[Vicious Love]

Actually, you get big guys with axes (lictors) at any castle, if I'm not mistaken. Which I probably am. At any rate, the biggest draw of castles in SP is probably the Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre. They're pretty pitiful at base stats, but Ermor can usually afford obscene levels of magic on its pretender, meaning you get some truly devsatating bless combinations on these utterly expendable troops. You'll still need to summon a bishop or something to bless 'em, though; none of your autosummoned commanders are unholy. Bishops earn their keep pretty well reanimating even more troops for you, though... unless the combination of reanimation and autosummoning is still bugged. Haven't played Ermor in a while, so I wouldn't know.