Mennas

Mennas A
HP	150
HD	19
XP	6578
Speed	15
AC	15
EV	28
Will	202
Attack1	30 (hit: plain)
Attack2	20 (hit: plain)
Resistances	rPois+, rElec, rN+, rHoly
Vulnerabilities	none
Habitat	land
Intelligence	High
Uses	Weapons & armour
Holiness	Holy
Size	Medium
Type	angel, angel
Flags	Fighter Flying Spellcaster See invisible Speaks Glows Unique

There was once a human priest named Mennas. He travelled far and wide preaching of Zin to any who would listen, going even so far as to travel into Orcish lands, preaching to orcs about laws and mercy. By all accounts the orcs were not happy with Mennas. They demanded he swear Beogh was the one true god, and when Mennas remained silent they cut out his tongue. Whether or not this angel is that same Mennas is something of a mystery, as he seems to have difficulty speaking.

Mennas is an incredibly dangerous unique angel, the only one who normally appears in the main Dungeon not locked behind a wall. He is fast, extremely durable, and disables many player abilities with Silence, making him a notorious menace to spellcasters. He is neutral towards worshippers of Elyvilon, The Shining One, and Zin.

Spells: Silence, Confuse, and Minor Healing.

Location

• The Dungeon:20-27
• The Swamp:5
• The Snake Pit:5
• The Shoals:5
• The Spider's Nest:5
• The Vaults:4-8
• The Crypt
• The Hall of Blades
• The Tomb

Strategy

Mennas has the speed of a centaur warrior, hits harder than a stone giant, and is almost as evasive as Ereshkigal. He has standard angel gear: a large shield and holy wrath weapon, making him exceedingly dangerous to undead or lichform characters. Needless to say, Mennas is hard to kill.

Once Mennas sees you, it may already be too late. He's faster than most species, and once he gets even moderately close, his 6-tile Silence aura prevents casting spells, reading scrolls, and all invocable abilities. Most traditional escape methods are impossible:

• You can't read a scroll of teleportation, scroll of blinking, or command your allies while silenced.
• Hasting yourself with a potion of speed or wand of hasting will only bring you up to his speed, which is almost never enough to escape with if he's already in melee range. Hasted centaurs, spriggans, and those with boots of running should be fine though.
• Mennas' magic resistance is far too high for a wand of slowing, wand of confusion, or wand of paralysis to affect him.
• Even Trog's berserk ability requires the ability to speak.

Worshiping a good god makes Mennas neutral to you. Failing that, a well-equipped, mid-level tank character should be able to overcome his defenses. High-level casters or followers of Trog can also handle him easily enough if they spot him at the edge of their LOS (even Mennas will grudgingly succumb to Fire Storm or an army of berserk summoned allies). Anyone else may wish to escape immediately:

• Escape scrolls work fine so long as you are outside of his silence radius. Don't wait until it's too late!
• Evocable escape routes (a wand of teleportation, ring of teleportation, Warpwright card, artefact with Blink ability, etc.) still function as normal, though waiting for a teleport to kick in will be painful. Think ahead: a wand of teleportation should be one of your first shop purchases.
• Hasting yourself with at least two tiles between you and him will let any non-naga species make it to a staircase without him catching up and following you.
• Non-Trog forms of berserk function, giving you an equivalent speed boost to Haste. Just don't let it wear off before you've escaped!
• Nemelex Xobeh's followers retain full use of all their decks.
• The Blink mutation works as normal.
• Although they're uncommon and dangerous, hopping down a shaft will work.

History

• Mennas was added in version 0.8.