Draft:Death

Omega 0.90.4

D Death
Form	Initial form, before any revival
Attacks	1 attempted attack without a working damage effect; no defense
Special abilities	Immediate stronger revival with a new scythe
Base level	100
HP	100
Hit	10
Defense	10
Action interval	10 ticks; lower is faster
Kill experience	0 initially; rises after revival
Generation	Fixed encounter and unrestricted summoning
Carried items	Scythe of Death, neutral +0; no extra random items
Immunities	Fear, sleep, negative energy, other magic
Remains	None; immediately revives
Remains use	None
Traits Hostile opens doors does not fly, swim or pass through walls
Reference	minit.h in Omega 0.90.4, line 287

Death is the scythe-bearing figure who appears after the four elemental stations of the Adept's Challenge have been completed. Defeating Death causes an immediate, stronger revival and produces another Scythe of Death. In 0.90.4, Death's assigned special attacks have no working damage effect; the dangerous reputation of the weapon does not describe the monster's actual attack routine.

Generation

Completing all four elemental stations restores the player's HP and places Death at (32, 4) in the Challenge. Death is initially hostile and carries a neutral, unenchanted Scythe of Death, with no additional random possessions. The figure does not belong to ordinary random monster pools.

A summoning scroll can nevertheless select Death through its unrestricted random monster choice. Blessing does not let the player request Death, and does not make the summoned creature peaceful.

Behavior

Death pursues the player, can open doors, and has neither flight, swimming nor wall passage. Invisibility makes ordinary pursuit less reliable. Below 25 HP, an attempted ordinary movement changes into retreat and drops any carried possessions; this requires a movement opportunity and is not an automatic result of every adjacent attack.

The monster attempts one ordinary melee action and has no defensive actions. In this version, a successful hit does not execute death-touch, life drain or ordinary weapon damage: the assigned Death attack is not implemented. Its nearby special action is also inactive, and it has no ranged strike. Misses and the ordinary monster fumble effects can still occur, including self-injury or dropping possessions.

Death is immune to fear, sleep, negative energy and other-magic damage. Physical attacks, fire, cold and electricity are not blocked by those immunities. Disintegration deals its usual 100 unavoidable damage to a monster; it does not permanently remove Death.

Revival and spoils

Death is an exception to the ordinary death and remains rules.

On normal death, Death first drops current possessions and awards the current experience value if the player has line of sight. Death then gets up immediately with another neutral +0 scythe. No corpse is produced, and the monster remains in the encounter.

State	HP after creation or revival	Hit / Defense	Action interval	XP at the next visible death
Initial	100	10 / 10	10 ticks	0
First revival	120	30 / 30	9 ticks	1,000
Second revival	140	70 / 70	8 ticks	3,000

The table assumes no intervening speed changes from retreat or fumbles. Each revival increases Hit, Defense and the experience reward, doubles the damage rating up to 10,000, and decreases the current action interval by one to a minimum of one tick. New HP is 100 plus ten times the new damage rating, capped at 100,000 in this build. The increasing damage rating does not repair the inactive attack routine.

The experience increase is the smaller of 10,000 and the old reward plus 1,000. Hit and Defense each increase by the smaller of 1,000 and the old rating plus 10; those are limits on the increase, not maximum ratings.

The final Challenge

The Challenge's announcement asks an Adept to conquer Death, but completion does not require a Death-kill counter. After the four stations, the Void must receive an object, and the player must enter it with both accessible possessions and the pack empty. A scythe is one possible offering; any object that reaches the Void station can prepare it. Entering with an unprepared Void or retained items is fatal.

The Oracle connects the earlier quests to the Challenge. The weapon article explains the offering and the weapon's separate effect: landing a melee attack with it kills a non-Adept player on the backswing. Taking a scythe from Death does not confer Adept status.

Strategy

Repeated victories can supply increasing experience and extra scythes, but also raise the HP and Defense that subsequent victories must overcome. The first defeat gives no experience. The current attack omission makes the encounter very different from a conventional instant-death enemy, yet it does not make the surrounding Challenge, other summoned monsters or the scythe safe.

For the final trial, preserve a disposable offering and follow the Void conditions instead of assuming that an arbitrary number of Death kills unlocks the ending. Avoid negative-energy attacks against Death's immunity; disintegration or an effective elemental attack is a separate option. A recovered scythe is valuable loot, but using it before becoming an Adept defeats the purpose of surviving the encounter.