Beogh

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Drown the unbelievers in a sea of blood!"

Beogh is an evil deity, worshipped by the cave orcs native to the dungeon. Only orcs may devote their service to Beogh, and they must prove their devotion with bloodshed. Especially fervent devotees of Beogh will find orcish followers flocking to their banner: it is an age of signs and portents, and the orcs have become increasingly certain that the coming of their Messiah is nigh. Followers of Beogh can smite their foes, and will even gain orcish followers of their own, who may be blessed by Beogh in battle and can be recalled as needed. Eventually, followers will gain the power to walk on water. Beogh will sometimes directly intervene to save a follower's life, and the chosen of Beogh will eventually be able to resurrect other orcs. Beogh likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings, and you destroy nonliving beings. Beogh especially likes it when you kill the priests of other religions. Beogh strongly dislikes it when you attack allied orcs or desecrate orcish remains.

Beogh the Brigand is the Hill Orc exclusive god of the dungeon, considered an evil god.

Racial Restrictions

Beogh only tolerates Hill Orcs as worshipers. Also, characters who sacrificed love under Ru cannot join Beogh.

Appreciates

• You or your allies killing a living, holy, undead, demonic, or nonliving creature.
• You killing a hostile priest.

Deprecates

• Inactivity: You lose 1 piety per 340 turns, on average (1/17 chance every 20 turns).
• You will also lose piety (or incur penance) for the following:
  • Desecrating orcish remains (using orcs for Necromancy).
  • Attacking allied orcs. (Be careful if you are confused!)

Altar

Beogh altars are most often found in the Orcish Mines, rarely appearing in the Dungeon itself. However, the primary way for Hill Orcs to worship Beogh is to find a conscious orc priest (or high priest / Saint Roka), which gives them an active ability to convert. If you have not abandoned Beogh before, all orcs within line of sight will be turned neutral.

Like most gods, Beogh vaults can also be found in the Abyss, and if Beogh is a valid god, available through a faded altar.

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Messenger"

• Spread experience - Each time you gain some experience, Beogh will give an additional half of that amount among the orcish followers in your line of sight. This specific effect does not reduce your own experience.

Piety level *: "Proselytiser"

• No new abilities.

Piety level **: "Priest"

• Smiting - You can smite any monster in view. Damage at 0 Invocation ranges from 9-12 (avg 10), and linearly scales to 9-72 (avg 40) at 27 Invocation. This is unavoidable, and cannot be reduced by any means. (3 MP, 3 Piety)

Piety level ***: "Missionary"

• Gain orcish followers - Non-summoned, shapeshifted, sleeping, confused or paralyzed orcs (even uniques, eg. Blork) around you may recognize you as their Messiah and turn friendly. The chance raises with piety and XL, but is lower for stronger orcs. Conversions may happen when:
  • You notice a hostile orc for the first time (including because you hit it or cast a spell on it)
  • A hostile orc becomes significantly wounded (best not use poison!)
  • You or one of your allies kill a non-ordinary orc (in this case, the monster will survive the killing blow, unless it was reduced under its max HP in negative). This works best on higher level orcs.

Orcs, as permanent allies, will take XP when they deal damage. Your share of XP scales with damage dealt; if you did no damage, orcs will take 50% of the XP.

• Bless your orcish followers - Beogh may bless one of your followers when it kills an enemy or otherwise gains experience. The chance is 1d(Piety) >= 30, or one at random when you kill an enemy (10% chance). The blessing has one of the following effects:
  • 10%: An ordinary orc becomes an orc priest, otherwise 25% chance to add +1 to their weapon's accuracy, 25% chance to add +1 to their weapon's damage, 50% chance to add +1 to their armour's AC.
  • 90%: 50% chance to remove poison, sickness, confusion, rotting, slowing, or exhaustion (if they are so afflicted), otherwise heals 25% of the follower's HP.
  • Beogh may also improve your followers' equipment and gift weapons, armour, and ammo to those who lack them.

Piety level ****: "Evangelist"

• Recall your orcish followers - You can recall your orcish allies. All your orcish followers in the dungeon are teleported close to you over a number of turns. Strongest orcs are recalled first, at a rate of 1 orc every 3-6 aut (2-3 orcs/turn). (2 MP)

• Orc reinforcements - If you have no followers on this level and there are no other orcs (including hostile ones) on this level, there's 1 in 20 chance that Beogh will give several permanent, friendly orcs to you.

Piety level *****: "Apostle"

• Walk on water - You can cross deep water as if it was normal floor. Water walking will never end before reaching land, so you won't drown even if your piety falls too low.
• Give Item to Named Follower: You have the ability to provide one gift to a named follower of your choice. The gift can be a weapon, a piece of body armour, or a shield. Once they receive a gift, you can not give them another, it cannot be relinquished unless they die.

Piety level ******: "Messiah"

• Resurrection: Bring a single orc back from the dead, converting them to your cause if they weren't already a follower. You must stand over their dead body, so if the orc didn't leave a corpse they can't be resurrected. (35 Piety).

Punishments

Beogh does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Blasphemers against the word of Beogh find themselves confronted with direct and physical opposition. Those who still worship Beogh find their followers regularly deserting them; they, and others, are further assaulted by waves of orcish warriors. When working through intermediaries fails, Beogh hurls dancing electric weapons at offenders, or simply smites them - and when smiting true sinners, Beogh has a heavy hand indeed!

During penance or following desertion, you'll occasionally experience one of the following forms of divine retribution:

• 25%: Beogh smites you, potentially dealing very significant damage. If you are worshiping another god at this point, there is a piety/4 % chance that the new god will protect you from this.
• 13%: Durably summons 1-2 hostile dancing weapons. These summoned weapon will be enchanted up to +2 and branded with electrocution.
• 25%: Followers around you have a chance to turn hostile (only if you're still a follower of Beogh).
• 37% (62% if you changed religion): Sends forth an army of durably summoned orcs, led by a stronger, occasionally named orc, whose type depends on your experience level.

Strategy

From the time your orcish army assembles to Zot:4, it doesn't really matter how strong you are - your orcs can handle many threats on their own. While having orcs contribute to a fight means losing out on XP, you'll only be 1-2 XL behind a regular character (at most).

Most of Beogh's strengths come from these orcs; careful management will prove to be great, but not necessary. A few high-level orcs are all you need. Once you convert the Orcish Mines (and possibly the Vaults), there's not too many reasons to conserve piety. Except for many, many uses of Smite, powered by Hill Orc's extremely high Invocations aptitude. Use it to take out anything from dangerous uniques to a stair-locking vault warden. It ignores both AC and EV, making it fairly reliable when you need to take out a low health enemy.

Orcish Management

• Recall will bring in your highest level orcs first. You can effectively use this to summon a small band of elite reinforcements and quickly cancel the recall through the abilities menu, saving the fodder for particularly dangerous battles.
  • You can stash your Orcish Warlords on another level, leaving XP to level other orcs. Example: You want to level your basic Orcs on D:15. Go up to a (fully cleared!!) D:14, recalling ALL orcs right on the stairs to D:15. Then go up to D:13 and recall until the Warlords (and Knights) have arrived. Now cancel the recall, go back down to D:14, and tell your basic Orcs to follow you to D:15.
  • You should also consider leaving most of your followers behind when engaging enemies with powerful AoE attacks. If you have a lot of orcs in a bad spot, you can move to the side and recall them to at least shuffle their positions.
  • You can tell said Orcs to guard a staircase if you know you'll be bringing monsters up.
• Since you can only give one item to each follower, you should choose something that complements the equipment they already have:
  • Prioritize reaching weapons for your followers. Most of the time, you (or another orc) will be in the way of 1-range weapons.
  • An orc with a good two-hander enjoys armour. An orc with a good one-handed weapon, a shield. For wizards and priests, prioritize defense, since their physical attacks are less important. Ranged weapons are good for everyone.
  • Hang on to, or stash any good artefacts that you may find, as they are potentially very useful gifts for your stronger followers.

Tips & Tricks

• Since conversions are based on piety (and XL), Beogh worshippers may want to delay clearing the Orcish Mines until they have maxed out their piety.
• Try to fight in open areas when possible -- 3 fighters are better than one!
  • Also, move at angles so that friendly orcs won't get hit by piercing attacks directed at you.
• Strangely enough, Beogh greatly appreciates it when you kill hostile orc priests. Take advantage of this for piety.

Trivia

• In very ancient versions of Crawl, comments in the code referring to orc priest smiting stated that they were channeling the wrath of B.O.G. (Brian's Orc God). This eventually evolved into the name, "Beogh."
• Very rarely, an orc follower can be given the name "Judas".

History

• In 0.32, Beogh will be greatly reworked. All species will be allowed to worship, and having large groups of random friendly orcs will be changed to managing 1-3 friendly apostles, which are named orcs with randomized abilities and attributes, among other things.
• Prior to 0.28, orcs that were near-death received less HP on conversion.
• Prior to 0.27, conversion occurred the turn after an Orc entered LOS.

Also, monsters would attack slower with almost any weapon, (1.0 + base delay) / 2, though orcs had higher base damage. For orc warlords, this meant that demon tridents and even spears were stronger (per turn) than bardiches. For example, a warlord would have stats of (32 + 6 dmg, 1.05 delay, 36.2 dmg/turn) with a +0 spear, but (32 + 18 dmg, 1.5 delay, 33.3 dmg/turn) with a +0 bardiche.

• Prior to 0.19, Beogh increased the benefits of armour and shields. Also, Water Walking would end immediately if piety dropped below 120, killing the character if over deep water or lava at the time the effect ended. Destroying an orcish idol could anger Beogh.
• Prior to 0.18, Beogh did not have the ability to resurrect orcs. Instead, Beogh rewarded the player for "blessing" (i.e. sacrificing) the corpses of fallen orcs. Also, the Orcish Mines had four easier levels with more low-level orcs but fewer strong orcs like orc knights or orc warriors.

In addition, Beogh had a 10 + (Piety/10)% chance to prevent a hit that would've killed the player. This protection would reduce piety by 20 + 1d20 and did not function while under penance. The protection was disabled in this version due to a bug, though the in-game description of Beogh's powers still mentions this passive effect, even in 0.31.

• Prior to 0.17, Smiting dealt approximately 40 max damage with 27 invocations; the approximate formula was 6 + 1d(5 + Invocation Skill).
• Prior to 0.15, players could not gift equipment to followers, and Beogh did not gift random gear to followers with empty equipment slots.
• Prior to 0.14, orcish versions of gear existed, and Beogh only granted bonuses for wearing orcish armour (as well as wielding orcish melee weapons).
• Prior to 0.13, hill orc priests started with this religion.
• Prior to 0.12, recalling orcish followers did not have any delay, but it was not able to recall orcish followers from other levels. Shared experience was added in 0.12.