Winged gargoyle
g winged gargoyle 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 11 |
| Attacks |
Claw 3d6, claw 3d6, bite 3d4 |
| Base level | 9 |
| Base experience | 207 |
| Speed | 15 |
| Base AC | −2 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | −12 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1200 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Stoning |
| Resistances conveyed | None |
|
A winged gargoyle:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line403 |
A winged gargoyle, g, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The winged gargoyle is a strong, thick-skinned and oviparous humanoid that is a stronger version of the gargoyle, and is considered a lord to their kind. They are unbreathing and capable of flight, and will seek out magical items to pick up.
Winged 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 winged gargoyle corpse or tin grants temporary stoning resistance and cures stoning.Contents
Generation
Randomly-generated winged gargoyles are always created hostile. 1⁄77 of eggs laid by winged gargoyles will hatch into winged gargoyles, with the rest hatching into gargoyles.[1]
Strategy
Winged gargoyles are even more rare than normal gargoyles, and will often begin appearing once you are around the double-digits in dungeon depth and experience level. Their claw and bite attacks are stronger, and their slightly worse AC of -2 is more than offset by the higher damage and 15 speed. Wands and spells can be effective, especially if a hero lacks the speed, good weapons and/or AC to deal with one - like normal gargoyles, winged gargoyles lack a magic resistance score, but should still be taken down quickly; a wand of slow monster can bring them down to a similar speed level as their wing-less kin.
As a pet and polyform, while winged gargoyles are faster and generally stronger than normal gargoyles, their wings make them unable to wear body armor and limit their ability to obtain useful intrinsics and MC. Winged gargoyles are still quite useful in both regards, since they are strong, inediate and breathless, and their stoning resistance is valuable against monsters such as cockatrices.
History
The winged gargoyle first appears in NetHack 3.2.0.
Origin
Gargoyles are semi-decorative figures carved from stone and primarily associated with medieval and Gothic architecture, though the concept of animal-shaped water diversions existed centuries prior. Gargoyles are specifically employed in order 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 and wings to achieve the desired distance from the wall.
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.
Mythical gargoyles are usually depicted as winged and are directly based on the carved stone figures - some fiction featuring them presents them as animated statues or living statue-like being similar to golems, while others depict them as beings of demonic affinity, e.g. the 1972 television film Gargoyles that provides their encyclopedia entry; still others consider them as vessels for demonic possession, as in the popular 1984 movie Ghostbusters.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, a statue trap with a winged gargoyle statue is generated on the outskirts of Grund's Stronghold at level creation.
Doppelgangers that reach experience level 9 can reliably #youpoly into winged gargoyles to take advantage of their innate strength and stoning resistance, as with normal gargoyles - choosing between the forms ultimately comes down to whether a hero values natural speed and higher damage versus body armor slots.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, winged 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 ]
