Kikubaaqudgha

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Spread unending torment and darkness!"

Kikubaaqudgha is a terrible Demon-God, served by those who wish to indulge in the powers of death. An evil god, Kikubaaqudgha requires worshippers to cause the death and destruction of as many creatures as possible. In exchange, Kikubaaqudgha offers great assistance to the aspiring necromancer: knowledge of dark magic, protection against necromantic backlash, and an endless supply of bodies taken from Kikubaaqudgha's vast mausoleum. Kikubaaqudgha will send corpses to followers, and enhance servants' necromantic prowess with gifts of Necromancy spells. Kikubaaqudgha will protect followers from the effects of necromantic miscasts, death curses, and may even shield them from unholy torment. Especially fervent followers may invoke torment themselves by sacrificing a cadaver, and Kikubaaqudgha will eventually allow followers to either receive knowledge of the most powerful and forbidden necromantic magic, or to have their weapon imbued with pain. Kikubaaqudgha likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings. Kikubaaqudgha's powers are based on Necromancy instead of Invocations skill.

Restrictions

Demigods may not worship Kikubaaqudgha (or any other deity).

Djinn's unusual approach to magic renders them unable to worship Kikubaaqudgha.

Appreciates

• You or your undead slaves killing living, nonliving, holy, undead, or demonic creatures. (Chance of +1 Piety, chance increases with the victim's HD, but decreases with your level.)
  • Note that the "Kikubaaqudgha accepts your kill" message does not mean your Piety has risen, just that it could have.

Deprecates

• 1 piety lost every 340 turns on average, and you are excommunicated if it falls to 0.
• Abandonment. (Penance)

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Purveyor of Pain"

• No abilities.

Piety level *: "Scholar of Death"

• Receive Corpses: Creates 1-9 reanimatable, branch-appropriate corpses near yourself. A high Necromancy skill gives more and better corpses, with freshness depending on your piety. (3 MP, 2-3 piety)

Piety level **: "Merchant of Misery"

• You may resist Necromancy miscast effects from spell miscasts or mummy death curses. Your resist chance rises with piety. Spells that qualify for protection will have "Kikubaaqudgha supports the use of this spell." in the description.

Piety level ***: "Artisan of Death"

• No new abilities.

Piety level ****: "Dealer of Despair"

• Protection From Torment: You sometimes take reduced damage from torment and agony; there is a piety/600 chance of taking no damage, and failing that a piety/250 chance of taking a random amount of damage from 2 to the full amount rolled. The average damage is shown below.

Piety	Unprotected	HP lost w/ Kiku Protection	HP lost w/ Kiku Protection & rN+++
80	50%	36.4%	34.3%
100	50%	33.35%	30.85%
120	50%	30.4%	27.5%
150	50%	26.25%	23.9%
200	50%	20%	16%

Piety level *****: "Black Sun"

• Torment - Use a corpse to torment everything in your LOS, including yourself. (4 MP, 8-12 piety)

Piety level ******: "Lord of Darkness"

• Once per game, you may choose to either:
  • Receive Forbidden Knowledge: Kikubaaqudgha will grant you Haunt, Borgnjor's Revivification, Infestation, Necromutation, and Death's Door
  • Brand Weapon With Pain: Give a non-artefact weapon of your choice a permanent Pain brand and increase its enchantment level by 2. This splatters blood over the area, invokes torment, and overwrites the current brand on the weapon.

Gifts

Kikubaaqudgha grants a semi-random assortment of spells upon reaching 1* and 3* piety. Each set guarantees the player at least one corpse-using spell to complement the Receive Corpses ability. Kikubaaqudgha will never grant spells your species cannot cast.

At 1* piety, Kiku will gift Animate Skeleton and three randomly selected low-level Necromancy spells:

• Corpse Rot
• Pain
• Sublimation of Blood
• Vampiric Draining
• Agony

At 3* piety, Kiku will gift Animate Dead and four randomly selected mid-level Necromancy spells:

• Dispel Undead
• Anguish
• Borgnjor's Vile Clutch
• Death Channel
• Excruciating Wounds
• Simulacrum

Punishments

Kikubaaqudgha does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Kikubaaqudgha's wrath brings forth all the dread powers of necromancy. Victims are wracked with torment, assailed by the undead, smothered in miasma, and afflicted with a host of other necromantic ailments. Further, Kikubaaqudgha's gifts become tainted; those that attempt to use necromantic magic to fend off wrath will find it backfiring on them when least expected. Kikubaaqudgha's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

When you abandon Kikubaaqudgha, all currently existing corpses will decay into skeletons in a few turns. While under penance, Kikubaaqudgha will occasionally inflict you with Torment, as well perform other forms of divine retribution. Kikubaaqudgha will often combine these punishments:

• Receive Corpses is cast (using your XL in place of Necromancy skill), followed by a hostile Animate Dead. All corpses and skeletons in the vicinity will be affected.
• Clouds of miasma at your location and around you.
• Death curses.

Kiku may also punish you for casting Necromancy spells (5% probability).

Strategy

Kikubaaqudgha offers three main features: a massive supply of corpses, protection from torment and mummy death curses, and knowledge of Necromancy.

• The former, coupled with Kikubaaqudgha's approval of demon-slaying, makes Kiku particularly useful in Pandemonium; Kikubaaqudgha lets you flood levels with cheap minions by animating the received corpses. Of course, a fairly cheap 1* spammable ability is great for the entire game, though it takes 2 turns to effectively work.
• Kiku's quick and scaling spell gifts are especially useful to characters learning necromancy from scratch, though it means Kiku is slightly less useful (comparatively) to Necromancers early on.
• Kiku makes it much easier to conquer the Tomb. The Tomb is one of the deadliest branches of the whole game, but with protection from mummy death curses, torment protection, and a far greater chance of having access to Dispel Undead and/or Necromutation, Kiku players have an easier time than anyone else. Torment protection remains ever-useful in the other extended-game branches, such as the Crypt in an otherwise 3-rune game.

At 6*, you get the choice between a pain-branded weapon and mutiple high level Necromancy spells. This typically happens around the mid-game, and it can be a tricky decision.

• Since you've been training Necromancy all along, a pain brand will be absolutely devastating in your hands, especially since you get to pick the best weapon you have for it (a fast weapon like a quick blade or demon whip is particularly good). However, the pain brand only works on living enemies; this is not an issue in the midgame, but near-useless in the extended endgame, where pain-resisting demons and undead are everywhere.
• The spells, on the other hand, are the other way around. Those spells are great for the endgame, but they won't help you one bit in the midgame (when your skills are too low to cast them). Also, it's entirely possible to luck across a spellbook containing those spells as you explore.

In the end, the decision comes down to "Would I rather have something that will help me much later, or something that will help me survive right now?"

In the case you decide to pick the spells, the Excruciating Wounds spell, if you've found it, can substitute for a permanent pain weapon in a pinch. However, Excruciating Wounds is a noisy spell that makes other spells somewhat harder to cast.

Tips and Tricks

• Living characters can still make effective use of invoked torment. Kiku's protection will reduce the damage to 20-25% of your health, but everything else on the screen will lose 50%. A second invocation will drop you from 75-80% to 56-64%, but everything else will be cut to 25%. Plus, your torment-immmune undead can mop up what remains. Torment is still quite expensive, though.
• Don't be stingy in the art of corpses! Receive Corpses is a very cheap ability. Here are some neat uses for Kiku's corpse delivery:
  • Make undead out of them (skeletons, zombies) for meat shields.
  • Corpse Rot can turn nearby corpses into a protective ring of miasma. Slow and poison your enemies, then use Animate Dead to raise an army of skeletons to attack them.
  • Even in the Hells, you can get powerful corpses. One or two of them combined with Simulacrum are often enough to build an army capable of taking down the Hell Lords.
• If you're planning on taking the pain brand, make sure to not enchant your weapon past +7 -- Kiku will increase your weapon's enchantment.
  • If absolutely necessary, you can use Kiku's final gift to overwrite a dangerous distortion-branded weapon with a harmless pain brand without the risk of unwielding it. Using a scroll of brand weapon is much cheaper, however.
• Kiku has no objection to you wielding weapons of holy wrath.
• In spite of Kiku's punishments, Kiku's divine retribution is one of the easiest to survive. Stair-dancing lets you run from the monsters Kiku sends. Expect to receive Torment every time Kiku's wrath occurs, however.
  • You cannot just use Receive Corpses and Animate Dead to surround yourself with a wall of minions before abandoning Kiku, as your undead minions turn hostile when you leave it.

History

• Prior to 0.28, Kiku's 1* and 3* spell gifts guaranteed a corpse using spell instead of Animate Skeleton and Animate Dead; book logic was also different.
• Prior to 0.27, Kiku would gift randart spellbooks and the Necronomicon, instead of gifting spells directly.
• Prior to 0.25, Kiku's wrath included Necromancy miscast effects instead of death curses.
• Prior to 0.20, Kiku's 1* spellbook gift had a guaranteed Corpse Rot rather than a guaranteed Pain spell.
• Prior to 0.19, Kiku gave a piety-dependent bonus to final HP when casting Death's Door. Also, Kiku did not grant piety for killing undead creatures, and the torment protection did not reduce damage from agony. In addition, Kiku worshippers had to pray over a corpse to invoke the Torment ability.
• Prior to 0.17, Kiku helped at Piety level **** to resist the Haunt inflicted sickness on the caster (resist rate rose with piety). Kiku worshippers also had to pray at an altar to receive the Necronomicon/Pain brand gifts.