[Edi]

Even at the cost of 1 gold per unit, that would mean every 15 soulless/longdead would cost 1 upkeep, which is untenable for Ermor.

I don't see a problem with certain types of summons costing money (e.g. trolls, they tend to be greedy), while the black hawks was a sort of "WTF?" revelation because other animals are free. And as for Sea King's Court, can anybody give me a single good reason to summon one other than a desperate stopgap measure when you have no other options? Without the changes to the sea troll that come with Zen's spell mod, the spell is useless unless you need a W3 mage you want to buff up to cast a ritual, but then you could just as well empower a W2 mage to W3 for the same price.

Edi