Azira said:
So... You're saying Derryth would have to kill them first, then raise them from the dead to serve her eternally?
Always an option yes, if you had a high CHA you could probably bluff some of them if they really liked you but 2 CHA so you would have to get creative.
Definitely an option but not without risks, I just don't want anyone whining when Derryth has to off a few people to keep her secret...
Nevill said:
Any more examples of the spells from necromancy school?
D&D treats necromancy a bit differently from 'black arts, burn on sight', but I don't know much about this setting. Are there spells that do not require to mutilate corpses and slaughter kittens? Something that would be more acceptable for our companions?
Also, way to spoil my campaign to make an aspiring Fallen Lord out of Derryth.
Sure, a bit more info and background on Necromancy and Magic, this will be a bit long:
Necromancy in this setting is actually something of a cottage industry (or was before the war killed a lot of the Necromancers), the bread and butter of this school is the raising of the recently dead or the long dead.
Derryth has a basic idea of what the school can do as she has had to fight her fair share of undead (usually one or two at a time).
-Your most basic spell can raise ghasts, basic zombies essentially, this is done by trapping the soul of a person in their corpse and breaking its will.
-Slightly more difficult is the creation of Thralls, the recently dead, like ghasts but bound with just enough of their consciousness to follow orders. They start off very weak but you can order them to train 24hrs a day till they become competent if slow warriors.
-Wights, are walking landmines (Derryth really hates dealing with them), they are ghouls that are further along in the process of decomposition with a few more spells added. Basically they are undead suicide bombers, you order them to attack and they sneak up and stab themselves dying again in a massive explosion.
-The Soulless or Hollowmen will be your main ranged construct. You need a clean and intact upper body of a skeleton to work the spell and with further enchantments you can create a magical sack from which they draw an endless supply of javelins (though that will be a difficult spell to learn and master). They do not have legs but instead hover over the ground and are great with ambushes. A Soulless killed one of Gareth's best friends in just such an ambush during the war.
-At the highest levels you can create Stygian Knights, by binding a departed soul to a suit of armour, these guys are very tough but slow, in theory you could even wear one for greater protection.
-None of the Fallen Lords knew how to create or control shadows, all that is known about creating them is that a person has to die in a lot of pain and with something important left undone, generally they are very rare.
-At the very highest levels of mastery rest the spells that can create truly sentient undead. Balor cast one such spell on the Myrmidons and it gave them eternal life but also drove them insane. They have not been seen since Balor fell during the Great War and some speculate that the magics sustaining them died with him.
-Another such spell is that which gives a Shade eternal life, think of it as a sort of lichdom. There are even more powerful spells that only the Watcher knew and he learnt them by traveling into the sunken lands in the north west of Myth, he studied them for decades underwater without taking a breathe and he learnt the Dream of Undeath on which all necromatic spells are based. For this reason he was considered the first necromancer.
It is worth noting that the Deceiver found other ways to maintain his life, as did Shiver and Soulblighter, none of them were particularly skilled at Necromancy.
Actually out of all the Fallen Lords the Deceiver was most reliant on living soldiers either willing servants and allies or dominated puppets. Which makes sense as he hated the other Fallen Lords with a passion and did not trust the necromancers. One of the reasons why he defected to Alric's side in the war against Soulblighter was because they hated eachother so very much.
As for why it is a "burn on sight" offense, the world of Myth has gone through two wars that have wiped out more than half the population. You would be hard pressed to find a person who has not lost a loved one to the Undead (hell Alric lost almost his entire family in the opening battles of the Great War) and most of those Undead were raised by necromancers employed by the Fallen Lords. As such common consensus amongst everyone from the Imperial government , to the Circles, to the Dwarves, to the local governments is "never again", they simply will not risk it. Now there are allies that can be found for the budding necromancer; the ghôls, the Fetch, the Myrkridia (if you can show you are powerful enough) , maybe even the Trow if you have something they want (they are effectively neutral and have allied with both the Light and the Dark) and there are also the mercenaries and cultists left over from the war but you will have a hard time getting regular people to side with you or even tolerate you once they realize what you are.
The Dreams:
Since someone asked and I can't remember if I already said or not I will explain the dreams again. This involves a bit of philosophy and theology which Derryth is not great at but Serpent and Thaïs have been helping you so you now have a decent grasp on it. This will be a bit of a story so settle in:
(tldr: the Dreams are the most powerful spells in the whole setting)
In the beginning the world did not exist. All was nothing except for the Dark Gods. Now no one knows much about them and only the ghôls remember their names and still worship them with bloody sacrifices. Then came Wyrd and Nyx the two great gods of the world. Wyrd created the world and drove out the Dark Gods to the place between worlds but Nyx grew jealous of Wyrd's creation and the two came to blows. The fighting created the great volcano Tharsis, and brought about a number of other changes but eventually Wyrd cast down Nyx and stood triumphant.
Interestingly the Trow continue to worship Nyx to this day, perhaps a comment on what they think of Wyrd's handiwork. Now there are a couple of related stories about Wyrd that may be of interest here.
The first is short and sweet, Wyrd had a son, nothing is said of the other parent, this son was named Segoth and the Dark Gods managed to capture and behead Segoth as vengeance for the creation of the world. But before hiding the head away they enchanted it so that it would live forever and never lose the power of speech. Talking heads are a recurring theme in the history of Myth and this suggests that at least some of the spells known by the Dark Gods can be learnt by mortals. These spells are never given a name so for the purposes of this CYOA I will can them the
Nightmares and they are very powerful.
The second story about Wyrd has to do with his creation of the world. It is said that he lay dreaming for countless ages, and his dream was the
One Dream. When he awoke he made his dream into the world and all the known lands of Myth were created in that moment. Now accounts vary after this but eventually the Dark Gods managed to get a hold of Wyrd and broke the great god. When they did so the
One Dream shattered into Forty Nine pieces and these are the
Dreams and these Dreams were hidden at the far corners of the world on great stone statues and pillars.
They are by far the most powerful spells in existence, but only a handful are known:
-Alric knows at least one of the Dreams and used it during the war, this was the Dispersal Dream and is a terrifying attack spell. It is like a chained explosion spell that one hit kills its target and spreads to anyone near the target and then anyone near them and so on. It can wipe out whole formations of enemy troops in an instant.
-Shiver knew one Dream as well called the Whisper Dream. This allowed her to enter the minds of her friends and enemies and alter their thought through their dreams, if she wanted to she could even kill through dreams and nightmares. The Avatara Rabican with the help of an unexpected ally managed to defeat Shiver in one such dream duel and killed her instantly, it is unclear if he also knew the spell as he was killed by the Watcher within a year of defeating her.
-It is thought that the Deceiver knew at least a few Dreams and he used one on his old enemy and sometime ally the Watcher. This dream was called the Confinement Dream which immediately fixes its target to a nearby surface permanently. The magics are so powerful that they can only ever be undone once, if this first attempt is failed than the victim remains trapped forever. The Watcher was forced to cut off his own arm to escape from the Deceiver's trap as he lacked the ability to fully free himself.
-Rumours from the south suggest that a great Ghôl idol known as Crom Cruach holds another of the Dreams, nothing is known about it save that it is called the Rotting Mist Dream.
-The Watcher definitely knew at least one Dream, the Dream of Unlife from which all necromancy spells derive.
-Soulblighter had the rare ability to polymorph himself which is the only example of such a spell in the setting and may be another Dream.
-It has been suggested that the Callieach (the ancient race of mages the Children are named after) knew some of the Dreams as well and that the spell they cast at the end of their losing war with the Trow which wiped them from the map may be one.
At any rate there are forty nine Dreams all told and it is believed that whoever manages to learn all forty nine will transcend mortal reality and take Wyrd's place as the god of Myth. This will in turn dramatically change the world but no one has any real idea what would happen.
One problem with the theory is that it is known that some of the spells have been completely lost to time, some think that this will prevent the recreation of the One Dream while others think that an archmage only has to collect all the surviving Dreams and that the destruction of some brings the whole world closer to change. Again no one really knows.
Derryth thinks that the map may lead to one of the Dreams but there is no way of knowing if it is real, which Dream it is, or whether or not the monolith with the Dream on it is still standing.
