Sword of Zonguldrok

From eronarn in 277:

Right now, this weapon is a highly-enchanted long sword that casts Animate Dead [against you] intermittently. These zombies can be killed for XP or piety. This is suboptimal, but essentially any arrangement would be - zombies aren't an interesting threat. I propose the following:

Zonguldrok is a long sword with the reaping brand. It reanimates zombies instead of leaving corpses, thus keeping some of its former food deprivation. Its curse is more subtle than just creating some weak hostile undead: now, the souls of the dead will come for the bearer, even if he stops using the weapon. Even a single hit with Zonguldrok will add the victim to its infernal tally. This manifests as those ghostly presences attacking in a similar way to god wrath; they'll simply keep appearing until vanquished, and the ghosts should be suitably brutal (ghosts of uniques or powerful creatures such as dragons, for example, not just popcorn monsters).

While this is an interesting idea, it would be perhaps even better for Kiku's wrath. — b0rsuk 2010-09-12 19:57

The powerful hostile ghost thing is definitely a cool idea. For now, though, I've just improved Zonguldrok by giving it the reaping brand (so you get friendly zombies for direct kills) and making hostile animate dead happen every turn (so you get hostile zombies for indirect kills - they still won't be a threat, but instead it at least makes the food restriction more significant). — marvinpa 2011-05-09 17:13