The Tavern

Playing Veh, I found Tornado, and later was gifted ch. lightning. Any suggestions about how to use them, chain lightning in particular?

When you have Tornado, don't learn Chain Lightning. Chain Lightning would have a very situational use compared to Tornado, which works excellent on almost any monster in the game. And Tornado is much more reliable when it comes to actually hitting something.

If used correctly, Chain Lightning does nearly as much damage as the full duration of Tornado (less if the monster has high AC), but it does it in a single turn. So use Chain Lightning when you want to kill something fast, it doesn't have rElec, it's within 5 squares, there are no other monsters nearby, and you don't mind making a lot of noise. Against monsters with really high AC/HP, cast Tornado first.

Neither spell is great but if you're getting one you almost certainly want to get the other; Tornado sucks at damage per time but is great for damage per cast, whereas Chain Lightning is great for damage per time but is garbage against multiple targets.

Tornado, it's the second best spell in the game after Firestorm... but, not that great....right

The reason tornado is so good is because it synergizes with abilities like sublimation of blood, and god effects that return life/mana on kill. In short, it buys you time to do other things while you can rely on a reasonable stream of incoming kills across several turns. The more you pay attention to positioning and the composition of what enemies are around you and what what range, the more effectly you can utilize Tornado.

While not an abysmally awful decision to run with chain lightning and tornado, I find in most games the spell points are better alocated elsewhere. It's fairly important to know the timing with which you are going to hit targets, and which ones, and chain lightning has a lot of unpredictability such that it's not great to rely upon.