Hunting horror
w hunting horror 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 28 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 25 |
| Base experience | 1155 |
| Speed | 16 |
| Base AC | -6 |
| Base MR | 30 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 9000 |
| Nutritional value | 1500 |
| Size | gigantic |
| Resistances | none |
| Resistances conveyed | none |
|
A hunting horror:
| |
| ~ hunting horror tail (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 1 |
| Attacks |
None |
| Base level | 0 |
| Base experience | 8 |
| Speed | 0 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 0 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | tiny |
| Resistances | none |
| Resistances conveyed | none |
|
The hunting horror tail:
| |
- Not to be confused with stumbling, wandering or shambling horrors.
A hunting horror, w~~, is a type of monster that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The hunting horror is a gigantic, carnivorous and worm-like winged animal that is both primordial and extra-terrestrial. It has a slithy and limbless body with an elongated head, and a multi-segmented tail that is similar to the tail of a long worm: unlike the long worm, it will never have more than two of these tail segments at a time, it will not divide if the segments are attacked, and it will quickly regrow any segments that are lost to HP damage.
Hunting horrors are strong and capable of flight, have a tendency to wander while moving, possess third-level low-light vision, and can break down doors and tear through webs. Hunting horrors have 16 points of 'natural' AC and 2 points of 'natural' DR, while their tail segments have 10 points of 'natural' AC. Seeing a hunting horror can lower the hero's sanity and increase their insight.
A hunting horror has a powerful bite attack and is weak to flashes and bursts of light, which is inherited by a hero that polymorphs into a hunting horror: some light-based monster spells, along with light-emitting artifacts such as Sunsword and Sol Valtiva, will instantly reduce a hunting horror (or a hero polymorphed into one) to dust.
Hunting horrors and their tail segments can be warded by a fully-reinforced Elder Sign.
Generation
Hunting horrors are only visible and tangible to heroes with at least 10 insight. Hunting horrors may appear in large groups, and are not randomly generated in Gehennom.
Hunting horrors make up 1⁄100 of the monsters randomly generated in R'lyeh, the last level of the Neutral Quest, and are always generated in groups of 2-6 within the chamber containing the up stair.
Hunting horrors act as the sole minions of Nyarlathotep.
A hunting horror may be one of the monsters generated within a magic item vault.
Hostile hunting horrors can be generated by the summon alien monster spell.
The Hmnyw-Pharaoh has a 2⁄21 chance of creating a hostile hunting horror whenever he summons monsters to his position while he is not visible to the hero (who must have 40 insight to see him)—if the Hmnyw-Pharaoh is visible, he instead has a 1⁄8 chance of creating a hunting horror whenever he summons monsters to his position. Hunting horrors generated this way are not treated as summoned or temporary and ignore extinction.
The Good Neighbor has a very low 1⁄2660 chance of creating a hostile hunting horror whenever she summons monsters to her position while she is not visible to the hero (who must have 40 insight to see her). Hunting horrors generated this way are not treated as summoned or temporary and ignore extinction.
Strategy
The hunting horror is fairly fast at 16 speed and its bite can be very dangerous to a hero with the insight required for it to appear, though you can take advantage of its wandering behavior to attack the tail segments without as much fear of retaliation.
Origin
The hunting horror is based on the description of creatures that appear in The Lurker at the Threshold, a 1945 horror novel by American writer August Derleth that is based on short fragments written by H. P. Lovecraft, who died in 1937—the novel was published as a collaboration between the two authors, and according to both Derleth and critic S. T. Joshi, under 1,200 of the novel's 50,000 words were written by Lovecraft. The fragment describing the creatures that inspired the hunting horrors serves as the encyclopedia entry.
Encyclopedia entry
And in the air about him were great viperine creatures,
which had curiously distorted heads, and grotesquely great
clawed appendages, supporting themselves with ease by the
aid of black rubbery wings of singularly monstrous
dimensions.
