Profane gifts

Eating the corpse of a keeper of Grundlēas changes your body for good. You get the keeper’s own gift for certain, then one or more gifts drawn at random from a table of good, bad, and mixed changes, and the meal pulls you hard toward evil. Nothing takes a profane gift away again except another gift.

Every keeper’s corpse gives profane gifts, from Gnægan the Rat King on the tenth floor to Nīðdraca the Hate-Wyrm on the hundredth. The deeper the keeper, the more gifts its meal draws, and the more of them come from the greater and dire tiers.

Eating a keeper’s corpse

A keeper’s corpse is eaten like any corpse, from the floor or your pack, and the game does not ask you first. It never rots (it is everlasting), so the meal can wait as long as you like. It feeds you as a medium creature’s corpse does.

When the last turn of the meal is done, this happens, in this order:

1. The corpse’s own words: “It is rats, many rats, and none of them fresh.”
2. What any fresh corpse does (what a corpse gives you). A keeper’s corpse never comes back up.
3. The keeper’s own gift, its signature gift: its line, then “You are Rat-king’s court.”
4. Each roll on the gift table, one after another: the gift’s line, then “You are Hungering.”
5. The pull toward evil (below), with a line if it moves you into another band.
6. It feeds you.

A meal cut short (something comes into view) does nothing at all: the corpse stays where it was, whole.

Gifts are talents that nobody picks. They show on the Talents page under Profane, a bad one marked as a flaw, as a birth sign’s flaw is. The game never says which gift is good or bad, nor any of their numbers; this page does.

Each keeper’s own gift

Each keeper’s corpse gives its signature gift for certain, never drawn by anyone else. The rolls column is how many gifts the meal draws; the last three columns are each roll’s chance of each tier of the table.

A gift’s resistance adds to the rest of yours, with no cap on the total, but at most 75 % of it ever counts (see resistance). So a signature’s 100 % is 75 % with 25 to spare: Rime-blooded keeps you at 75 % to cold even beside a 25 % weakness to it. No gift makes you immune. Eat both wyrms and their gifts add up: 100 − 25 = 75 % to fire and to cold alike, all of it counting.

Hate-wyrm’s heart lets you breathe fire, as the Wyvern’s Fire breath does but far stronger. It is used from the abilities menu, listed under Profane. If your sign already gave you Fire breath you still have one breath, listed under your birth sign: the stronger one, whichever came first.

How a gift is drawn

Each roll works the same way:

1. The tier. The keeper’s odds pick the lesser, greater, or dire tier.
2. The gift. One gift of that tier is picked by its weight, among the gifts you may take: ones you do not hold, that no gift you hold rules out, and that are not barred to your race.
3. An empty tier. If you may take none of that tier, the roll moves to the next tier up, then down: lesser, then greater, then dire; dire, then greater, then lesser. If all three are empty, “Nothing more of it will take in you.” and the roll gives nothing.

Each gift is given in full before the next roll, so a roll never draws what the one before it ruled out. The odds in the table below are a tier’s odds while none of its gifts is held or barred. As you gather gifts the rest of the tier shares the odds, by the same weights.

For example, the lesser tier’s weights add up to 124, and Hungering weighs 12: 9.7 % of a lesser roll. Hold Thick-blooded (weight 10), which also rules out Paper-skinned (weight 8), and the tier’s open weights add up to 106: Hungering is then 12 in 106, 11.3 %.

Every tier holds good, bad, and mixed gifts, so no roll is ever safe. By weight the lesser tier is 45 % good, 27 % mixed, and 27 % bad; the greater 45 %, 28 %, and 26 %; the dire 37 %, 25 %, and 38 %.

Gifts with other gifts

Some gifts change what happens to the others:

• Replaces: taking it takes the named gift away first. It is the greater form of the lesser gift (Wyrm’s hunger over Hungering).
• Undoes: if you hold the named gift, the meal takes that gift away and gives you nothing else (Withered over Oak-hearted). If you do not hold it, you get this gift as usual.
• Never with: you cannot hold both. While you hold one, the other is never drawn.

Every such link in the table:

Hill-thewed has nothing that undoes it. A replacing gift you draw while holding neither lesser form is simply taken, and the lesser forms can still be drawn after it.

There is no cure. No temple, potion, scroll, or prayer removes a profane gift. Only a later gift that replaces or undoes it takes it away.

Gifts that change your body

Some gifts change more than your numbers:

• Slots. Horns, hooves, claws, and wing stubs bar the helm, boot, glove, and cloak slots; a sixth finger opens a ring slot. What no longer fits falls to the floor as the gift takes (see Barred and opened slots).
• Claws. Clawed bare hands hit harder and can make a foe bleed. With a weapon in your hand the claws do nothing.
• Eyes. Deep-eyed gives you the eyes of the darkvision type, whatever your race, and sees farther into the dark besides. Barrow-eyed and Mere-eyed are its lesser forms, and Dim-eyed never comes with any of them.
• Kin. Rat-king’s court makes vermin neutral to you, as Beast-friend does animals, until you attack one: from then on that kind of creature is hostile again, for good. No drawn quest asks you to kill a kind it keeps neutral.
• Mana. Fell-minded gives you a quarter more mana at most, on top of what its Intelligence adds.
• Rising again. Twice-born is the Phoenix’s Rise from the ashes, with the same numbers, but a rising of its own. Anyone Twice-born rises once. A Phoenix who is Twice-born rises once by the sign (twice with Second rising) and then once more by the gift. The Talents page marks it spent once it is used.
• Light. Ember-veined makes you shed a dim red light at all times, enough to see the cells beside you, and enough for everything about to see you by. Under a full moon it burns as brightly as the Phoenix’s Inner light. Wyrm-blooded puts it out.
• The stare. Stone-eyed gives you the Basilisk’s Transfixing stare, used from the abilities menu. If your sign gave you one already, you keep one stare, the stronger.

The gift table

The pull toward evil

Every keeper’s corpse you eat is a deed worth −300 to your alignment, the largest single sin in the game. Like every deed it counts in full when you lean the other way, and for less the further toward evil you already are. From Neutral at 0, one meal takes you to −300, which is Callous. A Saintly character at 1000 falls to 700, still Good, and an Evil one at −500 only to −650.

A paladin’s zeal empties at the meal, as it does at any sin. Once you fall below Kind, a priest’s holy gifts stop working (see What it changes).

See also: Food and corpses, The dungeons one by one, and Talents.