Summon undead

Summon undead was a series of increasingly more powerful, evil summoning spells commonly in use by sorcerers and wizards of the Realms.

Effects
Like other summoning spells, a summon undead spell conjured one or more undead creatures from another place and made them appear within close range of the caster. The summoned creature appeared in a burst of fog and smoke, in which some claimed they could see the residual image of screaming faces.

An undead being was magically compelled to fight for the caster. A summoned undead could not be truly destroyed; instead, an attack that would otherwise destroy it instead sent it back to the place from which it was summoned where it reformed over the next day.

Summoned undead beings would serve the caster until the duration of the spell ended, which was anywhere from mere seconds to several minutes, depending on the power level of the caster.

After the Second Sundering, summon undead conjured an undead spirit that took a physical form chosen by the caster and remained in service for up to one hour, as long as the caster maintained concentration.

Components
Like other arcane summoning spells, summon undead spells required verbal and somatic components and a tiny bag and an unlit candle as magical foci. They uniquely required a third magical focus, the carved bone from any humanoid creature. The complicated spell required more than five seconds to cast.

The post-Second Sundering version of the spell required a gillded skull as its material component, in addition to verbal and somatic components, but tok mere seconds to cast.

Levels
There were five levels of this spell:
 * Summon undead I
 * Summon undead II
 * Summon undead III
 * Summon undead IV
 * Summon undead V