Animate Corpses
Occult Ritual, Necromancy, Dark Power
Casting Time: 1 hour, which can be part of Taking a Rest
Materials: Up to 3 corpses, and 250 sc worth of ruby dust per corpse, which the ritual consumes
Recharge: Rest
Duration: Instantaneous
Target up to three corpses as part of this ritual. Each corpse must have a majority of its torso and must have a head. You animate those corpses: they each become a skeleton or zombie (your choice for each corpse). They follow your mental commands for 24 hours, at which point they become autonomous unless you reassert control over them.
If you cast this ritual and target one or more skeletons or zombies that you have already animated using this ritual, then you extend your control over them for another 24 hours. Reasserting control over a skeleton or zombie costs no ruby dust, as opposed to animating one for your first time. If you do this on the same skeleton(s) and/ or zombie(s) at least once per day for a year, then they permanently follow your commands without any further need of this ritual.
If a skeleton or zombie that you control dies, and you animate it again using this ritual, it is no longer under your control and will act autonomously.
Dark Power: You may attempt to raise a corpse without expending ruby dust. For the first corpse that you attempt to raise in this way, make a Spellcasting check against DC 10. All subsequent corpses that you attempt to raise in this way increase the DC by 4 cumulatively. This DC resets when you Take a Rest. Each time you succeed this DC, you raise a corpse. Each time you fail, you instead gain Fatigue.
Upcharge: You may spend SP to raise more corpses or reassert control over more corpses: +1 corpse per +10 SP.