Silver bullet (dNetHack)
| ) | |
|---|---|
| Name | silvet bullet |
| Appearance | silvet bullet |
| Damage vs. small | 2d8+4 (+1d20) |
| Damage vs. large | 2d6+4 (+1d20) |
| To-hit bonus | +0 |
| Weapon skill | firearms |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 15 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 1 |
| Material | silver |
- For the ammunition in SLASH'EM and its derivatives, see silver bullet (SLASH'EM).
A silver bullet is a type of weapon that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack. The silver bullet is a tiny futuristic projectile that uses the firearms skill and is designed as ammunition for the same types of firearms that can use standard bullets (which can also be silver as a result of the object materials system). It naturally has a default material of silver, and appears as a silver pellet when unidentified.
Generation
Anachrononauts, Androids and Undead Hunters start each game with knowledge of the silver bullet's unidentified appearance. Heroes in a few roles can start the game with silver bullets as ammo for their weapons:
- Vampire Anachrononauts start with a stack of 50 uncursed +0 silver bullets for their pair of submachine guns.
- Hedrow Anachrononauts start with a stack of 30 uncursed +0 silver bullets for their sniper rifle.
Silver bullets are not randomly generated, though they can be found in bones and can only wished for by Tourists. They cannot be created by smithing unless the hero is an Undead Hunter that knows their appearance and is Skilled in firearms.
A chest in the northeastern-most hall of the base on the Anachrononaut quest home level contains 3 stacks of silver bullets—these stacks are not present in the Android quest.
A few monsters are generated with silver bullets as ammo for their firearms:
- Myrkalfar warriors are generated with 30 +3 non-cursed silver bullets for their sniper rifle.
- Commanders in the future (i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest) are always generated with 20-400 silver bullets as ammo for their holy-property +3 silver pistols.
- Dwarven monsters created at level generation in the future (i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest) are always generated with a stack of 100–199 silver bullets that have an enchantment ranging from +1 to +3, and acts as ammo for their pistol.
- Deminymphs that are given Undead Hunter kits have a chance of being generated with a pistol and 3–62 standard bullets as ammo, and there is a 1⁄3 chance those bullets will be made into silver bullets.
An Anachrononaut or Tourist can convert silver slingstones and rockets into bullets by applying a bullet fabber and feeding them into the device—a silver slingstone produces 2 silver bullets, while a rocket produces 10.
Regular bullets can be converted into silver bullets by The Silver Flame.
Invoking the Annulus while it is in the form of a BFG can be used to create ammo and choose silver bullets from the subsequent menu, generating silver bullets with a random enchantment and the same beatitude as the Annulus: this effect produces either 32-60 silver bullets with a blessed Annulus and 21-40 otherwise—if cursed, the ammo's enchantment will never be more than +0, and if blessed the ammo's enchantment will always be at least +0.
Description
Silver bullets are compatible for use with the following firearm weapons:
As firearms ammunition, silver bullets must be fired or "thrown" from an appropriate launcher to deal their actual base damage, and properly-fired bullets will always mulch whether or not they hit their target. A BFG can fire a minimum of 6 silver bullets per shot at a range of 100 squares before applying the user's firearm skill and other bonuses, and The Annulus in BFG form can fire 7 silver bullets per shot before bonuses are applied. Silver bullets deal piercing damage when properly fired.
An Anachrononaut or Tourist can convert 10 silver bullets into a rocket by applying a bullet fabber and feeding them into the device.
Origin
A silver bullet is a folkloric weapon that is often employed as one of the few effective means to hurt or kill a werewolf, vampire, witch, or other supernatural being. The term 'silver bullet' is also employed as a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" or magic bullet that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections.
Some authors asserted that the idea of the werewolf's supposed vulnerability to bullets cast from silver dates back to the Beast of Gévaudan, a man-eating animal killed by the hunter Jean Chastel in the year 1767; however, the idea that Chastel purportedly using a gun loaded with silver bullets is derived from a distortion of a detail found in Henri Pourrat's work, where the French writer imagines that the beast was shot thanks to medals of the Virgin Mary, worn by Jean Chastel in his hat and then melted down to make bullets. Similarly, Swedish folklore and other similar accounts tend to describe silver bullets as a catch-all weapon against creatures like wizards or the skogsrå that are "hard" against regular ammunition.
These associations from folklore have carried over into popular culture, such as fictional Wild West heroes that used silver bullets to symbolize their purity of heart (e.g. the various incarnations of the Lone Ranger) and monster slayers of the fantasy-horror genre. The 1941 film The Wolf Man and its sequels and spinoffs codified silver in general as the definitive death-dealer material for werewolves, to the point where this weakness is often regarded as exclusive to lycanthropes: notable film examples include the 1985 Silver Bullet and the 2005 Cursed, with the latter being in part a self-referential spoof of the 1941 film.
Of note is that real-life experiments with bullets cast from silver have shown them to be slightly less effective than ordinary lead bullets, as they have a lower density and are less malleable, and the high cost of silver means that they have never been produced in any real volume.
