Soul Guide

Soul Guide is the stage where conversations with the dead turn into commands to them.

Tongue of the Dead — uttering mystical words, the bearer forces a foreign spirit to leave the body; bodily protection of flesh and blood does not help here, because the blow goes straight at the spiritual body;

Raising the dead — he raises corpses as living skeletons and zombies, but this is an animation without will and without life force: a worker, not a human.

The conduct of spirits also grows: the Guide influences the Spirit World and takes part in it, gathers messengers for himself and receives help from some creatures on the other side.

It is from the sixth stage that the bearer of the Death path becomes a dangerous opponent rather than an informed assistant: the Tongue of the Dead bypasses any armor, because it strikes not at the body. Against it, both armor and bodily fortitude are useless — the only defense here is spiritual.

Raising the dead, meanwhile, should be understood without illusions. The skeletons and zombies raised by the Guide do not return to life: there is neither will nor life force in them. These are workers and a barricade, not comrades, and anyone who expects more from them is mistaken twice — in assessing his own strength and in assessing what he has done.

It is useful to compare with the Soul Warlock of the Dark path, standing one stage higher. That one seals spirits in his own teeth and releases them as needed; the Soul Guide works more crudely and more directly — he expels a foreign spirit from the body and raises what remains.

The formula is fitting: Shadow of Death and the soul of a pale lich, to them the decaying fluid of the dead, shards of the lich's bones, an object in which the Shadow of Death settled, and one lingering ghost.