====== Death ======

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**Death** is one of the eight Paths of [[magic]], and one of the Sorcery paths.

It is a flexible path concerned with decay, disease, fear, darkness, creating and destroying the undead, and hindering and draining the living. 

It has no in-battle boost spell, but ??Skull Staff?? is a readily-accessible item booster at {{path>D2}} and {{gems>10D}}.

==== Standout death spells ====

Some commonly-used death spells that represent its themes are:

Spells that summon temporary undead in combat:
  * ??Animate Dead?? and ??Raise Dead?? convert [[corpses]] to zombie-like ??Soulless??
  * ??Animate Skeleton??, ??Raise Skeletons??, and ??Horde of Skeletons?? make ??Longdead??, who can bog down or overwhelm living troops in large numbers

A wide variety of rituals that create undead of all shapes and sizes:
  * ??Reanimation??, ??Carrion Reanimation??, and ??Army of the Dead??, which create weak undead from corpses in large numbers
  * ??Pale Riders??, ??Revive Wights??, and ??Legion of Wights??, creating more elite undead troops
  * ??Behemoth??, ??Reanimate Archers?? (with {{path>F1}}), and ??Ziz?? (with {{path>A2}}), creating specialized undead of various forms
  * ??Revive King??, ??Revive Bane?? and ??Revive Bane Lord??, making undead commanders
  * ??Summon Spectre?? and ??Summon Mound Fiend??, which summon undead mages
  * ??Lichcraft?? and ??Call Wraith Lord??, which summon powerful immortal mages and are a common late-game option for Death gems
  * ??Tartarian Gate??, a specialized lategame spell that calls back a Tartarian from Hell -- a defeated pretender god from an earlier Ascension War whose power is only matched by its need for therapy. See [[Tartarian Gate]] for details.

Spells that destroy the undead:

  * ??Dust to Dust??, which damages one tile of undead
  * ??Wither Bones??, which does large damage to all undead in an area

Spells that deal armor-negating damage through the power of unlife but that can be negated by magic resistance:

  * ??Shadow Bolt?? and ??Shadow Blast??, which may also paralyze their targets
  * ??Bolt of Unlife??, ??Blast of Unlife??, and ??Vortex of Unlife??, which may reanimate victims to serve the caster
  * ??Disintegrate??, which is Death's answer to high-HP targets

Spells that create [[darkness]]:

  * ??Darkness??, which turns out the lights on a battle
  * ??Utterdark??, a ritual which turns out the lights on the world

Spells that put off one's absolute death:
  * ??Skeletal Body?? and ??Skeletal Legion??, which confer [[physical-resistance|pierce resistance]] by making the body bony (though the latter is rather nasty)
  * ??Invulnerability??, ??Stygian Skin?? (with {{path>W1}}), and ??Stygian Rains?? (with {{path>W2}}), which confer [[invulnerability]] against nonmagical damage
  * ??Twiceborn??, a ritual [[twiceborn|with its own page]] that gives the caster a "second life" back at home

Spells related to decay and aging:

  * ??Decay??, which makes one target age quickly
  * ??Weakness??, which permanently steals a target's strength
  * ??Wind of Death?? (with {{path>A1}}), which makes a battlefield age quickly
  * ??Burden of Time??, a global which makes all living things in the world age and die
  * ??Rigor Mortis??, an oppressive battlefield enchantment that causes all living things to fatigue rapidly

Spells related to fear:

  * ??Frighten?? and ??Terror??, which scares a few troops
  * ??Wailing Winds?? (with {{path>A1}}), which continually applies fear effects to the enemy army, and can be very hard to counter for certain nations

Spells that drain life to restore the caster's fatigue and health:

  * ??Drain Life??, which drains one target at range
  * ??Soul Vortex??, which continually drains everything near the caster, and is useful for [[thugs and supercombatants]] wading into hordes

Spells that disease enemies (and sometimes friendlies):

  * ??Plague??, which creates a contagious plague on the battlefield
  * ??Leprosy??, a nasty ritual that can disease an army
  * ??Harvester of Sorrows??, which creates a stealthy commander that can kill population and disease troops

==== Death Items ====

Death's forging options are varied but mostly relate to its themes; however, because of the wide variety of death rituals that summon powerful things, many players use most of their death income summoning things rather than forging items. It also offers ??Skull Mentor??, an expensive but powerful research booster.

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