Gremlin leader
| g gremlin leader (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 11 |
| Attacks |
Claw 1d8 physical, claw 1d8 physical, bite 1d6 physical, claw 0d0 intrinsic theft |
| Base level | 8 |
| Base experience | ? |
| Speed | 12 |
| Base AC | 2 |
| Base MR | 25 |
| Alignment | -9 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 100 |
| Nutritional value | 20 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | poison resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | poison resistance (33%) |
|
A gremlin leader:
| |
| Reference | SlashTHEM - src/monst.c, line 877 |
A gremlin leader, g, is a type of monster that appears in SlashTHEM. The gremlin leader is a small chaotic humanoid monster that is a stronger version of the gremlin. Like gremlins and other monsters in the gremlin monster class, they are capable of swimming, can be seen via infravision, and can follow the hero to other levels if they are adjacent. Gremlin leaders will not divide on contact with water as normal gremlins do, and lack their unique weakness to flashes and bursts of light. Tame gremlin leaders may turn traitor.
Gremlin leaderss possess two normal claw attacks, a normal bite attack, and a third claw attack that deals no damage, but has a 1⁄10 chance of intrinsic theft at night if the gremlin leader is not cancelled—the attack is intended to work the same as the gremlin's, but is not coded properly.
A gremlin leader corpse is poisonous to eat, and eating a gremlin leader corpse or tin has a chance of granting poison resistance.
Chatting to a gremlin leader causes it to laugh, with one of four different messages.
Generation
Randomly-generated gremlin leaders may be peaceful towards a chaotic hero that does not have the Amulet of Yendor.
Origin
Gremlins are mischievous creatures that originate in myths among airmen, and became popularized during World War II among airmen of the Royal Air Force (RAF) units, who blamed gremlins for otherwise inexplicable accidents which sometimes occurred during their flights. Gremlins were also thought at one point to have enemy sympathies, but investigations revealed that enemy aircraft had similar and equally inexplicable mechanical problems. As such, gremlins were portrayed as equal opportunity tricksters, taking no sides in the conflict, but acting out their mischief from their own self-interest. The concept of gremlins as scapegoats eventually became important to pilot morale.
The aviator Pauline Gower's 1938 novel The ATA: Women with Wings has one of the earliest post-WWII references to gremlins: in the novel, Scotland is described as "gremlin country", a mystical and rugged territory where scissor-wielding gremlins cut the wires of biplanes when unsuspecting pilots were about. An article by Hubert Griffith in the servicemen's fortnightly Royal Air Force Journal, dated 18 April 1942, also chronicles the appearance of gremlins and states that such stories had been in existence for several years, with later recollections of it having been told by Battle of Britain Spitfire pilots as early as 1940. Folklorist John W. Hazen states that some people derive the name from the Old English word gremian, "to vex", while Paul Quinion suggested that the term is a blend of the word "goblin" with Fremlin, the manufacturer of the most common beer available in the Royal Air Force of the 1920s.
British author Roald Dahl is credited with popularizing the concept of gremlins, having himself served in 80 Squadron of the Royal Air Force in the Middle East. In January 1942, he was transferred to Washington, D.C. as Assistant Air attaché at the British Embassy, where he wrote his first children's novel, The Gremlins, featuring the titular characters as tiny men who lived on RAF fighters. Though plans to create a live-action or animated full-length feature film (and then an animated short) fell through, Disney managed to have the story published in the December 1942 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. At Dahl's urging, Random House published a revised version of the story as a picture book in early 1943, which was considered an international success.
The concept of gremlins that multiply in water and have a weakness to light comes from the 1984 movie Gremlins, produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Joe Dante—the film prominently features a small and furry "mogwai" that spawns more malignant mogwai upon contact with water; these latter mogwai mutate into the evil and destructive titular creatures when fed after midnight, and at least one of them is killed by disintegration from light.
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