Maurice

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Maurice f
HP	39-80
HD	5
XP	520
Speed	10
AC	1
EV	13
Will	40
Attack1	9 (hit: steal)
Attack2	9 (bite: antimagic)
Resistances	None
Vulnerabilities	None
Habitat	Land
Intelligence	Human
Uses	Weapons & armour Starting equipment Open doors
Holiness	Natural
Size	Medium
Type	vine stalker, vine stalker
Flags	Speaks Warm-blooded Unique Male Regenerates No skeleton

A sly, conniving thief. A self-proclaimed legend, he was one of the most skilled and crafty of the thieves and rogues lured by the Orb. The magical parasitic vines that have claimed his body still wish to continue his life's work, with a back-up plan of both a vicious magic-drinking maw and potent wands. “‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound.” -Charles Dickens, _Oliver Twist_. 1838.

Useful Info

Maurice the Thief is a unique vine stalker thief who is perfectly happy to separate you from your hard-earned loot. He likes nothing more than sneaking up on you while invisible to pick your pockets as he attacks you, dealing damage and taking a random item (or gold) from your inventory. Thankfully, he drops whatever gear he stole upon death, assuming he hasn't used it yet. He generates with a cloak and dagger or short sword, some gold, and often a decent wand.

Unlike all other monsters, Maurice can pickup items you've seen or dropped.

Location

• The Dungeon:7-12
• The Orcish Mines

Spells

Spell set I
Slot1	Invisibility	Wizard flag
Slot2	Sprint	Wizard flag
Slot3	Blink	Wizard flag
Slot4	Teleport Self	Emergency flag, Wizard flag

Tips & Tricks

• Being able to see invisible will give you the chance to blast him on sight instead of letting him start the battle by taking your best attack wand.
• Poisoning him will let you continue doing damage over time even when he blinks or teleports away from you.
• His willpower and hit dice are both low, leaving him open to disabling spells like Hexes or Mephitic Cloud.
• If you have a wand of polymorph at hand and use it, he'll probably lose his weapon and his invisibility won't hamper you any longer.

History

• Prior to 0.32, Maurice had only 20 Will.
• Prior to 0.31, Maurice was a human and didn't have an antimagic bite. He spawned a bit later, on D:8-13 instead of D:7-12.
• In 0.18, Maurice can now steal from the floor as well as your inventory.

Maurice Scumming

Prior to 0.10, uniques who were sent to the Abyss and then followed the player back out would not be removed from the Abyss spawn list: only killing them in the Abyss would do that. This led to an obscure but powerful exploit with Maurice. Let him steal an item, duplicate the monster, and voila, you have two items.

In this game, the player used this exploit to duplicate scrolls of acquirement. Because Maurice would steal entire stacks of items as opposed to just a single one, the growth in scrolls would be exponential, making it possible to generate up to 300 or so scrolls of acquirement at a time this way (as many as you could carry).

Since gold contributed to score in these versions, this exploit could lead to a theoretically infinite amount of points. This was only limited by the hard cap of 99,999,999 points, also present in these versions. In the above game, the death was intentional (like any good mummy, killed by fire), as was the exact score gotten.