[shovah]

I thought they existed, just a sort of myth for me.

For equipping kings give non earth kings decent armour (i suggest either dragonscale for 18 prot and only a small defence reduction) or marble armour for alot of prot), a wraithsword(or hellsword if you must), preferably a horror helm or some other helm (maybe starshine), lucky pendant and then any extras you want like reinvig boots/regen ring or something. In non cb give then a bloodthorn and a charcoal/vine/accursed shield, this will give them fireshield/very easy to hit enemies/super high defence.

The best thugs imo are earth and astral kings, all they need is a wraithsword/blood thorn+shield, some reasonable armour for the astral and maybe a horror helm and they can run through small/medium sized armies. When fully tooled they can do great things (quickness+BoW+30 prot/astral and luck along with good equipment is amazing) and make great (and recruitable!) thugs until you get golems (i suggest you empower an earth king to summon them) and tartarians (i always have a d6 pretender where possible then just give him a skull staff and let him mass produce them while he/a vine king GoR's them)