Apostasy
The Apostasy skill teaches members of the Apostate class the art of both summoning and commanding mighty Baalzadeens and lesser daemons. Those with the Apostasy skill also learn to use sentient daeggers. Perhaps the most feared ability of this skill is the one that allows a Baalzadeen to tear out the soul of unwilling victims.
Abilities in Apostasy
| Ability | Description |
| Daegger | Call to your side a living, daemonic daegger to aid you. |
The daemonic daeggers are actually living creatures; small daemons with a network of small brains geared towards making them somewhat intelligent weapons. You can quickly stab your daegger at your target even if your skill in weaponry isn't very high because the creature's eye and limited levitation abilities will help to guide your hand. If the daegger is envenomed then the target has a chance to receive the relevant venom affliction. The strength, accuracy, and to a lesser degree speed of your stabs will depend on your skill in Apostasy. | |
| Hunt | Command your daegger to hunt your enemy. |
Your daegger has become stronger. Strong enough, in fact, that it can, with a bit of help from you, levitate itself and even fly at potentially lethal speeds towards your target. This is superior to simply throwing the weapon because it can hook around and come at odd angles, and if it misses, it will attack again. Because you are guiding the daegger largely with the power of your mind, your intelligence, not your strength, affects how strongly it hits, and your dexterity in the throw affects how quickly it attacks. Additionally, unlike with stab, your weaponry skill is what affects the chance of it hitting, as the daegger is putting most of its energy into levitation. The higher your skill in Apostasy is, the greater the number of passes the daegger will make. | |
| Envenom | Envenom your daegger to poison your victims. |
With this ability, you may layer venoms on an edged weapon. Each time that weapon hits somebody, one venom will poison your opponent, and disappear from the weapon. They work on a last-on, first-off basis, so if you put xentio on a weapon, and then put voyria on, the voyria would come off first, and the xentio second. You must have the selected venom in a vial in your inventory. In order to get rid of the venoms on a weapon, simply WIPE <weapon>. | |
| Pentagrams | Sketch an infernal pentagram, in blood. |
At a small life essence cost (if you do not have the essence skill in necromancy then telling just how much you have and how much you are using will be difficult) you can infuse your blood with a greater power. Then, taking your daegger, you make a small puncture in your hand, and carve an infernal pentagram onto the ground with your own steaming blood. There can be only one pentagram on the ground in a room at a given time, and you can only use a pentagram drawn in your own blood, infused with the life essence of others, as it may be. From here, a variety of other abilities may be used. | |
| Baalzadeen | Summon your beloved Baalzadeen to do your bidding. |
The Baalzadeen is the primary daemon of the apostasy skill. They strike a balance between being powerful enough to be very useful to you, but not so powerful that they break your will, and consume your mind and soul. Though ethereal and either unable or unwilling to do anything to defend itself, its powers can be bent towards your ends in many ways. | |
| Taste | Taste the flesh of your Baalzadeen. |
By tasting the sweet, sweet flesh of your Baalzadeen, you will be able to determine its level of health, and any ongoing abilities it is using. | |
| Rest | Order your Baalzadeen to rest. |
This ability is used to order your Baalzadeen to cease using any repeating abilities, such as sear or syphon. | |
| Armour | Request that your Baalzadeen grant you protection. |
Your Baalzadeen's power may now be used to create a demonic armour around yourself. Its effect is cumulative with any other armour you may wear. | |
| Horror | Instill great fear into your victim with your demon's aid. |
Instill great fear into your victim with your demon's aid. | |
| Fiend | Summon a daemon fiend to attack an enemy. |
The fiend is one of the minor daemons. Once summoned in your pentagram, it will flex and fire and lash out with its countless edged appendages, causing your target to sustain serious bleeding damage. | |
| Scorch | Order your Baalzadeen to melt icewalls. |
Use the cursed breath of your Baalzadeen to melt icewalls. | |
| Presences | Locate those in your local area with your Baalzadeen. |
Using this ability, your Baalzadeen will reach out and provide you with some information on the status of each person in your local area. | |
| Mask | Summon dark powers to mask your demonic servitor. |
This ability will conceal the movements of your Baalzadeen. UNMASK removes the concealment. | |
| Sap | Drain away the mana of a victim with your loving demon. |
With this ability, your Baalzadeen will draw some mana from its target. | |
| Trace | Command your Baalzadeen to trace the movements of someone. |
Though this ability will only function within the local continent, your Baalzadeen will be able to trace the movements of nearly any adventurer. | |
| Fortify | Fortify the health of your Baalzadeen with yours. |
Using this ability, you may replenish your Baalzadeen's power at a cost of some of your health. | |
| Apathy | Become numb to the crushing pain of existence. |
Your Baalzadeen is able to imbue in you such an incredible level of apathy that for ten seconds you will take no damage from attacks. There is, of course, a caveat, which is that when that ten seconds is up, you will take all the damage you received, minus 40%, in one fell blow. | |
| Shadowstrike | Use your daegger to strike at the shadow of a victim. |
Once you have levitated your daegger, you can order it to perform the deadly shadowstrike. Your daegger will fly towards the target, seeming to miss, but instead plunging into the gut of the target's shadow, having the same effect as if the daegger had impaled the target through his or her stomach. Your target will take damage for as long as he or she is impaled, and will have to writhe painfully off the daegger. | |
| Beckon | Your Baalzadeen is an attractive force indeed. |
Your Baalzadeen can be a potently attractive force. With the Beckon ability, you will cause it to attempt to draw either everybody in surrounding rooms, or a specific person, into your room. | |
| Daemonite | Summon forth a small daemonite to annoy your enemies. |
The daemonite is a small winged daemon which is considered to be of little threat. Once summoned, it will repeatedly fly at your target adventurer, driving him off balance. | |
| Strip | Command your demon to strip the defences from someone. |
With your Baalzadeen, you may strip a defence from your target, even through a magical shield. | |
| Sear | Order your Baalzadeen to sear the flesh of an enemy. |
Using this ability will cause your Baalzadeen to begin to regularly sear your target with fire and flame. DEMON REST will cause your demon to stop searing your target. Remember that your Baalzadeen will use up health every time it sears a target. | |
| Puncture | Pierce another's flesh with your daegger. |
By letting your daegger guide your hand, you may pierce the skin of an opponent, delivering a venom from the daemon's tip. Your daegger is able to identify and navigate your target's defenses, allowing this attack to bypass any aura of rebounding surrounding him. | |
| Eliminate | Use your daegger to tear the beating heart from a victim. |
This skill allows you to create an essentially psychic link with your daegger, seeing through its eyes as it see through yours, and analyzing your target for openings on a level most mortals can not match. You will then begin to close in on your target, and if the attack is successful, that is if you are not knocked over, paralysed, or webbed, you will penetrate any defenses they have set up, and plunge your daegger into your target's heart. Your daegger's blade will open and drive its teeth into the flesh and bone surrounding the target's heart, neatly severing it and removing it when you withdraw the blade soaking up the gore it is covered in. | |
| Bloodworms | Summon forth a horde of these foul lesser daemons. |
When the Malevolent One was sealed beneath hundreds of tons of rock, His strength to break free was stretched to its limit on multiple levels. Maggots and worms feed on what remained of the shell of a body He had initially constructed for Himself. Upon returning to His glory, He found these worms, bloated with the plunder of His flesh -- and with His power. When you summon the bloodworms, they will, after a moment, burst forth, spreading out into the surrounding rooms and attacking all with their poisoned psychic screams. All those who are not deaf will have their equilibrium disrupted. | |
| Blast | Order your Baalzadeen to blast your enemies from the room. |
At great cost to your Baalzadeen's health, this ability may be used to literally blast all those who are not on your allies list out of the room, pushing them from 1-6 rooms away, if there be room to advance in a straight line. | |
| Mindread | Command your demon to listen to incoming tells. |
With the activation of this ability, your Baalzadeen will attempt to overhear incoming tells to the room you are in. | |
| Nightmare | A daemonite born of the rape of the Goddess of Dreams. |
Born of Sartan's rape of Valnurana, the nightmare is the most ethereal of daemons. Though it will sometimes briefly take on shape, it has no body, and even with the added motivation of the pentagram it will not exist within sunlight. | |
| Fury | Cause those around you to go into an enhancing fury. |
This extremely powerful, though extremely costly ability, will speed up the equilibrium and balance times of everybody in the room for 20 seconds. Please remember that your Baalzadeen is good to you, and if you overuse this ability, you run the risk of weakening it to the point of uselessness. | |
| Stain | Stain the soul of someone with your Baalzadeen. |
Your Baalzadeen may be ordered to stain the soul of your target, lowering his or her various attributes for a short period and preventing the use of bloodroot to cure the slickness affliction. There is no known cure for this ability, besides death. | |
| Syphon | Order your Baalzadeen to draw afflictions away from you. |
Your Baalzadeen has a great affection for you, and will, at a cost to its health each time it works, slowly syphon off afflictions from you. | |
| Contemplation | Perceive the state of another's mental strength. |
With this ability, you may see how much mana an adventurer has. | |
| Refuge | Seek refuge in the Inferno. |
With this ability, your Baalzadeen may be ordered to transport you to the Inferno (a region of safety for your kind). | |
| Corrupt | Lay low the heretics with demonic corruption. |
The skilled apostasy practitioner can command their demonic servant to corrupt the soul of an unfortunate heretic. This will cause all curses that have been laid upon the person through the application of evileye to be lifted, but at a terrible price indeed. | |
| Catharsis | Perhaps their death is the greatest mercy there is. |
With hatred in your heart, you may order your Baalzadeen to bring, shall we say...catharsis, to the soul of your enemy, who must be on less than half mana. | |