[Taqwus]

Originally posted by condors:
how the heck do you kill these things?

ulm priests + smiths + statues + morning stars seem to do nothing against them

i am guessing enough fire spells may take one out but it rarely seems to work

would equiping commanders with fire helments work?

Depends what you and they have.

Well, you can forget about cold and poison, since they're undead. Fire will work, but fire magic tends to be on the imprecise side -- incinerate can help here. They're ethereal, so Maggots is unlikely to work, and 75% of all mundane weapon attacks will fail. They're heavily armored unless equipped with low-prot armor for other reasons, so forget the weaker weapons. They start with good magic resistance, which would not be an uncommon stat to augment for them, so mere banishment -- which is resistable -- is not likely to work unless cast by a strong priest with penetration boosters and probably a communicant horde for more penetration.

Given that they're undead, they are vulnerable to Dust to Dust and Wither Bones, but those are not easily acquired for Ulm. With Ulm... I'd be inclined to suggest trying to hold him off with something expendable and preferably non-life-drainable (in the quite possible event that the wraith lord has a life-draining weapon such as a wraith sword) and firing flaming crossbow/arbalest bolts at him en masse. Incinerate can also work; a Phoenix Rod takes 20 fire gems to produce, but a Master Smith with a Dwarven Hammer and fire-3 can produce one for 10 gems, which is much more nicer. Incinerate will always hit (ignoring the etherealness) and does armor-negating damage (thus avoiding the WL's usually quite good prot) while ignoring MR (another WL strength). If you can find a water-2 mage, put the phoenix rod and boots of quickness on the same commander for 2x incinerate per turn.

On the other hand, it may be immune to fire due to carried items...

If you have a source of Curse e.g. Lizard Shaman (widely available from your local lizard province), you could curse it which would greatly increase the chance of afflictions, which will make even minor nicks a threat to it.