Most Valuable Games 1

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Do not edit. 00000854 balrog 0,9 Horned devil 533,2 incubus succubus 629,4 erinyes 850,2 marilith 947,5 barbed devil 1230,2 vrock 1326,4 hezrou 1554,2 bone devil 1677,2 nalfeshnee 1797,3 ice devil 1949,4 pit fiend 2167,4 juiblex jubilex 2371,6 yeenoghu 2739,5 orcus 3023,3 geryon 3209,3 dispater 3373,2 baalzebub 3457,3 asmodeus 3618,4 demogorgon 3827,4 athame 4059,5 babelfish 4342,20 bug 5636,7 *centaur 6105,17 cockatrice 7181,23 creeping 42 8464,5 Cray 8782,9 Deep Thought 9328,110 Douglas Adams 13112,7 *dragon 13537,10 Eddie 14135,22 *elemental 15109,6 Ford Perfect Ford Prefect 15441,20 *giant giant humanoid 16490,6 gnome* gnomish wizard 16854,14 gold gold piece 17655,9 *golem 18156,3 gremlin 18305,3 grid bug 18485,3 gunyoki 18658,2 heisenbug 18775,14 hobbit 19610,10 hobgoblin 20243,23 humanoid 21568,5 human archeologist barbarian cave*man elf healer knight *priest* rogue samurai tourist valkyrie wizard 21854,7 imp 22287,13 jabberwock vorpal* 22981,20 kabuto 23642,1 katana 23662,3 *kobold* 23841,5 koto 24123,1 leprechaun 24143,18 leocrotta leu*otta 25225,7 *lich 25641,7 medusa 26091,6 mind flayer 26431,6 mithril* 26800,6 mumak* giant mumak 27159,8 *naga* 27644,4 *ooze *pudding 27895,4 orcrist 28114,9 osaku 28658,1 PDP-* 28706,22 piercer 30134,8 Prostetnik Vogon Jeltz 30578,13 quantum mechanic 31317,2 quadruped 31439,5 rust monster 31750,3 sake 31906,1 sasquatch 31929,4 shito 32147,1 snickersnee 32177,6 *soldier sergeant lieutenant captain 32418,8 tanko 32916,1 tengu 32976,7 towel Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal 33394,16 tsurugi 34498,6 *unicorn unicorn horn 34840,20 *UNIX* 35973,16 VAX 37082,9 vogon vogon lord 37693,22 wakizashi 39021,2 walking disk drive 39143,15 *long worm worm tooth crysknife 40197,7 wizard of yendor 40567,10 xan 41182,12 ya 41843,2 yeti 41966,3 yugake 42151,3 yumi 42343,4 *zombie 42567,5 zruty 42842,2 . 42944,0 ... It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed about it; and a black smoke swirled in the air. Its stream- ing mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it held a whip of many thongs. 'Ai, ai!' wailed Legolas. 'A Balrog! A Balrog is come!' [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ] Horned devils lack any real special abilities, though they are quite difficult to kill. The incubus and succubus are male and female versions of the same demon, one who lies with a human for its own purposes, usually to the detriment of the mortals who are unwise in their dealings with them. These female-seeming devils attack hand to hand and poison their unwary victims as well. The marilith, a type V demon, has a torso shaped like that of a human female, and the lower body of a great snake. It has multiple arms, and can freely attack with all of them. Since it is intelligent enough to use weapons, this means it can cause great damage. Barbed devils lack any real special abilities, though they are quite difficult to kill. The vrock is one of the weaker forms of demon, being only a type I. It resembles a cross between a human being and a vulture and does physical damage by biting and by using the claws on both its arms and feet. ``Hezrou'' is the common name for the type II demon. It is among the weaker of demons, but still quite formidable. Bone devils attack with weapons and with a great hooked tail which causes a loss of strength to those they sting. Not only do these demons, which are of type IV, do physical damage with their claws and bite, but they are capable of using magic as well. Ice devils are large semi-insectoid creatures, who are equally at home in the fires of Hell and the cold of Limbo, and who can cause the traveller to feel the latter with just a touch of their tail. Pit fiends are among the more powerful of devils, capable of attacking twice with weapons as well as grabbing and crush- ing the life out of those unwary enough to enter their domains. Little is known about the Faceless Lord, even the correct spelling of his name. He does not have a physical form as we know it, and those who have peered into his realm claim he is a slime-like creature who swallows other creatures alive, spits acidic secretions, and causes disease in his victims which can be almost instantly fatal. Yeenoghu, the demon lord of gnolls, still exists although all his followers have been wiped off the face of the earth. He casts magic projectiles at those close to him, and a mere gaze into his piercing eyes may hopelessly confuse the battle-weary adventurer. Orcus, Prince of the Undead, has a rams head and a poison stinger. He is most feared, though, for his powerful magic abilities. His wand causes death to those he chooses. Geryon is an arch-devil sometimes called the Wild Beast, attacking with his claws and poison sting. His ranking in Hell is rumored to be quite low. Dispater is an arch-devil who rules the city of Dis. He is a powerful mage. Baalzebub has been known as the lord of the flies. His bite drips poison, and a mere glance into his eyes can stun the hapless invader of his realm. It is said that Asmodeus is the overlord over all of hell. His appearance, unlike many other demons and devils, is human apart from his horns and tail. He can freeze flesh with a touch. Demogorgon, the prince of demons, wallows in filth and can spread a quickly fatal illness to his victims while rending them. He is a mighty spellcaster, and he can drain the life of mortals with a touch of his tail. The consecrated ritual knife of a Wiccan initiate (one of four basic tools, together with the wand, chalice and pentacle). Traditionally, the athame is a double-edged, black-handled, cross-hilted dagger of between six and eighteen inches length. "The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. [...] "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation." [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ] n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of hardware, esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. Examples: "There's a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards." "The system crashed because of a hardware bug." "Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs" (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems). [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] Of all the monsters put together by the Greek imagination the Centaurs (Kentauroi) constituted a class in themselves. Despite a strong streak of sensuality in their make-up, their normal behaviour was moral, and they took a kindly thought of man's welfare. The attempted outrage of Nessos on Deianeira, and that of the whole tribe of Centaurs on the Lapith women, are more than offset by the hospitality of Pholos and by the wisdom of Cheiron, physician, prophet, lyrist, and the instructor of Achilles. Further, the Cen- taurs were peculiar in that their nature, which united the body of a horse with the trunk and head of a man, involved an unthinkable duplication of vital organs and important members. So grotesque a combination seems almost un-Greek. These strange creatures were said to live in the caves and clefts of the mountains, myths associating them especially with the hills of Thessaly and the range of Erymanthos. [ Mythology of all races, Vol. 1, pp. 270-271 ] Once in a great while, when the positions of the stars are just right, a seven-year-old rooster will lay an egg. Then, along will come a snake, to coil around the egg, or a toad, to squat upon the egg, keeping it warm and helping it to hatch. When it hatches, out comes a creature called basil- isk, or cockatrice, the most deadly of all creatures. A sin- gle glance from its yellow, piercing toad's eyes will kill both man and beast. Its power of destruction is said to be so great that sometimes simply to hear its hiss can prove fatal. Its breath is so venomous that it causes all vege- tation to wither. There is, however, one creature which can withstand the basilisk's deadly gaze, and this is the weasel. No one knows why this is so, but although the fierce weasel can slay the basilisk, it will itself be killed in the struggle. Perhaps the weasel knows the basilisk's fatal weakness: if it ever sees its own reflection in a mirror it will perish instant- ly. But even a dead basilisk is dangerous, for it is said that merely touching its lifeless body can cause a person to sicken and die. [ Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library) and other sources ] These are the incarnations of The Answer (although nobody knows the question). Eating the dead body of one gives you a short, but insightful glimpse on the answer, thereby greatly increasing your experience in life. However the shock will cause your vision to blur temporarily. :cray: /kray/ n. 1. (properly, capitalized) One of the line of supercomputers designed by Cray Research. 2.Any supercomputer at all. 3. The {canonical} {number-crunching} machine. The term is actually the lowercased last name of Seymour Cray, a noted computer architect and co-founder of the company. Numerous vivid legends surround him, some true and some admittedly invented by Cray Research brass to shape their corporate culture and image. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] "O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out. "Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise,the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known ... The Time of Waiting is over!" [...] "Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader. "The Day of the Answer!" [...] "The time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was surprised to see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's neck. The word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times and then disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate this the other man spoke and the word Phouchg appeared by his neck. "Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion," the second man said,"and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak." "An awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and Arthur suddenly realized that he was watching a recording with subtitles. "We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg,"the answer to the great question of Life ...!" "The Universe ...!" said Loonquawl. "And Everything ...!" "Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, "I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!" There was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel. "Good morning," said Deep Thought at last. "Er ... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have ... er, that is ..." "An answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically."Yes. I have." The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. "There really is one?" breathed Phouchg. "There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought. "To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?" "Yes." Both of the men had been trained for this moment,their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children. "And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl. "I am." "Now?" "Now," said Deep Thought. They both licked their dry lips. "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought,"that you're going to like it." "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" "Now?" inquired Deep Thought. "Yes! Now ..." "Alright," said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable. "You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question ..." "Yes ...!" "Of Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought. "Yes ...!" "Is ..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes ...!" "Is ..." "Yes ...!!!...?" "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams ] Note to the real Douglas Adams: should you really ever read this text, please do not get upset about how you and your characters are represented in this work, but rather remember that it was you (yes, *you*) who started all this stuff! "All IMNSHO, constructive comments by e-mail, flame and murder threats to /dev/null, don't bother with flames, I'm fire resistant." In the West the dragon was the natural enemy of man. Although preferring to live in bleak and desolate regions, whenever it was seen among men it left in its wake a trail of destruction and disease. Yet any attempt to slay this beast was a perilous undertaking. For the dragon's assailant had to contend not only with clouds of sulphurous fumes pouring from its fire-breathing nostrils, but also with the thrashings of its tail, the most deadly part of its serpent-like body. [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)] "Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling just great guys, and I know I'm just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any programme you care to run through me." Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him to come on in but keep quiet. "Computer," said Zaphod, "tell us again what our present trajectory is." "A real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in orbit at an altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet of Magrathea." "Proving nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer to speak my weight." "I can do that for you, sure," enthused the computer, punching out more tickertape. "I can even work out you personality problems to ten decimal places if it will help." [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams] Elementals are manifestations of the basic nature of the universe. There are four known forms of elementals: air, fire, water, and earth. Some mystics have postulated the necessity for a fifth type, the spirit elemental, but none have ever been encountered, at least on this plane of ex- istence. By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed. Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this. This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society - with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough. He had made one careless blunder though,because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" [sic] as being inconspicuous. [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams] Giants have always walked the earth, though they are rare in these times. They range in size from little over nine feet to a towering twenty feet or more. The larger ones use huge boulders as weapons, hurling them over large distances. All types of giants share a love for men - roasted, boiled, or fried. Their table manners are legendary. ... And then a gnome came by, carrying a bundle, an old fellow three times as large as an imp and wearing clothes of a sort, especially a hat. And he was clearly just as frightened as the imps though he could not go so fast. Ramon Alonzo saw that there must be some great trouble that was vexing magical things; and, since gnomes speak the language of men, and will answer if spoken to gently, he raised his hat, and asked of the gnome his name. The gnome did not stop his hasty shuffle a moment as he answered 'Alaraba' and grabbed the rim of his hat but forgot to doff it. 'What is the trouble, Alaraba?' said Ramon Alonzo. 'White magic. Run!' said the gnome ... [ The Charwoman's Shadow, by Lord Dunsany. ] A metal of characteristic yellow colour, the most precious metal used as a common commercial medium of exchange. Sym- bol, Au; at. no. 79; at. wt. 197.2. It is the most malle- able and ductile of all metals, and very heavy (sp. gr., 19.3). It is quite unalterable by heat, moisture, and most corrosive agents, and therefore well suited for its use in coin and jewelry. [ Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition ] These creatures, not quite living but not really nonliving either, are created from inanimate materials by powerful mages or priests. The gremlin is a highly intelligent and completely evil creature. It lives to torment other creatures and will go to great lengths to inflict pain or cause injury. These electrically based creatures are not native to this universe. They appear to come from a world whose laws of motion are radically different from ours. The samurai's last meal before battle. It was usually made up of cooked chestnuts, dried seaweed, and sake. :heisenbug: /hi:'zen-buhg/ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics] n. A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.(This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment significantly enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of {Bohr bug}; see also {mandelbug}, {schroedinbug}. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from uninitialized auto variables, {fandango on core} phenomena (esp. lossage related to corruption of the malloc {arena}) or errors that {smash the stack}. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well- farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a handloom, although they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of "the Big Folk", as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ] Hobgoblin. Used by the Puritans and in later times for wicked goblin spirits, as in Bunyan's 'Hobgoblin nor foul friend', but its more correct use is for the friendly spir- its of the brownie type. In 'A midsummer night's dream' a fairy says to Shakespeare's Puck: Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: Are you not he? and obviously Puck would not wish to be called a hobgoblin if that was an ill-omened word. Hobgoblins are on the whole, good-humoured and ready to be helpful, but fond of practical joking, and like most of the fairies rather nasty people to annoy. Boggarts hover on the verge of hobgoblindom. Bogles are just over the edge. One Hob mentioned by Henderson, was Hob Headless who haunted the road between Hurworth and Neasham, but could not cross the little river Kent, which flowed into the Tess. He was exorcised and laid under a large stone by the roadside for ninety-nine years and a day. If anyone was so unwary as to sit on that stone, he would be unable to quit it for ever. The ninety-nine years is nearly up, so trouble may soon be heard of on the road between Hurworth and Neasham. [ Katharine Briggs, A dictionary of Fairies ] Humanoids are all approximately the size of a human, and may be mistaken for one at a distance. They are usually of a tribal nature, and will fiercely defend their lairs. Usually hostile, they may even band together to raid and pillage human settlements. These strange creatures live mostly on the surface of the earth, gathering together in societies of various forms, but occasionally a stray will descend into the depths and commit mayhem among the dungeon residents who, naturally, often resent the intrusion of such beasts. They are capable of using weapons and magic, and it is even rumored that the Wizard of Yendor is a member of this species. ... imps ... little creatures of two feet high that could gambol and jump prodigiously; ... [ The Charwoman's Shadow, by Lord Dunsany ] An 'imp' is an off-shoot or cutting. Thus an 'ymp tree' was a grafted tree, or one grown from a cutting, not from seed. 'Imp' properly means a small devil, an off-shoot of Satan, but the distinction between goblins or bogles and imps from hell is hard to make, and many in the Celtic countries as well as the English Puritans regarded all fairies as devils. The fairies of tradition often hover uneasily between the ghostly and the diabolic state. [ Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies ] "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. [ Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll ] A samurai helmet. The katana is a long, single-edged samurai sword with a slightly curved blade. Its long handle is designed to allow it to be wielded with either one or two hands. The race of kobolds are reputed to be an artificial creation of a master wizard (demi-god?). They are about 3' tall with a vaguely dog-like face. They bear a violent dislike of the Elven race, and will go out of their way to cause trouble for Elves at any time. A Japanese harp. The Irish Leprechaun is the Faeries' shoemaker and is known under various names in different parts of Ireland: Cluri- caune in Cork, Lurican in Kerry, Lurikeen in Kildare and Lu- rigadaun in Tipperary. Although he works for the Faeries, the Leprechaun is not of the same species. He is small, has dark skin and wears strange clothes. His nature has some- thing of the manic-depressive about it: first he is quite happy, whistling merrily as he nails a sole on to a shoe; a few minutes later, he is sullen and morose, drunk on his home-made heather ale. The Leprechaun's two great loves are tobacco and whiskey, and he is a first-rate con-man, impos- sible to out-fox. No one, no matter how clever, has ever managed to cheat him out of his hidden pot of gold or his magic shilling. At the last minute he always thinks of some way to divert his captor's attention and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. [ A Field Guide to the Little People by Nancy Arrowsmith & George Moorse ] ...the leucrocotta, a wild beast of extraordinary swiftness, the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a Stag, the neck, tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven hoof, the mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one contin- uous bone instead of teeth; it is said, too, that this animal can imitate the human voice. [ Curious Creatures in Zoology, John Ashton ] Once in a great while, an evil master wizard or priest will manage through use of great magics to extend his or her life far beyond the normal span of a human. The usual effect of this is to transform the human, over time, into an undead of great magical power. A Lich hates life in any form; even a touch from one of these creatures will cause a numbing cold in the victim. They all possess the capability to use magic. This hideous creature from ancient Greek myth was the doom of many a valiant adventurer. It is said that one gaze from its eyes could turn a man to stone. One bite from the nest of snakes which crown its head could cause instant death. The only way to kill this monstrosity is to turn its gaze back upon itself. This creature has a humanoid body, but has tentacles around its covered mouth and only three long fingers on each hand. Mind flayers are telepathic, and love to devour intelligent beings, especially humans. If they hit their victim with a tentacle, the mind flayer will slowly drain it of all intelligence, eventually killing the victim. _Mithril_! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of _mithril_ did not tarnish or grow dim. [ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ] the Mumak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk now in Middle-Earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty. On he came, ... his great legs like trees, enormous sail-like ears spread out, long snout upraised like a huge serpent about to strike, his small red eyes raging. His upturned hornlike tusks ... dripped with blood. [ The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien ] The naga is a mystical creature with the body of a snake and the head of a man or woman. They will fiercely protect the territory they consider their own. Some nagas can be forced to serve as a guardian by a spell caster of great power. These giant amoeboid creatures look like nothing more than puddles of slime, but they both live and move, feeding on metal or wood as well as the occasional dungeon explorer to supplement their diet. The Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he looked at it, and all his soldiers gnashed their teeth, clashed their shields, and stamped. They knew the sword at once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They hated it and hated worse any one that carried it. [ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ] The osaku is a small tool for picking locks. :PDP-10: [Programmed Data Processor model 10] n. The machine that made timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore because of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing facilities and research labs,including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford, and CMU. Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10 was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX product lines were competing with each other and decided to concentrate its software development effort on the more profitable VAX. The machine was finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983,following the failure of the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some attempts by other companies to market clones came to nothing;see {Foonly} and {Mars}.) This event spelled the doom of {{ITS}} and the technical cultures that had spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10. See {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {DPB}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop}, {push}, {Appendix A}. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] Ye Piercer doth look like unto a stalactyte, and hangeth from the roofs of caves and caverns. Unto the height of a man, and thicker than a man's thigh do they grow, and in groups do they hang. If a creature doth pass beneath them, they will by its heat and noise perceive it, and fall upon it to kill and devour it, though in any other way they move but exceeding slow. [ the Bestiary of Xygag ] Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons. His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy forehead.His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects. Not that he ever went swimming of course.His busy schedule would not allow it. [...] Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers. [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ] These creatures are not native to this universe; they seem to have strangely derived powers, and unknown motives. The woodlands and other regions are inhabited by multitudes of four-legged creatures which cannot be simply classified. They might not have fiery breath or deadly stings, but ad- venturers have nevertheless met their end numerous times due to the claws, hooves, or bites of such animals. These strange creatures live on a diet of metals. They will turn a suit of armour into so much useless rusted scrap in no time at all. Japanese rice wine. An ape-like humanoid native to densely forested mountains, the sasquatch is also known as "bigfoot". Normally benign and rarely seen, this creature is reputed to be a relative of the ferocious yeti. A Japanese stabbing knife. Ah, never shall I forget the cry, or the shriek that shrieked he, As I gnashed my teeth, and from my sheath I drew my Snickersnee! --Koko, Lord high executioner of Titipu [ The Mikado, by Sir W.S. Gilbert ] The soldiers of Yendor are well-trained in the art of war, many trained by the Wizard himself. Some say the soldiers are explorers who were unfortunate enough to be captured, and put under the Wizard's spell. Those who have survived encounters with soldiers say they travel together in platoons, and are fierce fighters. Because of the load of their combat gear, however, one can usually run away from them, and doing so is considered a wise thing. Samurai plate armor of the Yamato period (AD 300 - 710). The tengu was the most troublesome creature of Japanese legend. Part bird and part man, with red beak for a nose and flashing eyes, the tengu was notorious for stirring up feuds and prolonging enmity between families. Indeed, the belligerent tengus were supposed to have been man's first instructors in the use of arms. [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)] A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value-you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat;wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal,it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. [ The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams ] The tsurugi, also known as the long samurai sword, is an extremely sharp, two-handed blade favored by the samurai. It is made of hardened steel, and is manufactured using a special process, causing it to never rust. The tsurugi is rumored to be so sharp that it can occasionally cut opponents in half! Men have always sought the elusive unicorn, for the single twisted horn which projected from its forehead was thought to be a powerful talisman. It was said that the unicorn had simply to dip the tip of its horn in a muddy pool for the water to become pure. Men also believed that to drink from this horn was a protection against all sickness, and that if the horn was ground to a powder it would act as an antidote to all poisons. Less than 200 years ago in France, the horn of a unicorn was used in a ceremony to test the royal food for poison. Although only the size of a small horse, the unicorn is a very fierce beast, capable of killing an elephant with a single thrust from its horn. Its fleetness of foot also makes this solitary creature difficult to capture. However, it can be tamed and captured by a maiden. Made gentle by the sight of a virgin, the unicorn can be lured to lay its head in her lap, and in this docile mood, the maiden may secure it with a golden rope. [Mythical Beasts by Deirdre Headon (The Leprechaun Library)] :UNIX:: /yoo'niks/ [In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"] n. (also `Unix') An interactive time-sharing system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project,originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie the inventor of C,is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972--1974, making it the first source-portable OS. UNIX subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people,resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment. By 1991, UNIX had become the most widely used multiuser general-purpose operating system in the world.Many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {UNIX weenie} and {UNIX conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). See {Version 7}, {BSD}, {USG UNIX}. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] :VAX: /vaks/ n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11.Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by {killer micro}s after about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD UNIX (see {BSD}). Esp. noted for its large,assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set --- an asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] [...] Billions of years ago when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the planet's virgin shores...when the first rays of the bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the forces of evolution ad simply given up on them there and then, had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never have survived. [...] Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle- like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway. [ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams ] The samurai warrior traditionally wears two swords; the wakizashi is the shorter of the two. See also katana. :walking drives: n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum;the combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of drive access(a fast seek across the whole width of the disk,followed by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive models and held disk-drive races. [ The Jargon File, version 3.0.0 ] [The crysknife] is manufactured in two forms from teeth tak- en from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "un- fixed." An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human body's electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed knives are treated for storage. All are about 20 centime- ters long. [ Dune, by Frank Herbert ] No one knows how old this mighty wizard is, or from whence he came. It is known that, having lived a span far greater than any normal man's, he grew weary of lesser mortals; and so, spurning all human company, he forsook the dwellings of men and went to live in the depths of the Earth. He took with him the dreadful artifact, the Book of the Dead, which is said to hold great power indeed. Many have sought to find the wizard and his treasure, but none have found him and lived to tell the tale. Woe be to the incautious adventurer who disturbs this mighty sorcerer! They sent their friend the mosquito [xan] ahead of them to find out what lay ahead. "Since you are the one who sucks the blood of men walking along paths," they told the mosqui- to, "go and sting the men of Xibalba." The mosquito flew down the dark road to the Underworld. Entering the house of the Lords of Death, he stung the first person that he saw... The mosquito stung this man as well, and when he yelled, the man next to him asked, "Gathered Blood, what's wrong?" So he flew along the row stinging all the seated men until he knew the names of all twelve. [ Popul Vuh, as translated by Ralph Nelson ] The arrow of choice of the samurai, ya are made of very straight bamboo, and are tipped with hardened steel. An ape-like humanoid native to inaccessible mountain tops, the yeti is also known as "the abominable snowman". Whether or not the title "man" is appropriate remains unknown. Japanese leather archery gloves. Gloves made for use while practicing had thumbs reinforced with horn. Those worn into battle had thumbs reinforced with a double layer of leather. The samurai is highly trained with a special type of bow, the yumi. Like the ya, the yumi is made of bamboo. With the yumi-ya, the bow and arrow, the samurai is an extremely accurate and deadly warrior. The zombi... is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life, -- it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. [ W. B. Seabrook ] The zruty are wild and gigantic beings, living in the wil- dernesses of the Tatra mountains.