Shadows & Sorcery #33
Welcome to the thirty-third edition of Shadows & Sorcery!
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And remember! The first installment of my fantasy serial “The Path of Poison” is coming soon, in fact it’s coming very soon! I’m hoping for a debut in early May, but I want to make sure it’s up to scratch, so please be patient while some kinks are ironed out. This is a big change of pace for the newsletter, so it has to be just right.
This week’s editions concerns the frightful benefits of necromancy, the lengths to which a theocracy goes for control, how one must bury a sorcerer, secret rites of power, and one rather quaint but eerie wizard’s lair…
This week’s tales are:
Ash Grave
Forest Tower
Sacrificial City
Sorcerer’s Grave
Altar of the Abyss
Ash Grave
The belief was in a communal spirit, a sort of "people's spirit", or a grand ancestor of all, a tangible collection of the living history of the people. To this end, the folk of the region had created communal graves. Not graveyards, not shared catacombs, but vast pits into which the ashes of bodies were scattered. Expanded as it needed to be, pioneers settling in wild new places brought with them urns to carry their dead before an ash grave could be dug and filled. Soon, across the span of their lands, there were vast inverse domes in which the dead of many centuries lay together.
But as other lands had graverobbers, so too did certain individuals take to the desecration of the ash graves. Only in this particular case, there were no valuables, no jewelry, burial gifts, votive offerings, or even clothing or bones to steal. No, the thieves of the ash graves were necromancers, every last one, and they crept on night winds following the whispers of ghosts to their resting place, and took their ash.
The cellars of certain houses had entirely hollow floors filled with stolen ash. "Who would miss a single grain?" they thought. "Who would notice?" In truth, no one really did. Only when haphazard necromancers made mistakes and were caught did the elders enact strict laws and create tomb vanguards to watch over the grand ancestor, and looked within to find the magicians responsible.
But the necromancers had taken enough over the years, and in the hidden depths of city basements and manor dungeons, they learned to call up the spirit of the ash. They learned that the ash graves are one vast mass of spirit, and as such, these smaller pits function similarly. It is not the amalgamation of human souls they called up, but rather the primal spirit, the life which expresses itself in human form before dissolving.
Interestingly, although handfuls of ash could call up but wisps and air phantoms, greater collections of ash created greater spirits in both size and power, far beyond what they had been in life. It seems that what is apportioned to the human body is relatively weak, and that the legendary "great-souled" champions of old had something to them after all. Necromancers dreamed darkly of what might be called up from even a single proper ash grave.
The secret war against the necromancers was a lesson learned for the elders of the cities. Soul horrors were unleashed in shadowed alleys and frightful battles were fought in ancient tunnels. Many necromancers were imprisoned, many died and their bodies frozen so they may never return to spirit, and many more had their knowledge stripped from them in frightful interrogations. But the lands were not quiet at this time, as an old enemy finally took advantage of the inner turmoil of the region. Real war broke out, and as waves of foes crashed upon them, the elders convened and knew they would buckle soon, and so turned with shame to, of all people, the soul-stealing magicians they had persecuted.
The shaman-priests of the old faith decried the elders' sacrilege, but at great cost and under dire peril, where legacies were forged and heroes born, the three great ash graves converged on one spot thanks to the efforts of a grand pilgrimage of urn-bearing zealots.
And when the necromancers were called forth, the soul of an entire race rose from the ash grave. A god towered over the final battlefield, and swept aside the lives of over one hundred thousand soldiers in an instant. To see what these people could call up, what they were willing to do, tributes of fear poured in from every enemy and tentative ally, and the region waxed mighty.
Necromancers walk the streets of the cities now, and the ash graves are no more. Families call up the spirit forces of their ancestors, and in times of crisis, the College of the Animus strides forth to summon armies with the wave of a hand, and the grandchildren of shaman-priests pray for forgiveness.
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