Dithmenos

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Spread the eternal night."

Dithmenos the Shadowed desires all to be darkness. In exchange for their life essence and that of the inhabitants of the dungeon, followers of Dithmenos gain a strange and otherwordly affinity to the shadows of their environment. Dithmenos despises sources of light, including most forms of fire, and forbids their use by worshippers; Dithmenos favours those who would instead destroy those sources of illumination.

• No backgrounds start with this religion.
• A temple god; guaranteed an altar in Temple or somewhere on D:2-9.

Racial Restrictions

Demigods cannot worship Dithmenos (or any other god).

Appreciates

• Killing natural, undead, demonic, or holy creatures.
• Killing haloed monsters, or monsters with illuminating spells: Corona and Holy Light.
• Killing fiery monsters: Fire dragons, burning bushes, phoenixes, red draconians, hell hounds, fire drakes, lindwurms, fire crabs, any monster with melee attacks of these flavours: pure fire, fire, napalm, and any monsters with spells of the Fire Magic school.

Deprecates

• You'll lose on average one piety every 320 turns.
• Use of light: Corona and the mace of Brilliance (Piety loss)
• Use of fire: weapons or ammo of flaming/flame, staves of fire, wands of flame, wands of fire, wands of fireball, scroll of immolation, fiery spells, and lamps of fire. (Piety loss or penance)
• Abandonment. (Penance)

Given Abilities

Piety level (-): “Gloomy”

• No granted abilities.

Piety level (*): “Aphotic”

• Umbra - You are surrounded by an umbra which expands with piety. This aura cancels out haloes, increases your stealth, and decreases melee/ranged accuracy of most creatures by 1+1d4. Dithmenos makes you immune to the accuracy penalty.

Piety level (**): “Caliginous”

• Shadow Step - Blink to a space within your umbra and adjacent to an immobile target creature. The target must not be invisible, and must not be moving. All stationary monsters (such as statues and most plants) qualify, as do monsters that are sleeping, paralysed, petrified, withdrawn, or are preparing to resurrect another monster. (Costs 4 MP and 4-6 piety)

Piety level (***): “Darkened”

• Bleed Smoke - The player occasionally bleeds smoke on taking sufficient damage. The cloud always triggers on a 50% maximum HP attack. The lower bound goes down linearly to 0 damage at 200 piety.

Piety level (****): “Shadowed”

• Shadow Mimic - The player's shadow sometimes mimics melee and ranged attacks (except needles) and targeted spells (so long as they're not self-targeted). This happens 10% of the time at 4*, and 50% at full piety.

Piety level (*****): “Eclipsing”

• Shadow Form - Turns you into a mass of shadows. Grants invisibility, immunity to poison, draining, torment, and hostile enchantments, and 50% damage reduction, but halves your melee damage and reduces your spell power. While in shadow form, you bleed smoke on every incoming attack, but doing so further drains your skills. (Costs 9 MP, 10-15 piety, yellow skill drain)

Piety level (******): “Eternal Night”

• No new abilities.

Punishments

While under penance, Dithmenos will sometimes punish you with one of the following effects:

• 25% chance: Dithmenos summons shadows, shadow demons or a shadow fiend. Shadow fiends are possible only if XL>13.
• 25% chance: Shadow Creatures
• 25% chance: You are put to sleep
• 25% chance: You are afflicted with a Sentinel's Mark

Strategy

• While Dithmenos doesn't mind you using Lightning Bolt, he will object if you set a tree on fire with it. Air Elementalists of Dithmenos should be careful in wooded areas.
• Bleeding smoke (with or without shadow form) can create large areas filled with smoke reducing sight to 2 spaces for a short time. This can give you the edge you need to escape from or close to ranged attackers or casters. (Almost all opponents require sight to cast spells, healing being a notable exception.) The downside is that you have to get hurt for the effect to trigger.

History

Dithmenos was added in 0.14.

Trivia

Initially, this god was called "Dithmengos" which is an anagram for "Dsomething", an early placeholder name for the new deity.