Altar

An altar, represented by an underscore _, is a place where you may worship gods. Altars can be lawful, neutral or chaotic. In the Valley of the Dead there is also an unaligned altar in the temple of Moloch.

Altars can be found randomly in the dungeons or in temples. A temple is a special room with a priest and one is guaranteed to found in Minetown.

Altars can be used to detect the BUC status of objects. This is done by dropping an item onto the altar and watching if it glows: a dark glow marks a cursed object and an amber glow a blessed object. You will not learn the BUC status if you are blind or hallucinating.

Sacrificing corpses
Altars of other than your own alignment can be converted by #offering a fresh corpse to gods. If you are lucky, the power of your god increases and the altar is converted. If you are unlucky, the altar may resist or you might be converted to another alignment yourself. Trying to convert the altar of a temple will anger the priest.

When offering a corpse, one must touch it. This means that if you are going to sacrifice cockatrice corpses, you must be wearing gloves.

The tougher the monster you are offering was the more your god will appreciate it.

Sacrificing own race
While sacrificing corpses, there are a few points to be aware of. First, sacrifing a member of your own race if your are a human or an elf is generally considered a bad habit: your wisdom, luck and alignment will be abused. Chaotic characters can, however, do this safely. A peaceful demon lord is summoned and luck and alignment are excercised.

Sacrificing unicorns
Unicorns are another exceptional beings from the point of sacrificing. White unicorn is considered lawful, grey neutral and black chaotic. Offering a unicorn on an altar of its own alignment will cause bad things happen to you. If the altar was not co-aligned with you but the unicorn was, you will be converted to the alignment of that altar. Offering a unicorn of different alignment on the altar of your god is considered a good action. Other combinations convert the altar.

Praying
If you drop a potion of water or several potions of water onto the altar and #pray, the potions are converted into holy water if the altar was co-aligned and unholy water if the altar was not co-aligned. Normal prayer timeouts apply when praying on altars.

Praying on an altar may also make your god reward you by fixing your problems, such as lycanthropy, or with a spellbook, an artifact or an insintric. Praying on the altar of some other god will anger your god, decrease your luck and you might be punished in some other way too.