crystal skulls

I was on GC level 8 with a master necromancer who was resurrecting tons of zombies (unfortunately the orc room was on this level which meant plenty of corpses to raise back to life).

I killed him and he dropped a crystal skull with his corpse.

Mysteriously, the zombies kept appearing. I ran around the level several times looking for a necromancer (also had ESP, infravision, and 44 perception) and never saw one. Finally I picked up the crystal skull and dropped it away from the necromancer corpse, and that appeared to stop the zombies.

Just a coincidence or am I onto something?

I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, though I might be wrong. I haven't had anything like that happen yet but then again, I usually ignore the skulls.

I usually pick up the skulls. Good sacrificial value. So yeah, I don't know either.

I vaguely remember something to do with the skulls... hmm...
Well, you can sell them or use them for golem material. Or offer them to the god of your choice.

Always remember to decapitate and remove the head from a necromancer if there's other necromancers around!
...not that you've much choice in the matter.

Does a zombie necromancer have necromancer abilities? Maybe that's what happened then - it wasn't the skull, it was just a zombie necromancer that I killed without noticing.

iirc yes, a revived necromancer keeps his necromancer powers. Either that or my memory is starting to fail.

Revived isn't quite the same as zombie. I'm pretty sure zombies are just zombies, no matter what they were in life.

I meant as in resurrected by another necromancer. Poor choice of words in context.
Anyway, I plan on checking this now...

EDIT: Ok, nope I was wrong. Zombie necromancers everywhere, not one revived to his previous magic-casting state. I must have been drinking last time I played IVAN, I swear the ones in GC6 kept respawning to their former glory.

Hmm. I'm still suspicious about my original question then, because I searched and searched and never found a necromancer that was resurrecting all those zombies.

Sometimes the sneaky bastards can be hard to find, especially when there's some other type of spellcaster who can make them invisible. Lord knows I've missed them when running tests in WM, with everything visible.

I hate it when necromancers or mystic dark frogs find themselves inside those secret rooms with no doors. Irritates me to no end, especially when I have no method of either detecting them or getting to them.