Evelyn

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Name	evelyn
Appearance	ornate broken hand-crossbow
Damage vs. small	1d2
Damage vs. large	1d2
To-hit bonus	+2
Weapon skill	firearms
Size	one-handed
Base price	50 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	10
Material	iron

An Evelyn is a type of gun that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. It is a one-handed launcher that uses the firearms skill and is made of iron. It has a range of 8 squares and a rate of fire of -2 and gains the focus fire expert trait at Skilled and Expert. Evelyn can fire bullets, silver bullets and blood-spears.

Generation

Evelyns do not randomly generate.

One Evelyn is placed in the Undead Hunter quest goal level.

Evelyns can be created through smithing by a character who has fully identified one before and is at least skilled in firearms, but cannot be made by Smiths.

Deminymphs that are generated as "Undead Hunters" receive an Evelyn with enchantment of 0–3 as part of their inventory in ¹⁄₂₀ of cases. They will also receive: 60 bullets ¹⁄₃ and silver bullets otherwise, 20 blood bullets ¹⁄₃ of the time and a nightmare's bullet mold ¹⁄₆₀ of the time.

Description

Evelyns are precision launchers and gain a precision damage multiplier based on skill when fired with at least 19 dexterity. At Skilled, Evelyns gain +1x base damage against monsters with distinct physiology, increased to +2x at Expert. Projectiles fired from an Evelyn also benefit from a bonus from impurity, gaining a flat +(^imp⁄₂) to damage. At all skill levels, Evelyns fire 1 shot, unless the Sansara mirror is being wielded in the offhand, in which case it is either 1 or 3 at Expert. Quickdrawing increases this to a flat 3 shots.

Strategy

The Evelyn has some of the highest damage potential for defilement Undead Hunters, especially Vampire Undead Hunters, and pairs with blood-spears for very high damage output which doesn't fall off due to the projectile's versatility and growth potential through smithing and culting. Non-defilement Undead Hunters still benefit from the weapon's precision bonus and may wish to two-weapon it with their main-hand.

Origins

The Evelyn is a weapon featuring in the 2015 game Bloodborne, found in Forsaken Cainhurst Castle. Its item description reads: "Special pistol used by Cainhurst knights. The Evelyn uses Quicksilver Bullets, just as any workshop firearm, but the Cainhurst variant relies more on bloodtinge. Lovingly named after a woman and graced with an intricate design, Evelyns were adored by Cainhurst knights." It is used by Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower in The Old Hunters DLC. It is a weapon that scales on bloodtinge, but is otherwise very similar to the Hunter pistol, with their most striking difference being their appearances.

Etymological origins of the name Evelyn point to the Norman French "Aveline" (also spelled "Avelina"), which itself is the diminutive of "Ava". The weapon is sometimes believed to be an incarnation of the Avelyn, a variant spelling of the Norman French name, and is phonetically very close to Evelyn. This is similar to the moonlight sword's recurrence in most of Fromsoft's major installments. Another variant spelling of Aveline is the Irish Eibhlín, later anglicized into Eileen, though the gun otherwise has very little to do with Eileen the Crow.

Ernst Förstermann's interpretation of the words origins and meaning is that its roots are Germanic, from the Proto-Indo-European "*h₂ékʷeh₂" (likely "water";originated Latin "acqua") and which originated the word "Aue" in modern German, meaning either a (vegetated) riverbank or alluvial meadow, a river island or denoting an archaic term for female sheep (cognate with ewe). Other theories on its origins posit that it is derived from a combination of the names Eve (biblical, Hebrew "Chawwah") and Lynn ("lake" in welsh), or that it carries the meaning of “desired” or “wished for”, possibly due to a confusion with the Latin "aveo", related to the English "avarice". Originates from the Proto-Indo-European word "*h₂éwis", later "avis" in Latin—both likely meaning bird—but lacks any concrete etymological backing. The name can be interpreted as meaning "islet", "brook", "lamb", "little hazelnut" (false cognate in modern french) or "small lake" if taken literally, or more figuratively, to mean "born of the river", "born of the river meadow" or "desired child". Miyazaki, the game's director, had stated in a previous interview that he placed importance on names when creating Bloodborne, however that is all that can definitively be said about it.

Its appearance suggests a length of around 60-70cm, the same length as the Reiterpallasch when held, rather unusual for a flintlock pistol and distinctly longer than any other pistol in the game and approaching the length of a short rifle and has a non-functional flash pan and missing flint. It takes after french cavalry horse pistols from the mid 1700s or some french & Indian war pistols, seen towards the late 1700s. The British "long" dragoon, ironically enough, isn't as long as the Evelyn. It is clearly inspired by the ottoman style "kubur" (holster) flintlocks of the Balkan region, likely modelled after the "ledenica" (icicle, icy) and "zlatka" (gold, golden) Balkan versions seen between the 17th-19th century, built during the Ottoman Empire's reign of the Balkans. Naturally, they were refitted to be ornamented with copper details to fit Cainhurt's red theme. The red gem inlay is reminiscent of Algerian use of red coral as decorative embellishments in some historic gun models, especially as seen in diplomatic gifts around the 19th century.

The gun's in-game and accompanying animations are very quick and straightforward, with animations for shooting while standing, shooting while coming from a roll into a crouch and a fast draw animation. The standing and standing fast draw both show the gun being shot sideways, with heavy recoil. The roll-into-crouch animation instead leads the hunter to fire from a kneeling position, slightly steadying themselves beforehand. Reloading is not shown, which might've otherwise shown whether the ramrod was functional or decorative, as was the case with many of the ledenicas, where the actual ramrod, and sometimes also the powder flask, were carried around the neck.