Disease (Keeper Spell)

Disease is a high-end spell available in Dungeon Keeper. It infects the target with a highly-contagious plague that deals damage over time. 
==Description==
The Disease spell infects the target with an illness, and can only be cast on your territory. They become surrounded by flies (not the creature) and take periodic damage. The pièce de résistance of this spell is the spread of the disease among the enemy's creatures; it will keep re-infecting them as long as they come into contact with an infected creature. The length of time the creature is infected depends on the strength of the spell cast.
The spell is very expensive, starting at 7000 gold, meaning you should use it wisely. Infecting just one creature will have barely any effect, and they will soon recover. However, if you time it so that you infect one creature with a particularly strong spell while they are surrounded by their allies, they will all become sick as well. This can be devastating to an opponent in the middle of a battle, causing all of their creatures to lose health. If their creatures are sent home while still infected, they will likely infect their bunkmates and anyone who passes them, and will be constantly reinfected. This has the benefit of weakening or even killing creatures who cannot heal, as they will stop their jobs to sleep to recover.
The spell is not as effective against those who can heal, as they can recover the health lost due to sickness. This doesn't mean they can't still spread the plague, so they make effective carriers.
Similar to the Chicken status, any diseased creatures can be healed by putting them in the Temple. Sacrificing a Vampire will cause all of your creatures to become diseased.
It's also interesting to note the Avatar is almost completely immune to Disease, and it will take multiple castings to have any effect at all on him. Not that you should waste time with such tactics, as killing him with anything except brute force is almost pointlessly difficult.
There is no such thing as herd immunity in Dungeon Keeper; if you don't have a Temple, the only way to arrest the spread of a disease is to try to isolate infected creatures (a Prison is a good place to put them, if you have one) and wait for it to blow over. Fail to do this, and it could quickly become an epidemic and ravage your dungeon's ranks.
In later versions of Dungeon Keeper FX, creatures can be made immune to Disease, but, as with immunity to Chicken, it applies only to the Keeper spell, not the Creature spell (this is fixed in later versions).
== Trivia ==
*The incantation is a reference to Mortiis, a former member of Emperor.
== References ==
Category:Status Effect