Qazlal Stormbringer

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

"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. At 1*, they are generated in a 1-tile radius. Clouds can only generate when a selected tile has no more than 4 adjacent walls; this prevents clouds from appearing in hallways. Higher piety increases cloud frequency.
• 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 max piety, you create a noise of 20 (for reference, shouting is noise 12).

The SH and noise are not dependent on clouds; even if none are generated, you still get SH and still make noise. Storm Shield is upgraded 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. Upheaval deals 3d(9 + 4 * Invocations / 5) damage, which always hits. After damage, you'll get an extra elemental effect. You and your Elemental Force allies are immune.

• Fire creates temporary lava tiles (shoving items aside).
• Cold inflicts the Frozen status on targets.
• Electricity creates clouds of thunder.
• Earth is impacted three times as much by enemy AC (no positive effect).

Below 16.7 Invocations, Upheaval always has a 1-tile radius. Higher Invocations increases the chance of a bigger (2-tile) radius. (3 MP, 3-4 piety)

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

• Elemental Force: Create between Invocations / 3 and 1 + Invocations / 2 elementals from player-created clouds, assuming there are enough clouds in sight. One cloud is destroyed to create one elemental. Type of cloud determines the elemental created.

Not all clouds can be used to create elementals. Flame clouds and spreading flames will create fire elementals. Freezing vapours and rain will create water elementals. Clouds of sparse dust and petrifying dust will create earth elementals. Thunder clouds and all types of fog will create air elementals. (5 MP, 6-9 piety)

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

• Upgraded Storm Shield: At **** piety, Storm Shield grants you a permanent Repel Missiles effect, and the cloud shield is expanded to a 2-tile radius.
• Elemental Adaptation: Taking elemental damage occasionally grants you a single rank of resistance to the element of the damage. You can gain resistances to fire, cold, electricity, or physical (+3 AC) damage. (Passive)

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

• Disaster Area: Unleash several uncontrollably aimed Upheavals at locations within your line of sight. It strongly favors spaces with monsters in them, and favors closer tiles that are not adjacent to the player. Each explosion is discouraged from overlapping. This ability will never hurt you or your Elemental Force allies.

Disaster Area creates 2d(2 * Invocations)/2 Upheavals (min. Invocations/2). Damage per explosion is the same as the Upheaval ability, with the same elemental effects afterwards. (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 (equal chance):

• Summons 1 + XL/7 hostile, durably summoned elemental monsters. At low XL, you'll get actual elementals. At high XL, you'll get dragons (fire, ice, iron, storm) and shard shrikes.
• Give you one of the following temporary mutations: rF--, rC--, rElec-. These are transient mutations, and are removed as you gain XP.

Regardless of the type of retribution, there is a 50% chance to create a loud noise before the action. (This creates a noise of 25, which is louder than a 6* worshipper).

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 choose a slower path in order to avoid clouds, allowing you to gain some distance.

Unfortunately, this comes with a massive amount of noise, attracting enemies and making Stealth almost 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.

Qazlal is a relatively poor choice for casters, because the noise makes it harder to regenerate MP. It is also weak on stealthy species like Spriggans and Vampires, for rather obvious reasons.

Ability Strategy

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

• Upheaval is a smite-targeted ability that deals decent damage for a moderate piety cost. It can snipe a whole group of monsters from far away, or guarantee a hit on a weakened foe. The damage is not great at low skill, but becomes better as you gain Invocations skill.
• Elemental Force is most impressive for air elementals, which can paralyse enemies for a turn (ignoring both willpower and HD). Paralysis is a very strong status, both offensively and defensively. Other elementals aren't as powerful, but they are still effective as meatshields.
• 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 than Upheaval. 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.

Tips & Tricks

• Scrolls of fog create smoke clouds. When Elemental Force is used on fog or smoke, it will create air elementals. Summoning 10+ air elementals, all paralysing enemies, is no joke! Unfortunately, it doesn't work with a scroll of poison.
• Fog can also be used to control Disaster Area. It can't center explosions on tiles that you can't see, meaning that if you fog, you can have a a more concentrated set of explosions. You may need to step a tile in the intended direction, which blocks sight in places where you don't want explosions to land.

History

• Prior to 0.32, Elemental Force created fewer elementals, and you and your Elemental Force allies were not immune to Upheaval or Disaster Area.
• Prior to 0.28, Upheaval cost more piety/MP (3-5 piety, 4 MP), Elemental Force cost more MP (6 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. For reference, a 1* worshipper in 0.26 could end up louder than a 6* worshipper in 0.27, if they happened to spawn thunder clouds.
• Prior to 0.19, Qazlal's cloud immunity didn't apply to all clouds, just comprehended the player's ones. Also, Elemental Force would create hostile elementals when used on a hostile creature's cloud, or neutral elementals on dungeon-created clouds.
• Prior to 0.18, Qazlal's wrath would create elementals with adjusted HD, rather than summoning different elementally-themed monsters.
• Prior to 0.17, Qazlal's wrath didn't cause noise 50% of the time before the other possible actions, and could also inflict Deformed as a bad mutation.
• 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.