After his discussion, Tyron finished his simple al, 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 mont she saw him, she vanished, leaving him confused. He shook his head, staggered out of bed and went to put so 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 so 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 al. After washing it down with so water, he felt much refreshed, if not fully fit. He’d pushed himself pretty hard this ti, that much was clear. Thinking it over, he’d made so headway in his research, which was sothing. He’d doubted the Dust Folk had ever thought he’d be able to extract anything aningful from the scrolls they’d given him. He was most definitely going to have the last laugh on that front.
He took the ti to shave off what was starting to be a scraggly beard and not rely 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.
“Co 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 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. Co on.”
A mont later, they’d all shuffled out, leaving Tyron behind wondering what was going through their heads. After he’d pulled on so socks and sturdy shoes, he went to join them, falling into his seat and giving each of his apprentices a searching look.
“I assu you have sothing you want to tell ?” He said. “So sort of breakthrough in Arihnan’s texts?”
If so, he was quite keen to hear it.
“Exactly that,” Richard said, unable to conceal his excitent. “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 sothing Georg found.”
The forr farmhand jumped in.
“I was working through so of the things written by Bintis—”
“Wait a second. Who is Bintis?” Tyron interrupted.
“Oh. So of the volus appear to have been written by Arihnan’s… apprentice, or helper. He’s nad in a couple of writings, but it isn’t clear exactly what he did. Anyway, so of the texts dealing with more fundantal Necromancy appear to have been written by him.”
“Interesting,” Tyron mused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Go on.”
“Right. The book seed 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 nas of the alchemical substances they used to get a better idea. It’s possible we have already tried those thods.”
“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 ti of Arihnan the Black. That ant hundreds of years of research and innovation into their thods.
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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 ca to the spellwork, he had the benefit of further hundreds of years of theory and developnt since Granin had collapsed. That certainly helped.
“We will, we will!’ Georg insisted. “Just listen. Bintis was also ntioning the thods 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 assud 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 ca 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 thod. We completed a pretty exhaustive search and found only three other places where it was ntioned. One was a passing ntion of the difficulty dealing with the size of the remains, another listed several ans of preparation required for converting specific corpses, and the final ntion, we believe, may have been an alternate version of Raise Dead.”
“Show ,” Tyron demanded, holding out a hand.
Unable to hide her grin, Briss handed a volu 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 mont, 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 beco 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 Advancent.”
As with most of the spells he had seen in Arihnan’s notes, there were inefficiencies and sub-optimally ford sigil strings scattered throughout. The conduit work was particularly… if not crude, then lacking in refinent. 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 ti, 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 movent 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 ti 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 mont until Tyron raised his hands and made ‘shooing’ motions.
A mont 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 ti 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 an 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 implent 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.
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