Book of The Dead

After his discussion, Tyron finished his simple meal, went to his room to wash up and then slept. He was out for over twelve hours before he woke to find Briss poking her head through the door as he blearily sat up. The moment she saw him, she vanished, leaving him confused. He shook his head, staggered out of bed and went to put some fresh clothes on, only to find a warm plate on his desk with breakfast. Had Briss just delivered this?

If so, he had to ask her how she’d managed to get her hands on some eggs. They were worth their weight in gold these days, with how few chickens managed to make it over the mountains. As many eggs as possible were being fertilised in the hopes of building up the population, so actually getting to eat one was a rare treat.

After pulling on a simple robe, he sat down to enjoy the meal. After washing it down with some water, he felt much refreshed, if not fully fit. He’d pushed himself pretty hard this time, that much was clear. Thinking it over, he’d made some headway in his research, which was something. He’d doubted the Dust Folk had ever thought he’d be able to extract anything meaningful from the scrolls they’d given him. He was most definitely going to have the last laugh on that front.

He took the time to shave off what was starting to be a scraggly beard and not merely stubble before he combed out his hair and tied it back. A haircut was long overdue. He’d probably get Filetta to put a knife to it. Just as he was finishing, there was a tentative knock at the door.

“Come in,” he said, turning to face it.

Expecting to see Briss, he was a little surprised to see Georg and Richard as well. The three students entered his small and sparse chamber, giving him deferential nods as they did so.

“Is there a reason you all want to talk to me in my bedroom?” he asked, frowning.

“Oh,” Richard started, just seeming to realise where he was. “We… we’ll go wait in the sitting room. Come on.”

A moment later, they’d all shuffled out, leaving Tyron behind wondering what was going through their heads. After he’d pulled on some socks and sturdy shoes, he went to join them, falling into his seat and giving each of his apprentices a searching look.

If so, he was quite keen to hear it.

“Exactly that,” Richard said, unable to conceal his excitement. “The three of us have been coordinating to get through all the material, there’s so much of it, but we put that aside a few days ago to focus on something Georg found.”

The former farmhand jumped in.

“I was working through some of the things written by Bintis—”

“Wait a second. Who is Bintis?” Tyron interrupted.

“Oh. Some of the volumes appear to have been written by Arihnan’s… apprentice, or helper. He’s named in a couple of writings, but it isn’t clear exactly what he did. Anyway, some of the texts dealing with more fundamental Necromancy appear to have been written by him.”

“Interesting,” Tyron mused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Go on.”

“Right. The book seemed to be Bintis detailing the steps that needed to be completed in order for Arihnan to work on various forms of undead. Most of these things are familiar to us. How they treated their bones for skeletons. How they preserved corpses for zombies—”

“Anything interesting there?” Tyron interrupted again.

Finding new ways to prepare raw materials to create better undead was one of Tyron’s many obsessions. He’d done so much work on his own to develop more ideal bones, and now a lot of that research had been passed to Bone Smiths and Corpse Handlers, yet he still thought about it often.

Squeezing even a single percent of performance out of his basic skeletons would make a significant difference when his army numbered in the tens of thousands.

“Not… not really? There’s a few things that could be useful, but we would need to work on translating the names of the alchemical substances they used to get a better idea. It’s possible we have already tried those methods.”

“Make sure you look at that as a priority,” Tyron insisted.

He refused to believe that, in just a few years, the Necromancy that he and the others practiced was as developed as what Arihnan used. Sure, the spellwork might be better, since Tyron was, if nothing else, very good at magick, but processing corpses was brand new to him and everyone else he worked with. Necromancy hadn’t been illegal in Granin during the time of Arihnan the Black. That meant hundreds of years of research and innovation into their methods.

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Tyron knew he was smart, but he wasn’t that smart. Overcoming a deficit like that in just a few years was impossible. When it came to the spellwork, he had the benefit of further hundreds of years of theory and development since Granin had collapsed. That certainly helped.

“We will, we will!’ Georg insisted. “Just listen. Bintis was also mentioning the methods used to process the remains of kin. We know from the historical record that Arihnan the Black had monsters in his armies, and this was the first hint we’d seen that the process of creating those undead had actually been written down!”

The Necromancer sat up in his chair. Now this was interesting. He’d long assumed that the powerful beasts seen in Arihnan’s horde had been bone constructs, which was why he’d devoted so much of his own attention in that direction. The limitations of the Raise Dead spell were quite clear: you could only use it on remains of your own… type. Even extending it to horses had been a rare boon. Creating undead from kin?

It… didn’t make sense. There was literally an inexhaustible supply of kin. Infinite materials. If a Necromancer could use them to create undead… they would have dominated the entire world ages ago!

“Did you find more?”

“That’s where I came in,” Briss announced proudly. “When Georg shared with us what he’d found, Richard and I dropped our own work to start combing through everything to find more details about this method. We completed a pretty exhaustive search and found only three other places where it was mentioned. One was a passing mention of the difficulty dealing with the size of the remains, another listed several means of preparation required for converting specific corpses, and the final mention, we believe, may have been an alternate version of Raise Dead.”

“Show me,” Tyron demanded, holding out a hand.

Unable to hide her grin, Briss handed a volume over, a marker slid between two pages. Seizing the book, Tyron opened it to the marked page and started devouring the words in front of him. For five minutes, there was total silence in the room as the three students watched their teacher with bated breath. In truth, they weren’t expert enough to know exactly what they’d found. The three had checked again and again, knocking their heads together to try and be as sure as they could be.

With a snap, Tyron closed the book, a thoughtful expression on his face. For a long moment, the students were left in suspense as he continued to ponder.

“A couple of points,” he said finally. “This is indeed a modified version of Raise Dead,” he said, tapping a finger on the cover of the book. “However,” he continued, cutting their joy off before it could become too pronounced, “I do not believe this is generally applicable to all forms of kin. Rather, I think there were specific types of kin that Arihnan was able to raise as undead. It feels like he was granted these modifications as a result of feat selections, or perhaps his platinum Class Advancement.”

As with most of the spells he had seen in Arihnan’s notes, there were inefficiencies and sub-optimally formed sigil strings scattered throughout. The conduit work was particularly… if not crude, then lacking in refinement. In this particular version, there were a significant number of sigils that Tyron didn’t recognise, so he could only use context and his own knowledge to make educated guesses. If he wasn’t mistaken, then most of them related to the artificial mind, which was the area Tyron himself felt the most deficient in.

His basic undead, those without a soul, were only capable of a limited number of actions when acting on their own. Engraving even this small list onto the minion took a significant amount of time, and in the end, it basically boiled down to ‘controlling their body well enough to hit things, use shields and shoot bows.’ More complex reasoning and patterns of movement were well beyond his ability to inscribe. His basic skeletons weren’t really capable of jumping, for instance.

Expanding his knowledge of artificial minds was one of his primary goals, and if he could unlock the secrets behind these sigils, then that would be a significant stride forward.

“Get ready,” he announced to his students, still thinking to himself.

Georg, Briss and Richard looked at each other, confused.

“For what?” Georg asked.

Tyron looked at him.

“To head to the rifts,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Prepare your undead, bring any of the new Necromancers you think will benefit from fighting against the kin and leave lessons for the rest. We’ll march out tomorrow.”

He tapped a finger on the cover of the book again.

“The best way to test this spell is to try and apply it to various kin. If we can find monsters that are similar to the ones we know were present in Arihnan’s army, then we can attempt to use the spell on them. Considering it's time to push toward the rifts anyway, we can kill two birds with one stone. There will be many kin to kill, and you all need levels, so you’re coming too.”

The three students sat wide-eyed for a moment until Tyron raised his hands and made ‘shooing’ motions.

A moment later, the three were gone, leaving Tyron by himself once more, thoughtfully tapping away at the book now resting in his lap.

This would be an interesting opportunity. Deciphering the sigils laid out in the text would be a major step forward in the overall understanding of Necromancy being developed around Tyron. Being able to add powerful kin to his army without having to invest any ability selections or feat choices would be a major coup. While they were at it, he could take this time to complete the push for the closest rift. Seizing control of it would make a huge difference for the survivors living in the ruins of Granin. Fewer kin roaming the wilds would mean it was safer to expand further outwards. The outskirts of the city were still considered dangerous, as smaller kin could slip into the ruins unseen and roam through the crumbling buildings looking for prey.

It would also give Tyron a chance to fully implement the knowledge the Old Gods had given him regarding the nature of magick. If he could truly destroy it, remove it from the realm, shrinking the rift in the process, then his world may indeed have a future after all.

If he were the first person in the history of the realm to actually close a rift, then he would go down in history as a hero, perhaps regardless of the damage he caused in his pursuit of vengeance.

Rising from his chair, he made his way to his workshop, issuing dozens of silent orders with his mind. He couldn’t muster his full army, many were needed to keep the peace and help with manual labour in the city, but he would need to bring as much strength as he could. This would be a difficult battle.