Death Channel
 Death Channel
| |
|---|---|
| Level | 6 |
| School1 | Necromancy |
| Source(s) | |
| Casting noise | 5 |
| Spell noise | 0 |
| This spell raises living creatures slain by the caster and his or her allies into a state of unliving slavery as spectral things. |
Death Channel is a level 6 Necromancy spell that, while active, raises living creatures (natural holiness) slain by the caster into a state of temporary undead slavery as spectral things. The type of spectral thing depends upon what is killed, but its stats will be similar to that of the creature slain, and it will always have draining-branded attacks. Increasing your spell power will increase the number of turns in which your kills rise as spectral horrors, but has no effect on the duration of the spectral things themselves.
Spectral things are not permanent pets, but while they exist, they will follow the caster up and down stairs. Creatures affected by this spell still generate corpses as normal.
Strategy
Death Channel and Animate Dead function similarly, in that they raise up undead slaves for you. However, the most glaring difference is that Death Channeled servants are only temporary, guaranteed to dissipate after a brief time. Zombies don't vanish after a fight, letting you slowly accrue an army across a level. Comparing zombies and spectral things, zombies tend to have more hitpoints but less AC, and are of zombie intelligence whereas spectral things carry their original intelligence with them. Spectral things also have draining branded attacks.
Death Channel is convenient, in the sense that it automatically reanimates monsters for you (where Animate Dead forces you to burn a turn doing so every now and then). It also does not require a corpse; a living creature slain by you will be reanimated whether it was going to drop a corpse or not.
Foes that are turned into spectral things still leave a corpse. You could potentially have double the number of slaves if you have both spells, but they're both great spells so this is mostly unnecessary.
One final difference is that it has no synergy with Kikubaquudgha's Corpse Delivery.
