Screep Scraep Sket

Scrimshaw, an interesting art. Both ornamental and practical. Now that I have the chance to start over again I should reduce the amount of miasma intake into my body. The long term effects are many. I suspect my infertility to also be related. The more practical inability to be healed by divine power and most conventional magic methods is of greater concern. For now I can create a few items that may come into use. I cannot be sure if there are sophisticated detection wards so I cannot enchant them just yet. At the worst I can quickly over infuse them for use as disposable weapons. Better to make dedicated ones but any thing of worth in a fight. Odd I feel anxious, as if I expect to be interrupted. Well, best check on the herbal wind process. The wine is doing fine as the herb is steeped, shaking the container I then go back to carving.

Taking the time to gather a number of herbs in the area I begin creating some items. For my cover as an apothecary as well as my personal use. Nothing good, these types of herbs are home remedy grade items. A few very low level magical herbs however for use by the lowest ranks. I seem to think that these are actually relatively rare, not unseen but still rare. Is it just that the area has a low mana saturation. No information on such matters of course on the map, the mana jet streams are undocumented along with any springs or lines. Survey work, tedious work but necessary. Removing some of the powder as it goes away in a yellow white puff I inspect the patterns. One of the patterns I learned at my time in the academy, a fire explosion rune. Finishing the protective polishing I go over the next matter of concern.

I take out the chain around my neck and check the amulets on it.  Ahhh good, the goddess did keep my most important artifact intact. I will however miss my rank plate.The culmination of my master’s teachings and my research, my magnum opus; the Liber Sequenti Temporum Mortis. My personal grimoire, currently looking like a small square of copper with carvings. Here are recorded the spells I have learned over my time and hidden under the strictest protection my research. Every single magic imprint and ritual for creating undead of various types is recorded in this grimoire.

Perhaps one of the greater accumulations of necromantic lore that would drive any who knew of it mad whether from the latent energy or the thirst for it’s secrets. It was a piece of work ensuring that whenever I visited a conclave gathering of necromancers that I kept this under lock and key though any self-respecting mage hides their grimoire and research. The others did the same, The tales of fortified mage towers are often true, there are few things with less ethics than a mage with an intruder out for research in their quarters.

The best tale of such an event involves a group of three master theifs infiltrating a tower of an archmage. Said archmage was rumoured to have created a method of converting gold to a higher form. Such a thing drove said group of thieves to attempt to infiltrate, the entire attempt ended up in ruin. Some of the defenses included curses that affected to the fifth degree of kinship. Families wiped out without ever knowing they were related, a harsh method. Death by their very blood boiling to detonation. That is an extreme example but still should serve as warning not just to a mage’s refusal to know restraint but how your actions will affect others. Blood relation, such a convoluted thing. A status modifier, there is precedence to its importance but not always...

But such matters are no longer of concern to me. master was a pioneer and sneered on traditional methods and made sure that I never went down the path of fool’s power. In particular he experimented with improving animal and monster reanimation, it is quite effective as an alternative to human reanimation if not exactly very flexible. Animals and monsters are usually much better for fighting long term, less fragile and need for equipment compared to humanoids but that inability to improve through external means is limiting. Nor are they so available as humans. More widespread practice of monster reanimation was what made my career at the local academy, a more codified method to necromancy and also quite a bit of embezzlement for my personal research which spawned the golem corps.

By civil law it is heavily restricted to practice necromancy, by military law this is loosened. Still in the long term by personal experience you would use necromancy to cleanse areas the most, offensive necromancy is second, necromancy to heal/revive is third, necromancy to raise monsters and necromancy to raise golems is fourth depending on availability of resources, and finally necromancy to raise humans is last.

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If they ever found my secret laboratory I would probably be burnt on the stake with holy fire. While I did not make a secret coup d'etat undead army I did do enough smaller scale work for things to not be tolerated if found out by the wrong parties. Of course it is not like I massacred a few towns to fuel my work but a few decades allows one to accumulate quite a bit of material. Let us say that I never kept many prisoners of war around and had a good working relationship with those in charge of the penal work gangs not that it was any special act. An open secret was that most mages and nobles had similar connections and my making them was not viewed as special. One does not simply invent new necromantic creations without finding ways of making it possible to mass produce.  Unfortunately most of that work was theoretical since I had most practical tests on smaller scales, I was perhaps too cautious in keeping things hidden but then again I did manage to rise to my high position and accumulate knowledge regardless.

I am admittedly weak in conventional manners of necromancy, my control is meant for small groups micromanaged to perfection. I cannot create the massive self perpetuating hordes of undead that liches can, nor can I so swiftly convert an undead. Quality over quantity, taken to an extreme. My creation of pseudo souls was key in this, undead are beings of fixation. They usually cannot progress, intelligent ones can if slowly but that is not allowed under convention. Such a creation is why necromancy has flourished under my tutelage, what was once solely a tool for clean up and anti-undead tactics was expanded. I expect development to be slow, the energy of the soul is not something to be so easily tampered with. Well for reasonable beings it is.  But to stagnate is to die, if something has potential and can be proven the growing pains can be borne. I tap my pendant as I take a second to allow myself to calm.

Checking one of the projects I had I find that my brew is complete. A very low grade stabilizer fluid from the local resources. Still satisfactory for my purposes. Weaving my mana into the gel it flows over the bones I have here. One of the pack I exterminated before, the gel flows across the bone to the runes carved there earlier. The mana and gel are absorbed into the rune, the first step is complete. Now is the time for the miasma, taking out some of that ether I have within me I begin constructing the necromantic glyphs for this. Allow more delicate and systematic change within the bone soon it is converted from its mundane nature to a warhound of death. Standing perhaps one part of of ten larger than before it is perfectly still, devoid of any active order other than to be at ready.

This will be good if I need to have something hunted down, giving it the ability to distinguish living beings from inanimate objects/plants will save me some time and risk. Something to flush the prey. I would test its ability on a homunculus but that is not available right now. Hmm on that thought I remember that there was to be a test of the new model arquebus next year. Sad that I could not be there.

The arquebus that was created recently in only the last two decades, I don’t know what made me so absorbed with it in the first place but I found much potential in them. Low grade necromantic creations of copper rank and below cannot use them but stronger ones can. Copper rank, raw material to be used, militia and beginners in training of all possible paths. The destructive power of that arquebuses offer along with ease of use such that undead without shackled souls can use is promising. An advantage of the living over the dead is that they can learn to use an item even if inefficiently.The latest tactics fresh from the military segment of the imperium’s various academies revolved about conscripts enmass to counter heavy infantry and cavalry, to go forward with one aspect to make up for the others.

But there is so much more that can be done. They fill a niche in low magic combat or trained but still majority mundane armies of bronze rank and below. Those who have been tempered and are ready to be used, but not truly put to the test. The lowest rank for any respectable army and thus the majority. There is even use against gold rank soldiers, those who have been given the resources needed to advance. Effort will get you far but not without the material to advance. At the same time this is a border, you can use money to get this far but both effort and money will be needed to advance.  

Arquebus warfare and all warfare in general arrays around formation use, proper combined arms tactics to enhance the strengths and mitigate the weakness. Such formations that undead properly managed can execute would be a massive force multiplier. Leave the mindless swarms to those lesser necromancers, true grand warfare requires much more skill and superior troops. Both small scale and grand strategic command, If what they say is true of the scale of the wasteland then I will have as much material as I need. But at the same time I will be working from scratch in terms of manpower. It will take time, and mistakes will be made.Information and secrecy will be what I need. How to start such an organization from scratch is a concern. I need to think on this. Facts, concrete plans, logic. I have a few thoughts, perhaps I can create a real plan. Writing down some of my thoughts on some parchment I spend the rest of the daylight outlining points of interest.