Qazlal Stormbringer

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Let the forces of nature tear it all down!"

Qazlal Stormbringer is a violent god of tempests, who delights in unleashing the forces of nature against the unsuspecting. Those who invite Qazlal's gaze will find themselves the eye in a storm of elemental destruction, from which only their god can protect them. Pious worshippers of Qazlal will gain the ability to direct and control the destructive might of the storm. Followers of Qazlal are protected from the clouds they create. As a follower of Qazlal gains divine favour, they are slowly surrounded by a loud storm, causing elemental clouds to appear near them, blocking attacks, and (for the particularly devout) deflecting incoming projectiles. Qazlal allows followers to incite nature against their foes, causing a localised natural disturbance or, for particularly devout followers, a more widespread disaster. Followers of Qazlal eventually gain temporary resistances after taking damage, and can give life to clouds, turning them into allied elementals. Qazlal likes it when you kill living beings, you destroy the undead, you kill demons, you kill holy beings and you destroy nonliving beings.

Racial Restrictions

Demigods may not worship Qazlal Stormbringer (or any other deity).

Appreciates

• You or your allies killing natural, undead, demonic, holy, or nonliving beings. The higher the enemy's HD compared to your experience level, the better the odds of you gaining piety.

Deprecates

• Inactivity: You lose 1 piety per 340 turns, on average (1/17 chance every 20 turns).
• Abandonment.

Given Abilities

Piety level (-): "[Your Species] Mishap"

• All worshippers and their divine allies are immune to the negative effects of any clouds. Other allies (like summons from a spell) aren't protected. (Passive)

Piety level (*): "Lightning Rod"

• Storm Shield: Storm Shield generates clouds around you, gives bonus SH, but creates significant amounts of noise. (Passive)

• Cloud generation: You generate randomly selected elemental clouds, including: flame clouds, freezing vapour, clouds of thunder, and clouds of sparse dust; the former 3 deal damage. From 1* to 3* piety, you create clouds in a 1-tile radius. From 4* onwards, this is upgraded to a 2-tile radius. Clouds can only generate when a selected tile has no more than 3 adjacent walls; this prevents clouds from appearing in hallways.
• Shield: Storm Shield provides an innate bonus of piety/20 SH (max. 8 SH).
• Noise: Qazlal generates a piety-dependent amount of noise, which wakes up monsters and attracts them to your location. At 6* piety, you create a noise of 16 (for reference, shouting is noise 12).

This skill is upgraded further at **** piety (see below).

Piety level (**): "[Your Species] Disaster"

• Upheaval: Blast a small smite-targeted area with elemental forces, dealing either fire, cold, electricity, or earth (physical) damage. Three of the elements also have an associated additional effect: fire creates temporary lava tiles nearby (shoving items aside), cold will freeze the targets, while electricity will deal bonus damage to flying monsters. Raising Invocations increases this ability's damage and area of effect (ranging from a single tile to a 2-radius burst). (3 MP, 3-4 piety)

Piety level (***): "Eye of the Storm"

• Elemental Force: Convert nearby clouds into elementals. Clouds you've created will produce friendly elementals, naturally occurring clouds will create neutrals, and clouds created by monsters will create hostiles (worth no XP). Invocations determines the maximum number of elementals you can make. (6 MP, 6-9 piety)

Piety level (****): "[Your Species] Catastrophe"

• Upgraded Storm Shield: At **** piety, Storm Shield grants you a permanent Repel Missiles effect, and creates more clouds.
• Elemental Adaptation: Taking elemental damage occasionally grants you a single rank of resistance to the element of the damage. The following elements can be affected:
  • Fire
  • Cold
  • Earth (this equates to physical attacks, granting you a small boost to AC and SH)
  • Electricity
• This resistance lasts for X turns. Passive, no cost.

Piety level (*****): "[Your Species] Cataclysm"

• Disaster Area: Unleash several uncontrollably aimed Upheavals at locations within your line of sight, strongly favouring spaces with monsters on them, but never with you in the blast radius. Invocations increases damage dealt and number of Upheavals. (8 MP, 10-15 piety)

Piety level (******): "End of an Era"

• No new abilities.

Punishments

Qazlal does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Qazlal's wrath is swift and unmistakable. Sinners are stripped of their resistances, assaulted by furious elementals, and surrounded by waves of molten lava.

Upon abandoning Qazlal, you are given 25 penance. Every so often, you will be afflicted you with one of the following forms of divine retribution:

• 33.3%: Summons hostile, durably summoned fire, water, earth, or air elementals near you, upgraded with HD equal to your experience level. These are far more dangerous than normal elementals.
• 33.3%: Causes a mighty clap of thunder at your location, generating significant levels of noise.
• 33.3%: Give you one of the following temporary mutations: rF--, rC--, rElec-. These are transient mutations similar to those caused by wretched stars, and are removed as you gain XP.

All the time it will cause noise 50% of the time before other possible actions.

Strategy

Qazlal, like any storm should, brings an unparalleled amount of devastation. It also brings an unparalleled amount of noise.

The storm shield is the defining feature of Qazlal. It provides a significant amount of defense, which grows as you gain piety. The clouds, on their own, can do substantial damage over time. Enemies may avoid the clouds, which slows them down. While clouds won't spawn if you're standing in a hallway, the defensive bonuses still apply.

Unfortunately, this comes with a massive amount of noise. At high piety, it's louder than if you shouted every turn. This attracts enemies from far away, and makes Stealth meaningless. Try to pull difficult enemies backwards, towards safe and already-cleared areas. This reduces the chance of reinforcement enemies arriving. The noise is a special liability in the Abyss and unusually quiet areas like the Crypt.

To compensate, Qazlal comes with 3 abilities, each with their own potential.

• Elemental Force is surprisingly powerful, since air elementals can paralyse enemies for a turn (ignoring both willpower and HD). Paralysis is a very powerful status both offensively and defensively. Other elementals still deal good damage, and they can distract enemies or act as meatshields.
• Upheaval is a smite-targeted ability that deals high damage for a high piety cost. It can snipe a whole group of monsters from far away. Damage becomes more impressive as you gain Invocations skill.
• Disaster Area creates many large blasts around you, able to clear whole screens of enemies (with enough Invocations, that is). If there is a lot of enemies, it is a much more efficient ability. Note that Disaster Area will not hit you, and often won't hit tiles adjacent to you.

All 3 abilities are quite expensive in piety, however. Worshippers are expected to be capable to fight crowds of enemies on their own, without using god abilities for every fight.

History

• Prior to 0.28, Upheaval cost more (3-5 piety, 4 MP), Elemental Force cost more MP (5 MP), and Disaster Area cost less MP (7 MP).
• Prior to 0.27, thunder clouds created a loud noise, which made Qazlal worshippers much louder than intended (even at 1*).
• Prior to 0.19, Qazlal's cloud immunity didn't apply to all clouds, just comprehended the player's ones.
• Prior to 0.17, Qazlal's wrath didn't cause noise 50% of the time before other possible actions, and could inflict bad mutation deformed body.
• Qazlal Stormbringer was added in 0.15.

During Qazlal's original development, the final gift at maximum piety was to permanently grant the player a single rank of any elemental resistance. This was removed before release, however.