CLOK BBS

So the webpage says:

Infuse a shadow familiar into a corpse to animate it and become the sorcerer's minion. The corpse will retain its skills only up to a maximum equal to half the caster's skill ranks in Sorcery. The corpse must be a human corpse, and it must be in a condition fit for living (no fatal wounds to the head, neck, back, chest or abdomen).

And after Rithiel fixed minion skills so it worked, I noticed that my animate had zero points, in well, everything. Halp?

What mob did you reanimate?

Infested town guard. I realize they are low skills, but 0? Nah.

Sorry about that. It's fixed now.

Yay!

Also: any chance of getting the undead to look undead in their desc or in the room? Cuse right now they look kinda...livingish

That's because they are living. Note the spell requires a corpse that's in a condition fit for life - if there are any fatal injuries, the corpse cannot be animated via Minor Animation. The Rook Parlour theory is that the familiar enters the body, taints/converts the blood, interfaces with the brain, and acts as a substitute for the corpse's missing soul. It also provides the initial energy (to the now-tainted body) to jump-start the body back to life. There are a few changes on the inside (particularly in the brain and tainted blood), but it's still a living, breathing creature.

This method requires much less effort and energy than it would take to animate something otherwise inanimate - the living body is doing most of the work for you, providing energy on its own via normal means - your familiar just assumes control. If you wanted to animate, for instance, a skeleton, then you (or your familiar) would have to provide and constantly maintain the energy for animating the entire thing, down to each minute little movement. Much less efficient.

I <3 you Rias. Seriously.