[thejeff]

I used something like this:

Imprisoned Master Lich
Water 9
Death 8

Dominion 6

Order 3
Production 0
Heat 0
Growth 0
Misfortune 2
Drain 2

Shift the scales around as you prefer, you only need one negative scale, which isn't bad at all. Drain hurts, but you can do both quills and skull mentors, so it's not that bad.

It may not be the most effective bless, but the Water is, as usual, brutal and the death works very well with Late TC.

It's not so much that death is the best bless for TC, as that TC is the best nation for the death bless.
All your mages are sacred, so they benefit from the affliction chance. The sacreds are one of the few sacred archers and they have those cool fear bows, so I had to find a way to make it worthwhile to use them.
I don't know how they'd stack up in MP. They're not Vans or Neifels and they are capital only, so they'll lose effectiveness eventually. I'll bet SCs will still fear the affliction bonus, though.