as the Furies, are female chthonic deities of vengeance that appeared in ancient Greek religion and folklore, and the Romans also referred to them as "Furiae" in their earthly incarnations. The Erinyes play a major part in the "Oresteia" trilogy of tragedies, especially embodying their themes of justice and revenge.

The Erinyes are commonly associated with night and darkness, and dwelled in Erebus where they heard complaints of insolence brought to them by mortals, punishing such crimes by hounding the culprits relentlessly. They were depicted as crones, with varying sources giving them various traits such as snakes for hair, dog's heads, coal black bodies, bat's wings, and blood-shot eyes. While their number is usually left indeterminate, they were often described as three maiden goddesses: Virgil in particular would recognize three named Erinyes, a number and motif which would be carried on into later literature such as the Inferno of Dante Aligheri.

Variants

NetHack variants created prior to the release of NetHack 5.0.0 may retain the behaviors of erinyes from previous versions, while those that do not may implement special behavior of their own for the monsters (including behavior similar to NetHack 5.0.0 and later versions).

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, erinyes have their frequency lowered to 1, but otherwise have the same properties and attributes as they do in NetHack 3.4.3 and previous contemporary versions of NetHack.

An erinys can be summoned by a gypsy telling the hero's fortune if the 9 of trumps representing Justice is drawn, which ignores extinction when creating the monster.[26][27][28] The 11 of trumps representing the Devil will generate a hostile minion of Moloch, which can create an erinys and also respects extinction.[29][30][31]

All of the above information also applies to SlashTHEM.

dNetHack

Main article: Erinys (dNetHack)

In dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack, erinyes are much different from their appearance in NetHack 3.4.3 and previous contemporary versions of NetHack, e.g. they are not limited to a maximum of three per game.

Encyclopedia entry

Erinyes are the Furies of ancient myth.
(Erinys is the singular form.)

[]

Holy and pure, from Zeus Khthonios born
and Persephone, whom lovely locks adorn:
Whose piercing sight, with vision unconfin'd,
surveys the deeds of all the impious kind:
On Fate attendant, punishing the race
(with wrath severe) of deeds unjust and base.
Dark-colour'd queens, whose glittering eyes are bright
with dreadful, radiant, life-destroying, light:
Eternal rulers, terrible and strong,
to whom revenge, and tortures dire belong.

[ LXIX. To the Furies, The Orphic Hymns,
translated by Thomas Taylor ]

In NetHack 3.6.7 and previous versions, their encyclopedia entry reads as follows:

These female-seeming devils named after the Furies of mythology attack hand to hand and poison their unwary victims as well.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5920-L5966: adj_erinys() function
  2. ↑ src/mondata.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1018
  3. ↑ include/monsters.h in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2952-L2953
  4. ↑ src/attrib.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1307-L1310
  5. ↑ src/mhitu.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 394-L410
  6. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5296-L5299
  7. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 4128-L4130
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2280-L2281
  9. ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1541-L1551: mbirth_limit() function governs special monster birth limits
  10. ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 113-L123
  11. ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2603-L2612: summon_furies() function
  12. ↑ src/attrib.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1343-L1351
  13. ↑ src/mkroom.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 482-L491
  14. ↑ dat/sanctum.lua in NetHack 5.0.0, line 111
  15. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5964
  16. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5965
  17. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5926-L5928
  18. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5929-L5931
  19. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5932-L5934
  20. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5935-L5938
  21. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5939-L5941
  22. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5942-L5944
  23. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5945-L5951
  24. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5952-L5954
  25. ↑ src/mon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 5955-L5961
  26. ↑ gypsy.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 163
  27. ↑ gypsy.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 376
  28. ↑ makemon.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1378
  29. ↑ gypsy.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 165
  30. ↑ gypsy.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 376
  31. ↑ minion.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 87
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