Warrior: I swear I will have revenge for the death of my brother.
Elf: you have my bow.
Dwarf: and my axe.
Necromancer: and your brother! -- Anon Guest
[AN: Heheheh, I remember when that first did the rounds on Tumblr. I think someone made a comic page out of it eventually. I wanna say Oglaf, but... probably not Oglaf[1].]
People always think necromancy is the ultimate evil. They think that necromancers don't respect the dead, the gods, the feelings of those still breathing. They think wrong. Remember such magics as Revivify? Or True Resurrection? They're necromantic. Clerics talk to the dead all the time, but the instant you wear a black robe and start using necrotic damage... Yeah.
Death is a part of life. Helping someone pass peaceably from life into death is just as important as helping both mother and child survive the process of birth. Trust me, there's things that can go wrong. Unfinished business makes ghosts. Put a ghost too near a magical construct, and it causes all sorts of problems. Unstoppable creature with one purpose melded with an unkillable spirit with a different purpose? Bad noise. And don't get me started on the undead. Yeah, necromancers can hate those shits. Bringing dead meat to life has its own perils and undead is in the top three.
Forget black robes and skeletal minions. It's only the edgelords that go there. Edgelords with a lot of money. Black is a very expensive hue for clothing[2]. Not great when you're a starving student of the dark arts. Honestly, I look like any other student - hard-wearing worker's clothes so I don't have to keep buying new clothes. A long-lasting pair of shoes headed for their last breath... And at least one stupid accessory because it had a practical application and no student ever had the coin to spare for style.
If it's stupid and it works...
So yeah I have a dumb fake animal head for a hat and that's because I'm vulnerable to cold damage and my sneezes can mess up every stealth roll for three hundred feet. It has googly eyes. Deal with it. It was possibly that humorous edge that spared me from Hrungyr's little thing against necromancers. It at least gave me enough time to explain everything.
So now there's One Good One, Hrungyr's at least willing to let me be weird and creepy about some things in peace. Wizards and clerics are just as weird and creepy about stuff. Speaking of those... there's Seanthylli the Spellbow and Dyurgin, devotee of Forseti.
An Elven archer is a stereotype. So is an Elven wizard. Seanthylli couldn't make up hir mind - seems to be a theme - and did both at once. Ze makes "spellbolts". It works. We shop for a lot of the same ingredients and there have been bidding wars.
Dyurgin calls me a "scourge on the fair face of the prime material plane," but after a few surprise uses of Spare the Dying, that particular chain of words is more loving than spiteful. We've all had our differences. We arm wrestle over who gets the necessary diamonds.
And then there's Voulnath. Hrungyr's dead brother. Remember what I was saying about magical constructs and ghosts? Remember zombies? Yeah. Technically, Voulnath's a ghost possessing a corpse and between Dyurgin and I, we're keeping the body in good condition until such a time as the four of us can break the curse.
Once we get revenge on Voulnath's murderer - we can break the curse that prevents him from being resurrected properly. Then, just as I promised, we let Voulnath decide where he goes.
It's not all a careful balance between good and perceived evil. The rest of the gang let me have my fun now and then. Any random bone I can glean and clean becomes stock for my true necromantic minions. They're intentionally creepy. Bones that should not fit together made to fit together and move as if they were a living thing. They have an automatic intimidation bonus.
I keep them out of sight in civilised spaces. It's less trouble that way.
Good thing that the big bad our quest is about doesn't really like civilised spaces. I wouldn't have my undead army of nightmares to do all the dangerous stuff when we venture into any given dungeon. It's okay. They aren't really "alive" like Voulnath. No souls, just my will giving them motion and the semblance of personality. Sure, if one of them blows up, it stings me a bit, but it's no big deal.
Making a new minion out of bones and scraps is a pain in the butt, all the same. Better a bone minion than us. It's been way too useful to ignore.
We're getting closer to our quarry.
I sure hope the googly eyes still work for me after that.
[1] Browse at your own risk, dear readers. Frequent instances of nudity and sex jokes
[2] True facts - achieving black cloth before chemical dyeing processes involved a LOT of processing and over-dyeing and even then, the best you can hope for is a very, very dark brownish-grey.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Xochicalco]
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