What the?!!!

[PvK]

I don't know about ritual spells, but it does count undead which you banish, at least in Doms I. The only guy I've lost to the spell so far is a priest who had banished a bunch of undead. So if that's still the case, you might want to build up a veteran banisher - go banish a bunch of Ermorian armies, and then stack them with the units you want to protect from the spell, including say some armor and maybe a summoning item - not only would he probably count as the biggest butcher, but he might be able to re-banish the hordes... or at least, he'd be relatively replacable. I guess in practice it might not be so simple, but it's an idea, anyway. I might do that with my priest who won the Death Match, for instance, although in that game, I'm sure my dragon pretender is the bigger butcher so far.

As for the skeleton talisman, I think it's Death 1, with zero research requirement.

PvK