Unidentified scrolls can have any one of many labels. In Hack 1.0, these labels are initially paired with the scroll types in a way that seems to be meaningful.[1] It is often claimed that Hack 1.0 uses a fixed label for each scroll type, but in fact it does shuffle the labels.[2]

The various labels through NetHack 3.6.0, and their meanings, are:

Some variants add extra scroll names, to accommodate additional scrolls. NetHack 3.6.0 adds no new scrolls, but does add some new names that originally appeared in one or more variants:

ETAOIN SHRDLU A rough list of the most common letters in English; often erroneously printed in newspapers. LOREM IPSUM Latin-derived filler text. FNORD Nonsense word central to the Principia Discordia, made popular by the Illuminatus! trilogy. KO BATE Line from Kurd Lasswitz's book Auf zwei Planeten. ABRA KA DABRA Traditional incantation, as engraved on amulets and as stereotypically used by stage magicians. ASHPD SODALG From Portal: ASHPD is the acronym for a portal gun; SODALG is GLaDOS spelled backwards. ZLORFIK Alien swearword from the computer game Zak McKracken. GNIK SISI VLE "Elvis is King" spelled backwards. Used as words of power in Zak McKracken. HAPAX LEGOMENON "A thing said once," that is, a word or phrase occurring once in a written corpus. EIRIS SAZUN IDISI PHOL ENDE WODAN First lines of the two Merseburg incantations. GHOTI A phonological respelling of "fish". MAPIRO MAHAMA DIROMAT Incantation featured a scene in the computer game Wizardry. VAS CORP BET MANI One variant of the Armageddon spell in the Ultima game series; translated as "Great death, small healing." XOR OTA "Atorox" spelled backwards. Atorox is a robot from the works of Aarne Haapakoski. STRC PRST SKRZ KRK "Stick your finger through your throat". Czech and Slovak tongue-twister.

Because there are many more scroll labels than types of scrolls, not all of these are used each game.

References

Further reading



