Horror spells

[Beasley]

Curious if any of the send horror spells are anonymous. Playing as Mictlan with some friends, and wanted to encourage conflict between them by sending horrors. One is neifel and one is abissia, so it could be either one doing it. Maybe I can get them to attack marveni...

Thinking of all the variants - send lesser horror, send horror, send dream horror, and horror seed. Anyone have details on how the lsat two unfold and if their worth it??

[Trumanator]

Dream horror has a marginal use as an unrest raiser. Horror seed on the other hand is pretty much useless. IIRC, the send horror/lesser horror spells are anonymous.

[Quitti]

Dream horror is a useful unrest raiser if you have the slaves to spend since the unrest generation stays in the province until they have time to patrol it. It is also anonymous. Still best bet to raise unrest is spam rain of toads into their forts with mages, since they will get diseased. Like Trumanator said, Horror seed is somewhat useless since it requires a MR check, so you'd need to stack penetration items to make it even marginally useful. Send horror is your mainstay to kill off armies and such from these spells, lesser horros are generally not worth the slaves/mage time. Against Nieflheim it might not work very well (or at all), since the horrors are not cold immune, and against Abysia it's also a bit dubious since they are not fire immune, but work better than against Niefelheim.

[Calahan]

While Send Horror/Lesser Horror is an anonymous spell with regards to how it is reported, they are not that anonymous with regards working out who actually sent them in all likelihood. Especially if it is still early/mid game, as it's unlikely nations will have divesified their magic options by then to be able to cast difficult duel pathed spells with non-national mages. Even more so with spells from the blood school, as only blood nations will be researching that path early on.

So as EA Mictlan, the chances of sending anonymous Horrors is pretty slim, as you'll always be the first nation suspected and therefore the one most likely blamed. Whereas pulling off Horror sending with someone like Agartha is a real anonymous shot.

And of course, using a particular nations trademark type of attack (Send Horror for Mictlan, Seeking Arrow for Caelum etc.) is a great way of starting wars between other nations

[Tolkien]

I've never really used Horror Seed or Dream Horror, so I'm not in a position to comment on that. Send Lesser Horror isn't too useful, Send Horror though is absolutely wonderful. Horrors lack elemental resistance, which can be a really big deal when dealing with enemy thugs or certain nations (I found that out when I spammed horrors one game against a bunch of Utgard's werewolf thugs: frost/fire brands negate quite abit of the advantages of horrors, etc), but overall, are a fairly great remote attack spell, which will consistently rout most PD or mid-level armies (although that might depend on the magic available). Plus, it uses blood slaves: you can always hunt for more blood slaves.

[Illuminated One]

Send Lesser Horror is a great way to rout PD. If one isn't enough it's cheaper to send two than a normal horror.
They also work against weaker thugs that rely on buffing quite well (Eagle Kings for instance).

[Sombre]

Baalz has reported a great deal of success using lesser horror spam against SCs that do not have morale 30, because a large number of them will cause automatic rout as they surround it. You can cut off the surrounding territory, also using lesser horrors. As stated, they are best sent in groups of 2+ and really spammed, unlike send horror which works fine with 1 of them vs almost any pd.

[Agema]

I've not actually tried it, but LA Ermor is probably pretty much horror resistant.

A horror's fear isn't much use against mindless undead, and I suspect the Life Drain they need to regen HP won't work on undead either.

[chrispedersen]

Correct.

Sometime back I wrote up a thread on how to resist horrors. Some of the methods are suprisingly effective. It was widely poo poo'd as just easier to retake the territory.

But things like tanglevines work great on horrors.