Athame

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Name	athame
Appearance	athame
Damage vs. small	1d4
Damage vs. large	1d3
To-hit bonus	+2
Weapon skill	dagger
Size	one-handed
Cost	4 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	10
Material	iron

Athames are almost completely identical to daggers, even using the dagger weapon skill. However, athames are exceptionally suited for engraving. Any non-cursed athame will not dull from engraving, (although any athame that has an enchantment of -3 or lower is too dull to engrave with, regardless of blessed/uncursed/cursed status) and athames engrave at up to 19 letters per turn rather than 1 letter per turn. They are useful for writing messages and, if your version has it compiled in, engraving "Elbereth."

Athames are rarer than daggers, as they are never randomly generated. However, the first gift that a wizard receives from his/her god is always Magicbane, a neutrally-aligned artifact athame, and master liches and arch liches have a chance of being generated with an athame. For master liches, the chance is 6/91 (about 6.6%); for arch liches it is 2/9 (about 22.2%).^[1] In addition, there's a 1/260 chance of an arch-lich-dropped athame being the Magicbane. Newt, prisoner in the wizard quest end, often carries one.^[2] Finally, prior to 3.3.0, wizards started out with athames.