Gargoyle
g gargoyle 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 8 |
| Attacks |
Claw 2d6, claw 2d6, bite 2d4 |
| Base level | 6 |
| Base experience | 95 |
| Speed | 10 |
| Base AC | -4 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | -9 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1000 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Stoning |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A gargoyle:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line397 |
A gargoyle, g, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The gargoyle is a strong and thick-skinned humanoid monster that is unbreathing, and is part of the gremlin monster class.
Gargoyles have two claw attacks and a bite attack, and possess stoning resistance - they are one of the few monsters with the property that is neither acidic nor capable of stoning other monsters on their own.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit 071d79dc, eating a gargoyle corpse or tin grants temporary stoning resistance and cures stoning.Contents
Generation
Randomly-generated gargoyles are always created hostile. 76⁄77 of eggs laid by winged gargoyles will hatch into gargoyles, though they are not oviparous and cannot grow up into winged gargoyles.[1]
Strategy
A gargoyle can hit fairly hard with its bite and two claw attacks, and has a natural AC of -4, which may result in death for adventurers who fail to take it seriously. They are somewhat slow at 10 speed, however, and have absolutely no magic resistance, making them very vulnerable to wands and spells if the hero can successfully land them.
As a pet and polyself form, gargoyles are somewhat decent - they are strong, breathless and inediate, their immunity to stoning makes dispatching cockatrices easy, and they are capable of wearing all armor.
History
The gargoyle first appears in SLASH 6, and is introduced to vanilla NetHack in NetHack 3.2.0.
Origin
A gargoyle is a semi-decorative figure carved from stone and primarily associated with medieval and Gothic architecture, though the concept of animal-shaped water diversions existed centuries prior. The term originates from the French "gargouille", which in English roughly means "throat" or "gullet"; its root is the Latin "gar" ("to swallow"), associated with the gurgling sound of water. Gargoyles are used to divide the flow of rainwater and direct it away from the sides of a building - a trough is cut in the back of a gargoyle, and the rainwater typically exits through the open mouth, preventing it from eroding the mortar between masonry walls; such gargoyles are typically given elongated forms to achieve the desired distance from the wall, and may optionally be given wings as well.
Mythical gargoyles are directly based on the carved stone figures, and have been conceived as animated statues or living statue-like being similar to golems; some works depict them as beings of demonic affinity, e.g. the 1972 television film Gargoyles that provides their encyclopedia entry, or else vessels for demonic possession, as in the popular 1984 movie Ghostbusters. The concept of the gargoyle as a guardian partly derives from the French legend of a dragon-like monster called Gargouille (or Goji), which was subdued or captured by Romanus of Rouen with the aid of either a crucifix or a condemned man that acted as the sole volunteer. The monster is led back to Rouen and burned, with its head and neck preserved due to being tempered by the fire breath; the head was mounted on the walls of the newly built church as a ward for protection and scaring off evil spirits.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, gargoyles are the only "stony" monsters immune to the rays from a wand of digging or the spell of dig, unlike other stony monsters such as the closely-related statue gargoyle.
Doppelgangers that reach experience level 6 can reliably #youpoly into gargoyles to take advantage of their innate strength and stoning resistance. Tamed gargoyles have a chance of turning traitor, unless you have more HP than them.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, chatting to a tame gargoyle will cause it to ask "if you've seen Elisa Maza"; this is a reference to the popular Disney animated series Gargoyles.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, gargoyles can appear among the court of a vampire lord or vampire lady-ruled throne room.
Encyclopedia entry
And so it came to pass that while Man ruled on Earth, the gargoyles waited, lurking, hidden from the light. Reborn every 600 years in Man's reckoning of time, the gargoyles joined battle against Man to gain dominion over the Earth.
In each coming, the gargoyles were nearly destroyed by Men who flourished in greater numbers. Now it has been so many hundreds of years that it seems the ancient statues and paintings of gargoyles are just products of Man's imagination. In this year, with Man's thoughts turned toward the many ills he has brought among himself, Man has forgotten his most ancient adversary, the gargoyles.
_Gargoyles_, written by Stephen and Elinor Karpf ]
