Book 1 Synopsis

The primary character is Jeremiah Thorn, he’s a kid that wanted to be important and was kicked out of his home, he ran away to become a mage. After failing in his tutelage with many, he got picked up by a Lich named Flusoh to learn Necromancy. Spent years doing that, and then was kicked out into the world to learn things the hard way.

He learned that no one cares what his intentions are, he’s a necromancer, and that’s all they need to know.

Jeremiah meets an adventuring party;

Allison Allday: Soldier, disciplined, vibrant, natural teacher and sort of motherly figure

Delilah Fortune: Half-elf, alchemist, lawyer, doctor, super ambitious and intelligent. Acts as a bridge between Jeremiah and the political and power workings happening around him.

Bruno: Rogue extraordinaire. Brotherly figure to Jeremiah, acts as a mirror to the excesses and injustices that happen around the story and its setting.

Jeremiah delves a dungeon with them, gets outed as a necromancer, and they proceed to put him on trial for being a necromancer. Mostly Allison saying that his very nature means he deserves to die, with Delilah being unsure, and Bruno being a bit more forgiving.

They decide not to kill him, but Jeremiah wants his cut of the treasure, which they had already agreed to. So they take him to Dramir the Capital city, with some amount of bonding happening along the way.

He stays with Delilah, they make a ton of money off the sale of loot, he proves himself useful in a very minor sense taking care of their house. The money Jeremiah receives from his cut is more than he’s ever had in his life by a long shot.

They go out drinking on his last night with them, and he has a good time until he is excluded from the stories Allison tells to her soldier friends. He sulks away into the night and encounters a large building fire. Fire brigades and bucket lines are working on it, and he joins them, but when they begin to hear shouts of people trapped inside Jeremiah creates skeletons to save the people.

He’s knocked out by Delilah, and wakes up in jail. He’s being tried for the fact of being a necromancer, something that wasn’t illegal specifically but a sham trial is forcing it along.

While in jail he meets Vivica, a beautiful and mysterious elven girl. She displays conviction and determination and talks to him about “irresponsible forgiveness” by not willing to fight against the people jailing him.

She escapes by crushing her body between the bars of her cell, then rapidly healing via some mysterious power.

Jeremiah is tried, defended by his friends, and found guilty. He pleads his case at sentencing that he’d do it again too, because it was the right thing to do. He is sentenced to working, for free, to prove his value to the city and its people for a year and a day. If at the end of that time he fails to impress the judges of his trial, he will be executed. Delilah, his lawyer, is simultaneously and unexpectedly found guilty of knowingly aiding and abetting an necromancer. She will suffer permanent disbarment if he fails to prove himself.

After some resistance from the city, Jeremiah finds himself working for Albert Dunsimmons, a farming magnate whose vast stable of horses has suffered a terrible plague. His lack of horses means his vast acreages might go unplowed and he would miss the planting season. Jeremiah ends up raising the horses as tireless zombies to get the work done in the otherwise impossible deadline Dunsimmons sets.

More work follows helping farmers do manual labor jobs with corpses. Then conducting elaborate funerals, including one where a former teacher of Allison’s fights in a ceremonial duel with Allison for the last time, having passed of old age and not having been felled in battle like he wanted.

No feedback from the legal system. It becomes clear that they don’t care. They’re just letting Jeremiah be useful before they kill him. They’re approached by Colonel Valemore, a military man in service to the Kingdom of Dramir. He says he has “an opportunity for an opportunity”. Jeremiah says he’ll think about it.

Jeremiah is brought to a seedy bar by Bruno, who uses it as a way to illustrate to Jeremiah that what he’s doing is a disruption that’s taking work and money from the poor and passing it up the chain to the rich. Bruno understands why Jeremiah’s doing it, he has to in order to survive, but he wants Jeremiah to understand what impact he’s having, and to hopefully always have that in mind.

Jeremiah and his group agree to the opportunity for an opportunity, which involves eliminating a bandit camp that’s been causing trouble. There’s a lot of preparation that happens montage style. Jeremiah and reader see what goes into the preparation and how important it is. Lots of money gets spent, highlighting that adventuring is impossibly expensive business. High risk high rewards. Jeremiah helps by utilizing a favor earned from someone he saved from the fire that got him jailed. A cartographer is able to get them access to a military intelligence map of the area they’re investigating for the bandit camp. It proves very valuable in narrowing it down. Jeremiah learns the value of paying patronage to artists and specialists who can create customizable tools.

They travel to the desert via carriage drawn by undead horses disguised as normal ones, thanks to patroning a theater company with costume designers.

They find the bandit camp to be a fortress, very unusual and indicative of a greater level of organization. Jeremiah makes a comment about his undead being able to handle killing people in such an environment. The detached language he uses prompts a serious conversation between himself, Allison, and Bruno, about how difficult killing a person actually is, and how such intense situations don’t leave a lot of time for figuring out who’s bad and who’s good. Emphasis is placed on people that might surrender to save their own skin. Jeremiah assures them it’s not going to be a problem.

They infiltrate the fortress at night, Bruno killing a bunch of people in their sleep. Jeremiah is shocked at the brutality but manages to barely keep it together. Jeremiah is set to guard a door while the group prepares, and a man enters. Jeremiah is expected to kill him, but freezes at the sight and is unable to act. The man is killed at the last moment by Bruno before an alarm can be raised.

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Jeremiah is left behind and self-loathes for a while, before recommitting to the cause in the face of his own self disgust and raising lots of undead to attack the fortress with his friends.

Lot of killing, lot of danger, combat adventure etc etc.

In the aftermath Jeremiah finds a man who died in a closet, hiding from his undead. He is suddenly hit by the fact that not everyone was scary bad bandits trying to fight, some were just torn apart and afraid. He has a panic attack, his friends are successful in soothing him to some extent and bringing him back down, but the ‘Man in the Closet’ remains a figure in his dreams and memories for the rest of the book and series.

He recalls his old teacher talking about how normal people are rarely ever Evil “With a capital E”. They tend to cap out at greedy jerks.

They uncover a vast amount of treasure hoarded by the bandits, enough to make them filthy rich. Jeremiah has a moment of weakness and says he’s going to remain at the fortress instead of returning with his friends. He feels like the bondage he’s been placed under isn’t going to be lifted no matter what he does, and that he’s just being used for short term profit. He fights with Delilah over this fact, but she eventually convinces him to stay with ‘his family’, the only people who are going to care about him. It’s made mention that ‘alone in isolated areas’ is what happens to most necromancers.

Jeremiah returns with them. Delilah has a happy breakdown because she technically owns the fortress and land, and is made into a minor noble because of it, a big step in her dream of being elected Queen. They are invited to a fancy celebration party in her honor.

Bruno explains to Jeremiah that their vast fortune is now theoretical money, not money held in their hands. Its in a bank and on paper. Neither of them really understand what that means or its significance.

Jeremiah is brought to a poor seamstress for new clothes for the party. Some explanations about how she can do just as good for much less than bigger stores, has newer ideas, and the money will mean more to her (hooray small business essentially)

They go to the party and Jeremiah is confronted by a sketchy dude who wants to learn necromancy. Jeremiah has a PTSD moment when the man is vaguely threatening and loses his temper, threatening the man in a very public and graphic display.

They are brought before King Hector and learn about a barbarian incursion in the northern city of Nosirin that’s being led by a single powerful leader. A picture of the leader is passed around and its revealed to be Vivica, the woman Jeremiah met in jail. He lets everyone know about this. The king is revealed to have had a previous relationship with Allison in some unknown regard, but enough that they’re familiar with each other and possibly flirtatious. Jeremiah is being sent north to reinforce Nosirin with his friends as an act that will get him out from under the thumb of Dramir.

At home Allison and Delilah have a huge fight about whether Allison not trying to get in touch with the king on Jeremiah’s behalf was a wrong. Delilah says she was scared of not being remembered and afraid of the answer, Allison says she had no reason to believe the king would remember her or even care about their problems. They eventually are able to see each other’s points of view, and accept them, if not agree with them.

They go to Nosirin together, an attack by the barbarians against the city happens almost immediately. Jeremiah is sent to raise zombie soldiers prepared by the city. Its discovered a lot of these people might have been prisoners and were executed to make more reliable soldiers. Jeremiah resurrects far more zombies than he could previously hold in his mind at a time.

The barbarians surround the city and surprise the offenders by catapulting their soldiers over the wall with giants, its discovered that Vivica has given them the same ability to regenerate, and many survive being thrown. They cause havok and the city’s defenses are quickly routed. The undead have no appreciable impact on the battle.

They retreat to the cast at the center of the city. Jeremiah is told to cover the retreat of the soldiers using the undead. Jeremiah misunderstands the orders and tells the undead to abandon their positions and start attacking en masse. The order to retreat had not actually been given yet, and Jeremiah realizes his undead have been attacking friendly troops for several minutes, causing an unknown number of casualties. Jeremiah mentally severs his connection with the undead, destroying them.

Colonel Valen taken Jeremiah aside and tells him that “All men make mistakes. Great men make great mistakes.” But he’s not very nice about it. He reveals to Jeremiah the plan is to have leadership and VIPs evacuate the city while the soldiers launch a counter attack to cover them. Jeremiah negotiates making Allison a part of that retreat.

Vivica approaches the castle via giant and asks the leader (King Growlack) to surrender. The king says no. Vivica reveals a vast number of POWs she has from the attack, including Allison. She has all of their throats cut simultaneously in a gruesome display and tells the King she can save them, if he just surrender. King says no.

Jeremiah jumps forward and begs Vivica to save them. She’s pleased to see him, but saddened he’s on the wrong side. She offers to save them if Jeremiah let’s her cut off his hands. Jeremiah says yes without hesitation, surprising Vivica. She is touched and off put by his response, and instead brands his arms and saves the POWs anyways, saying that he doesn’t belong on that side.

The leadership makes a retreat out of the city via secret tunnel. As they head back to Dramir, Jeremiah reveals to his friends he no longer wants to be a Necromancer. The responsibility is too great, and the costs are too high, and he just can’t handle it. His friends are supportive of his decision.

They are pursued by Vivica’s army, who are empowered by her healing magic to be completely tireless in their pursuit. They make it back to Dramir and she lays siege to the city. They are able to throw only precious few soldiers over the walls, and they engage in sabotauge and raising support for Vivica within the city.

King Hector is tempted to force Jeremiah to continue to work for the military, but keeps his promise and releases Jeremiah and Delilah from any legal responsibilities.

Vivca visits Jeremiah in his home. She expresses that he has caused her to doubt her mission, both because of his believe in forgiveness and his willingness to help people. She wants to know which of them is right. She reveals to him her plans; She’s going to “knock down ever tower taller than the smallest hovel.” Essentially a war against the wealthy. When Jeremiah asks what comes next, she says she doesn’t know. She explains that revolutions are always bloody, and she has the power to make it as painless as possible, but what replaces it is for greater minds than hers.

Jeremiah develops a plan to stop her, though he’s unsure if she’s wrong. He calls a meeting of the wealthiest people in Dramir and wants to put together an unfathomably large bribe to hand her the ability to change how things work by making her the richest person in the world by an order of magnitude. Most disagree, some believe it’s the right idea to stop bloodshed and that she’ll take it anyways. Then there’s an assassination attempt against the lot of them that barely fails and the agree.

Jeremiah brings the bribe to Vivica, an impossible amount of money, outside the city. She takes offense to the idea, believing him to have been corrupted. She attacks him, and the ground falls out from under them, revealing a swarm of undead have been tunneling underneath. The undead pull Vivica under and bury her alive along with the money.

Book concludes with Jeremiah going to lots of meetings about the events, Vivica and the money are gone forever with the undead still digging for at least one month, and Jeremiah turning down his teacher Flusoh to return for further teaching. Flusoh says power justifies its own use, and isn’t offended Jeremiah doesn’t want to, says we all go through it.

Jeremiah is fully accepted into the family of Bruno, Allison, and Delilah, regardless of no longer being a necromancer.