Draft:Historical adventurer

Omega 0.90.4

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
Surviving ending	Any	Living named adventurer
Death	Below 3	Ghost named after the character
Death	3-6	Haunt named after the character
Death	7-11	Spectre named after the character
Death	12 or higher	Lich named after the character

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.

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.