Lord Erebus is a vampire. That's pretty much his schtick. He says Count Dracula kinds of things while he levitates around the battlefield. He gets a bite attack that sucks health from his target. He can automatically regenerate his health. He can turn into mist to simultaneously protect himself and damage a group of enemies. He can cast a mass charm that stuns enemies. He can perform a "swarm of bats" teleportation attack or escape. In addition to the usual entourage that some demigods can buy, Lord Erebus assembles an army of "night walkers". These zombie rolly-polly bugs are raised from the corpses of his victims, and they allow Erebus to lead a private army like no other demigod. He can even leave a nasty surprise on the field. When demigods die, they drop health potions that other demigods can pick up. But Erebus' health potions can be poisoned.

Actually, none of the above is necessarily true. Read the real story after the jump.

The beauty of Demigod, and its real claim to being a real time strategy game, is that you choose your demigod's powers as you play, much as you'd chose what units to build in a strategy game. Each demigod has a skill tree. How you progress in any given game is entirely up to you as the match progresses. Are you going to play Erebus as the leader of a night walker swarm? As a blood-sucking, regenerating warrior who uses his bat trick to ambush enemies? As an elusive general who vanishes into mist when threatened, leaving the fighting up to his compliment of powerful minions? As some combination of the three?

These sorts of decisions apply to each of the eight demigods in the game. At first, I figured each demigod had about three distinct "builds", given the size of the skill trees and the number of levels you'll advance in a typical game. I think I've low-balled the number. There are probably three basic branches in the early stages of a game. But each branch can then branch out a few different ways. And that's just using a demigod's skill tree. Now fold in the crazy number of ways you can tweak your demigod with inventory items available for purchase as you amass gold. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

As for Lord Erebus, I was going to recommend you play him in his current form while you still can. I had though he was the most powerful demigod for the way he can gather steam with a giant swarm of night walkers. But the more I play this game, the more I realize that pretty much everything has some sort of counter. Remember how yesterday I was all down on Sedna, the chick with the snow tiger? Well, after another day of playing, I'm pretty sure she's one of my favorites. She's definitely in the top eight, at any rate.

But the immediate appeal of Erebus is that he has an apparent solution for situations such as healing himself, inflicting damage over a wide area, evading combat, and overwhelming defenses. Most of the other demigods can probably do two of those four things before having to make tough choices.

My favorite Lord Erebus trick? Wading into a crowd of units and casting mass charm, freezing them all in place. Follow this up by evaporating into poisonous mist and you're killing your captive audience while they're stunned by the charm. Note that this mist will damage enemies, but it also drains Erebus' mana. So it only lasts as long as his mana reserve. But once you go shopping at the item store for mana boosts and an improved mana recharge rate, mana comes close to lasting indefinitely.

Tomorrow: Torch Bearer or hat rack?
(Click here for yesterday's game diary.)