Corpse

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A corpse is what you get when you die, or kill a living thing. You can also request corpses in the team rooms in the capture the flag arena--useful for various spells and rituals that require whole corpses.

Player corpses

When you die, you will naturally leave behind a corpse with all your stuff on it. If you are not a playerkiller, nobody except you will be able to get things from it unless you "permit" them. If you are a playerkiller, other playerkillers will be able to get things from your corpse without permission (although this will set off any wards on those items), but npks will still need to be permitted--and npks will need to be permitted before they can use Find Corpse on you.

Nobody except you will be able to drag your corpse unless you permit them, and corpses cannot be dragged in water rooms.

Unlike npc corpses, player corpses are saved over reboots.

Wards

Getting items from a corpse will set off any wards on those items, unless it's your own corpse or one the owner has permitted you to take things from it.

Decaying

Any corpse will decay after a while, leaving behind all the stuff it had on it. At this point anyone can pick up the stuff and it will be lost if the room reloads or the MUD reboots or crashes.

Corpses go through several stages of decay, visible in the short description:

  • "the corpse of <dead thing>"
  • "the somewhat decayed remains of a corpse"
  • "the decayed remains of <dead thing>"

It takes an npc corpse between nineteen and twenty real minutes to decay fully.

A player corpse, however, lasts for nearly a real-life hour. A player corpse will turn into "the somewhat decayed remains of a corpse" after approximately fifty minutes, and "the decayed remains of a human" after approximately fifty-five minutes. Up until the fifty-five minute mark, looking at the corpse will show the line, "This is the dead body of <player name>." After that, it will only say, "This is the dead body of a human" and won't be identifiable just by looking.

Corpse bits do not always go through stages of decay on their own (although they will decay into dust abruptly), but have different descriptions based on the state of the corpse you cut them from.

  • "This is a fresh <body part> severed from the corpse of a <type>."
  • "This is a <body part> severed from the corpse of a <type>."
  • "This is the partially decayed remains of <body part> severed from the corpse of a <type>.

If a bit is taken from an npc corpse immediately after death, it will take slightly over thirteen minutes to decay. If there is time between the death and taking the bit from the corpse, then the time between taking the bit and the bit decaying fully will be shorter, but the time between death and the bit decaying will be longer.

The temperature of a room has no effect on how quickly corpses and bits decay.

Burial

Npc corpses can be buried and recovered; if you kill something then a large chunk of xp is received when the corpse is first buried.

Ritual burial is also an option for priests--this takes 50 gp per corpse, and gives command xp and an alignment shift as well as burial xp. Although the descriptions for the commands tend to indicate that the corpse is destroyed or taken elsewhere, it can still be recovered.

In some places, trying to bury a corpse will result in it falling into a different room; this is true on bridges (the corpse falls to the room underneath) and the wall around Djelibeybi. In this case they can't be recovered; you have to go to the room they're in to get to them.


Corpse parts

Corpse parts are items which can be cut from various corpses.

If you are holding a knife or dagger, you can cut pieces from corpses with "get <bit> from corpse". Body parts thus gotten can be referred to collectively as "bits".

Soft corpse bits can be eaten, pickled, used for Food of Life, used as the focus for the Sek totem, or burned in the Sek fire pit in Djelibeybi for a slight evil alignment shift. Some soft bits however contain bony bits, which must be removed before the soft bits can be eaten.

Some specific corpse bits are components in spells, rituals, or poisons, while a few have other uses.

Some bits contain other bits--for example, a head contains a skull. You can either get the skull directly from the corpse, or get the head from the corpse and then get the skull from the head.

Cutting heavy bits off of a corpse can make it marginally lighter, and therefore easier to drag. If the bit is too heavy for you to pick up, it will be left on the corpse (but carried instead of attached).

Available corpse bits

Different corpses are composed of different parts. The short description of the bit will indicate the type of corpse it was gotten from, like "a human skin".

There is a category for specific corpse parts.

Human corpses

Most human corpses have the following:

  • skin
  • head
  • neck
    • throat
  • arm (2)
  • torso
    • backbone (can be referred to as "spine")
    • rib
    • heart (missing from heartless lawyers)
    • stomach
    • liver
    • pancreas
    • colon
    • intestine
    • lungs (2)
    • kidneys (2)
    • spleen
    • appendix
    • gallbladder
    • nipples (2)
  • bladder
  • genitals
  • legs (2)
    • femur
    • kneecap
    • foot
      • toes (5 per foot)

Animal corpses

Animal corpses have different bits than human corpses.

  • may have pelts, hides, or scales instead of skins
  • may have paws or claws instead of feet
  • different numbers of body parts as appropriate (for example, rats have four legs and four paws)
  • may be missing some body parts

Additional body parts

  • abdomen (insects, spiders, lobsters)
  • antenna (beetles, crabs, lobsters)
  • antennule (crabs, lobsters)
  • antlers (deer - bucks)
  • apron (crabs)
  • arms (squid, octopus)
  • beak (bird, tortoise, octopus)
  • bell (jellyfish)
  • body feather (bird)
  • carapace (insects, crabs, lobsters)
  • cheliped (crabs, lobsters)
  • chop (wild boars)
  • claw (lobsters)
  • eyestalk (crabs, lobsters)
  • fangs (spiders)
  • feelers (insects)
  • fins (fish)
  • gills (squid, fish, octopus)
  • gland or sac (poisonous snakes, spiders, scorpions)
  • hepatopancreas (crabs, lobsters)
  • horns (antelopes)
  • mandible (beetles)
  • mantle (squid, octopus)
  • mollusc foot (oysters)
  • pedicel (spiders)
  • pleopods (crabs, lobsters)
  • poison sac (blowfish)
  • shell (tortoise, oyster)
  • skeleton (blowfish)
  • snout (pig)
  • spine (sea urchin)
  • tail (rat, bird, tortoise, fish)
  • tendril (jellyfish)
  • tentacle (squid)
  • thorax (insects, crabs, lobsters)
  • trotters (pig)
  • tusks (wild boars)
  • wings (birds)
  • wishbone (birds)

Other corpses

Some non-animal corpses have harvestable body parts.

Non-animal body parts

  • branch (tree)
  • roots (tree)
  • trunk (tree)

See also

Scavengers

Certain animals will tear off and eat bits of corpses that are in the room with them. These include:

  • crabs on the Ankh river
  • rats in Ankh-Morpork and Bes Pelargic
  • crows in the Sto Plains (they will sometimes fly into the room to eat parts of corpses when you kill something)
  • vultures
  • small birds (woodpeckers, sparrows, etc) at the Chronides Farm

Vampirism

When an npc or player is killed by a vampire, their corpse may rise as a vampire. You can tell whether this will happen or not by looking at the corpse--if it will rise again, it will have a line after the description saying that it's twitching and you shouldn't get too close.

Corpses thus afflicted cannot be buried, but you can get items from them as normal. They seem to rise as vampires either at the same time they would normally decay, or shortly after everything has been looted from the corpse.

When the vampire rises, it will drop everything that was on the corpse (and acquire some more suitable clothing at the same time), then attack any players in the room.

Embalming

You can get corpses embalmed at the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades in Djelibeybi, on Market Street. You must first "buy a chit for <corpse>" in the reception foyer (you'll be told how much the chit will cost before you have to pay for it), after which you can go downstairs and get the corpse mummified in Gern and Dil's room. This turns it into a mummy--it can still be referred to as a "corpse", but it can't be ritually buried anymore.

Bandages have been tightly wrapped around the body.  Here and there pieces have come loose and hang off.  The fact that even the face and eyes have been tightly wrapped could explain why most mummies walk around with their arms spread forward.  A strange smell lingers in the air around it.

See also