Draft:Historical adventurer

Omega 0.90.4

@ Historical adventurer
Form	Living historical record; undead forms below
Attacks	One lunge and one riposte per two combat levels, rounded up; physical damage follows profile
Special abilities	Missiles, spells, theft or fleeing by recorded profile
Base level	Recorded combat competence (C)
HP	20 × (recorded character level + 1)
Hit	Depends on combat profile
Defense	5
Action interval	3, 4 or 6 ticks; lower is faster
Kill experience	20 × C, when death is in sight
Generation	Saved character history; residences and random encounters
Carried items	No inherited equipment or starting treasure
Immunities	None innate in the living form
Remains	Named corpse; guaranteed on normal death
Remains use	No alchemy in the living form; eating is cannibalism
Traits Name and combat profile follow the record Mobile; initially wandering Residential occupants hostile; asleep at night
Reference	mon.c in Omega 0.90.4, lines 626–749

A historical adventurer is a living person or named undead creature drawn from the game's record of earlier characters. These encounters make Rampart's residences potentially dangerous even when the building looks modest. They are the ordinary Log NPC type, distinct from recorded office-holders such as the Duke or high priests.

Generation

An ordinary house has two possible historical-resident positions; a hovel has one, and a mansion has one in addition to its separate notable resident. Each ordinary position has a 50% chance to be occupied. Residential occupants start hostile, asleep at night and awake by day.

The same historical type can occur through random-monster generation and wilderness encounters. A game record is selected from the available history rather than by finding the strongest previous character. Records from characters who died produce named undead; other recorded endings produce living people. With an empty history, the fallback is Malaprop the Misnamed, a living melee fighter with 40 HP, combat level 7, attack strength 21, armor class 5 and base damage 35.

Characters ending a non-cheated game above level 0 can add a record. The record preserves name, ending level and behavior, not a copy of the character's carried equipment. Killing an encountered historical adventurer does not remove that record or transfer a guild office to you.

Living and undead forms

The recorded character level determines HP: 20 times (recorded level + 1). Combat level and fighting style instead come from the behavior recorded for that character. A high recorded level is therefore a source of durability, not proof of a matching combat level.

Recorded ending	Recorded level	Encounter form and symbol	Defense	Innate immunities
Surviving ending	Any	@ Living named adventurer	5	None
Death	Below 3	g Ghost named after the character	10	Physical damage, fear, sleep
Death	3-6	h Haunt named after the character	5	Poison, fear, sleep
Death	7-11	S Spectre named after the character	20	Poison, fear, sleep
Death	12 or higher	L Lich named after the character	20	Fire, poison, fear, sleep

The defense and immunity differences come from the chosen form; the information card describes the living form only.

These undead forms are not ordinary monsters with a different name. They retain their type's armor class, immunities, movement and some abilities, but receive historical HP, combat strength and behavior. Their usual invisibility, flight, intangibility and poisonous-body flags are removed by this construction. The ordinary poison or life-draining melee style is replaced by the recorded fighting style's ordinary melee.

Abilities that are not replaced can still matter. A melee-oriented historical lich can retain spellcasting, and a historical ghost can retain fear-inducing moans and physical immunity. A thief or spellcaster behavior can replace the special ability. The tactical action sequence also depends on the resulting creature type: the named ghost's empty melee sequence is not turned into a full set of punches just because its attack-strength value increased.

Living historical adventurers use their recorded combat level to build lunges and ripostes. This differs from office-holder encounters, which use another tactical template. Their dialogue may provide ordinary remarks, threats, begging or a hint according to the recorded behavior; an undead form can retain its own dialogue instead.

Combat profiles

Let C be the record's combat competence, the encounter's actual combat level. It is distinct from the recorded character level used for HP. The ordinary recorded profiles set the following values:

Profile	Hit	Physical damage rating	Action interval	Added ability
Melee	3 × C	5 × C	3 ticks	None; an undead form can retain its special ability
Missile	2 × C	3 × C	4 ticks	Missile attack
Spellcaster	C	C	6 ticks	Spellcasting
Thief	C	C	3 ticks	Theft
Fleeing	C	C	3 ticks	Fleeing movement as a special action

For a positive damage rating, each landed physical hit rolls from zero to one less than the rating before absorption. The zero rating rolls zero; an unprevented ordinary hit still inflicts at least one HP. A living record gets one lunge and one riposte per two combat levels, rounded up. Undead records instead retain their form's tactical sequence, so the named ghost still has no melee attacks.

Normal death guarantees named remains because these encounters are marked unique. Living remains follow the cannibalism rules, including a ten-point shift toward Chaos. Undead remains retain the chosen type's alchemical identity; the historical haunt has lost its poisonous-body flag, so eating its remains follows the sickness effect instead of the ordinary haunt's poisonous-food effect. It reduces the food reserve to at most four.

Strategy

Judge a residence by its occupants as well as its walls and safes. A hovel can contain an old character with hundreds of HP. Night entry grants an initially sleeping resident, not a guarantee that it stays asleep while you move nearby.

Use a named undead's article for clues about retained defenses, but use the distinctions above before choosing an attack or expecting a particular ability. An ordinary spectre's life drain, for example, is not automatically the attack used by a historical spectre.

These people do not reproduce an earlier character's inventory and do not provide the automatic title rewards of a promotion quest. The main reason to confront one in a residence is access to that building, not recovery of a past character's possessions. Leave when the resident exceeds your preparation rather than assuming a small house implies a small fight.