Kikubaaqudgha

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"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 the deaths of living creatures and demons as often as possible. In exchange, Kikubaaqudgha offers great assistance to the aspiring necromancer: spellbooks filled with 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 spellbooks. Kikubaaqudgha will protect followers from the effects of necromantic miscasts, 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 the Necronomicon, or to have their weapon imbued with pain. Kikubaaqudgha likes it when you or your undead slaves kill living beings, you or your undead slaves kill demons and you or your undead slaves kill holy beings. The power of Kikubaaqudgha's abilities is governed by Necromancy skill instead of Invocations.

Appreciates

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

Deprecates

• Forgetting him. (1 Piety lost every 340 turns on average, and you are excommunicated if it falls to 0.)
• Abandoning him. (Penance)

Given Abilities

Piety level -: "Purveyor of Pain"

• No abilities.

Piety level *: "Death's Scholar"

• 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. These corpses can't trigger the Powered by Death mutation. (costs 3 MP, 50-100 food, and 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 ***: "Death's Artisan"

• No new abilities.

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

• Sickness from casting Haunt may be resisted (resist rate rises with piety).
• Protection From Torment: You take reduced damage from torment, as follows:

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"

• Invoke Torment - Pray over a corpse to torment everything in your LOS, even if you're undead. (Costs 4 MP, and 8-12 piety)

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

• Once per game, you may pray at an altar of Kikubaaqudgha to receive either the Necronomicon or a permanent Pain brand on your currently wielded weapon. This splatters blood over the area and invokes torment, as well as overwriting the current brand on the weapon, unless it is an artifact weapon.

In addition, Kikubaaqudgha does the following:

• If you cast Death's Door, Kikubaaqudgha adds a piety-dependent bonus to your final HP.

Gifts

Kikubaaqudgha grants randart spellbooks upon reaching 1* and 3* piety.

The first spellbook will contain four randomly selected Necromancy spells from levels 1 to 3, and Control Undead:

• Pain or Animate Skeleton
• Two level 2 spells which can be Corpse Rot, Sublimation of Blood or Lethal Infusion
• Regeneration or Vampiric Draining
• Control Undead

The second spellbook will contain four randomly selected Necromancy spells from levels 4 to 6, and Dispel Undead:

• Animate Dead
• Agony or Excruciating Wounds
• Bolt of draining, Simulacrum or Death Channel
• A random spell which can be any of the 7 previous spells.
• Dispel Undead

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.

When you abandon Kikubaaqudgha, all currently existing corpses will decay into skeletons in a few turns. While under penance for leaving him, 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.
• Necromancy miscasts.

He may also punish you for casting Necromancy spells.

Strategy

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

The latter, coupled with Kikubaaqudgha's approval of demon-slaying, makes him particularly useful in Pandemonium; he lets you flood levels with cheap minions or assemble permanent pets through Twisted Resurrection. The corpse delivery is particularly nice for Ghouls and Vampires, who are dependent on corpses for sustenance. Note that the corpses won't produce hides when butchered.

Necromantic tomes are granted very quickly and roughly in order of spell level. This makes Kiku great for characters who want to learn Necromancy from scratch, but less useful for characters who are already Necromancers. He's also great for melee/hybrid characters, as Necromancy offers a lot of utility and support spells useful for melee fighters, like Regeneration. A bodyguard of meatshields is never more than two turns away with corpse delivery and Animate Dead, and you can get that tactic online very quickly as long as the second spellbook gift has Animate Dead in it.

Kiku's torment invocation is great for the midgame, but becomes all but useless in the late game, when most enemies are torment-immune. Even if you're not undead, Kiku's torment protection can making invoking torment worthwhile; you'll only lose 20-25% of your health depending on your piety, and 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%. Invoking torment and letting your torment-immune undead minions mop up can be a very good way to clear out large amounts of monsters in the midgame. Just watch your piety and have ways to escape and regain that health; torment is expensive and risky.

At 6*, you get the choice between a pain-branded weapon and the Necronomicon. This typically happens around the midgame (if you converted at the Temple), 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 - but only to living enemies. (Since you get to pick which weapon to brand, a fast weapon like a quickblade or demon whip works best.) As with the torment invocation, this is great in the midgame, but useless in the extended endgame, where pain-resisting demons and undead are everywhere. The Necronomicon, on the other hand, is the other way around. Its 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). 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?"

The Necronomicon may be found in other places, but it is far less likely that you will find a pain-branded weapon that is both the type you're using and the best weapon of that type. Pain-branded quickblades, for example, are very rare.

In the case you decide to pick the Necronomicon, the Excruciating Wounds spell can substitute for a permanent pain weapon in a pinch. That has its cost as well, though - Excruciating Wounds is a noisy spell, you'll have to commit the levels to memorizing it, and brand spells are kind of tedious. It's not guaranteed that you'll ever actually find the spell, either, so if you choose the Necronomicon you may not ever get a pain-branded weapon at all.

Finally, worshiping 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 access to Dispel Undead, Kiku players have an easier time than anyone else.

Tips & Tricks

• If absolutely necessary, you can use Kiku's final gift to overwrite a dangerous Distortion branded non-artifact weapon with a harmless Pain brand without the risk of unwielding it. Using a scroll of brand weapon is much cheaper, however.
• Here are some neat uses for Kiku's corpse delivery:
  • Eat them. This is particularly useful for vampires, ghouls, and trolls, especially in corpseless branches. However, not all corpses are edible.
  • Make undead out of them (skeletons, zombies) for meat shields.
  • Corpse Rot can turn a field of corpses into a lot of miasma and skeletons very quickly. Let enemies wander in and then confuse them to make them stay inside, use Animate Dead to raise an army of skeletons to attack them.
  • Even in Hell 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.
• Kiku has no objection to you wielding weapons of holy wrath.
• In spite of his punishments, Kiku's divine retribution is one of the easiest to survive. Stair-scumming lets you run from the monsters he sends. Expect to receive Torment every time his wrath occurs, however.
  • You cannot just use Receive Corpses and Animate Dead to surround yourself with a wall of minions before abandoning him. Kiku turns your undead minions hostile when you leave him.