Draft:Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch

Omega 0.90.4

Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch&TypeArtifactBase value (Au)1000Item level5Weight25Unidentified appearanceMetal PineappleCursed nameHoly Hand-Grenade of Antioch

The Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch is a single-use artifact that destroys a chosen square and its contents. It bypasses ordinary attack and damage checks, but also removes the victim's dropped loot. Identify it before activation and count to 3. Unknown use or a wrong count can kill the user outright.

Generation

The grenade is repeatable random treasure and can appear among a monster's additional random possessions. Random copies begin unidentified and neutral, with the appearance Metal Pineapple. Ordinary acquirement does not offer artifacts, and automatic pawn-shop stock excludes them.

The Order of Paladins supplies a fully identified, neutral grenade when a Gallant becomes a Guardian. The promotion requires at least 400 Order experience and +50 alignment. The accompanying instruction supplies the correct count. This is a promotion reward, not a repeatable purchase or a condition that limits who may use the artifact.

Activation

Keep the grenade accessible, choose A → a, select the target square and confirm it with . before entering the count. This is artifact activation rather than the ordinary throw command. The target need not pass an attack roll or a line-of-fire test.

Identity and count	Result
Unidentified	Immediate death before target selection
Identified; count greater than 3	Immediate death
Identified; count less than 3; a creature occupies the target	The target throws it back; immediate death
Identified; count exactly 3	Target square is destroyed
Identified; count less than 3; no creature occupies the target	Target square is still destroyed

Successful destruction gives 1,000 experience, changes the selected square into a trapdoor, invokes normal death handling on its creature, and clears all loose objects at that square. This clearing occurs after the victim drops possessions and a possible corpse, so both pre-existing treasure and newly dropped quest items disappear. One grenade is consumed; blessing, enchantment, mana and target damage immunities do not enter the activation test. Death itself has a revival exception in normal death handling, so the effect is not a guarantee of permanently removing every named creature.

Only the selected square is affected: this is not an ordinary surrounding fireball. Selecting your own square with a correct count changes its terrain and clears its ground items; the explicit self-kill conditions above are separate. Do not use Escape as a target cancellation after activation: this effect does not safely handle the target selector's abort result. Decide on a valid square before beginning.

Strategy

Use a known grenade when removing a dangerous target matters more than recovering its treasure. Its lack of an ordinary damage roll makes it useful against opponents that resist conventional attacks, but normal death events and special revival still apply. Count to 3 even on an apparently empty square; counting lower adds a fatal dependence on whether a creature is actually there.

Obtain needed quest loot first. For example, stealing the Amulet of the Planes before using the grenade on its carrier preserves the travel artifact; killing the carrier with the grenade first destroys the dropped amulet and Regalia. The Juggernaut of Karnak offers a different destructive option whose line of attack leaves ground loot, but it also destroys terrain and may trigger a cave-in.

There is no damage bonus to gain by blessing or enchanting the grenade itself. Save those resources for equipment that benefits; enchanting an intact artifact instead causes a mana-storm backlash.

Trivia

The name and counting instruction refer to Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). In the film, the grenade's elaborate instructions likewise specify a count of three; Omega echoes that instruction in the Guardian reward and failed-use messages.