Marionette
Marionette, Puppet of Screams is a spirit that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack.
Ritual, seal and taboo
Marionette's seal must be drawn on a square inside a graveyard room, The Lost Tomb or the Valley of the Dead.
To remain bound to Marionette, the hero must not quaff holy water or a potion of starlight, nor are they allowed to remove cursed by reading a scroll of remove curse, casting the remove curse spell, have items uncursed through successful prayer, or perform any action that replicates these exact effects.
Mark
A hero that has Marionette bound will have metal wires sprouting from their elbows and the backs of their knees. These wires can be seen from a distance, but can be disguised with a worn suit of armor that is metallic and covers the torso.
Benefits
While bound, Marionette grants the hero stoning resistance along with skill in axes and matter spells.
Marionette's active powers are as follows:
- Root Shout: The hero fires a beam of force in a chosen direction, dealing 1d5 spirit dice of damage. The beam digs through walls as a wand of digging does.
- Yank Wires: The hero flings themselves in the chosen direction as if they threw a heavy iron ball that is chained to them.
Her passive powers are as follows:
- Marionette Shadow: The hero's melee weapon attacks also target the square behind the defending monster.
- Marionette's Edge: The hero's melee weapons gain +2 to dice size when attacking non-adjacent monsters.
- Root Fingers: The hero can destroy boulders which they cannot ordinarily move if they try to push them.
Strategy
The Yank Wires power should be used with great care around water and hazardous terrain such as lava, and will result in wounded legs if used when the hero is stuck in a bear trap.
As a monster
| ' Marionette (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 35 |
| Attacks |
long reach touch 4d6 yanks you to them, weapon 4d10 physical |
| Base level | 31 |
| Base experience | 1414 |
| Speed | 8 |
| Base AC | -4 |
| Base MR | 60 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 4500 |
| Nutritional value | 0 |
| Size | large |
| Resistances | fire resistance, cold resistance, sleep resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance
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Marionette:
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In notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, Marionette, ', also appears as a monster that can be summoned by an Illithanachronounbinder. She is a strong, mindless, humanoid-shaped, and thick-skinned golem-like entity that is unbreathing and thus amphibious. Marionette will collect items such as weapons and armor, lacks HP regeneration and will follow the hero to other levels if she is adjacent. Like many summoned spirits, Marionette cannot be made tame.
Marionette has a long-reaching attack that can pull targets to her, as well as a strong weapon attack. She possesses fire resistance, cold resistance, sleep resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, and death resistance.
Marionette is poisonous to consume, which primarily comes up if she is actively or passively abducted by Ahazu, but consuming Marionette this way ignores poison.
Generation
Marionette is first generated when summoned from her seal by an Illithanachronounbinder. She is always created hostile, and is not a valid polymorph form or genocide target.
Marionette is generated with a battle-axe and the uncursed Puppet Wire: The Puppet Wire is an artifact grappling hook that has a +1d4 to-hit bonus and deals doubled damage.
Marionette does not leave a corpse upon death, instead dropping 2-8 grappling hooks.
Strategy
Below this point, there are major spoilers for the Illithanachronounbinder role. They can be accessed by selecting the "Role spoiler" tab.
If Marionette is killed after being summoned, she can be encountered again in the Void, a branch accessed by opening the high altar of Ilsensine the Fallen as an Illithanachronounbinder using the invoke effect of The Elder Cerebral Fluid. Marionette is placed randomly along with many other spirits of the near void on the second floor of the branch, and is generated with the "whispers" template, which makes her nonliving.
Messages
- You notice metal wires sticking out of the ground within the seal.
- You attempted to bind Marionette.
- In fact, there are wires sticking up all around you.
- Shrieks and screams echo down from whence the wires come.
- You feel sharp pains in your elbows and knees!
- It seems that you, are but a puppet.
- You successfully bound Marionette to yourself.
- You hear screaming!
- You feel sharp pains in your elbows and knees!
- As above, if you are blind.
- The wires wrap around your weapon!
- You successfully bound Marionette to the Pen of the Void.
- Something tangles around your weapon!
- As above, if you are blind.
- But they don't do anything interesting.
- You failed to bind Marionette due to a lack of open slots for spirits of the Near Void.
- You hear the sounds of digging, and of bones rattling together.
- You performed the binding ritual incorrectly.
Encyclopedia entry
We are all puppets of death
We dance
We sing
Until we cut the strings…
