Kikubaaqudgha

"Spread unending torment and darkness!"

Kikubaaqudgha is a terrible demon-god, served by those who seek knowledge of the powers of death. Followers gain special powers over the undead via gifts of Necromantic spellbooks. Like most evil gods, Kikubaaqudgha demands the deaths of living creatures and demons as often as possible. Unlike them, Kikudaaqudgha is not interested in the offering of corpses, instead offering corpses to his followers for their evil uses.

Kikubaaqudgha is considered an evil god.

No background starts with this religion.

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 "Kiku 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. This ability will fail in branches that have no appropriate corpses to choose from. (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. The second spellbook will contain five randomly selected Necromancy spells from levels 4 to 6.

Punishments

When you abandon Kikubaaqudgha, all currently existing corpses will be rotted. While under penance for leaving him, Kikubaaqudgha will sometimes punish you (about once every 2000 turns). He may also punish you for casting Necromancy spells.

Possible punishments are:

• Receive Corpses is cast (using your XP level in place of Necromancy skill), followed by a hostile Animate Dead. All corpses and skeletons in the vicinity will be affected.
• Rotting
• Torment
• XP draining
• Summons hostile undead
• Forced Necromancy miscasts
• Miasma clouds

Kikudaaqudgha often combines his punishments. If you abandon him, expect to be tormented right before facing several summoned zombies. Debilitating miasma clouds are also common. In spite of this, Kiku's retribution is one of the easiest to survive. Stair-scumming lets you run from the monsters he sends, and if food isn't an issue, you can wait it out in the Ecumenical Temple.

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.

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 Kikudaaqudgha's approval of demon-slaying, makes him particularly useful in Pandemonium; you'll have enough chunks (or potions of blood if you're a Vampire) to fuel Sublimation of Blood as a cheap means of MP restoration, and it lets you flood levels with cheap minions or assemble permanent pets through Twisted Resurrection. Note that some of the corpses may be fresh enough to produce hides when butchered, so you might be able to pick some dragon armour that way. The corpse delivery is particularly nice for Ghouls and Vampires, who are dependent on corpses for sustenance.

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 and Lethal Infusion. Being able to brand any weapon with draining, even temporarily, is devastating in the early and mid game. 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.

When in doubt, it's usually better to pick the Necronomicon, as 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

• It may be overkill, but 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.
• 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, and not all branches have corpses to summon.
  • Make undead out of them (skeletons, zombies, abominations) for meat shields.
  • Combine with Sublimation of Blood for quick MP restoration
  • 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, or use Portal Projectile to send a corpse where you want quickly before rotting it.
  • 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.