Three's also a mob
"Cold feet, like it goes. So I told him, think of us more like a voluntary fire brigade. For instance, those rafters looks dangerously flammable." The short, bespectacled man grinned, and tilted his head upwards, before taking another swig of what passed around here as gin. "And then I lit my cig just so the ceiling got a lick, and-"
"For Goddess's sake, spare me the fairytales. Did you get the money, or not?" His performance was interrupted by the plump dhaerow reclining in the seat across from him, the back of her chair tilted all the way towards touching the next table. Not that anyone would be inconvenienced by the fact - somehow, the spots around the trio of Carlo Ponzani's "business associates" tended to remain empty even during the midday rush.
"Here." he uttered, looking down on the table, and produced a greasy pouch from one of the many pockets of his overcoat. "All three hundred and fifty eight." No soon has he opened his palm than the sack set to flight, floating slowly about four feet across into hers. She opened it, and gave the contents a cursory sweep. "Two silvers, yes, and… did you count the copper?"
"Arpad did, twice." he looked at the snake wrapped around his shoulder with an obvious hint of pride in his voice, before resuming to gawk at the passing barmaid.
"Excellent." the drowess smiled. "So that makes eighteen for us, which together with my ninety six makes how much, Rustam?"
The third leaf of the clover, a half-orc, raised his sight from the book he was frowning at all afternoon, and ran his fingers through the coarse, patchy stubble on his chin. "One hundred and fourteen?"
"Ding!" she grinned, scribbling the figure into a little notebook with worn, leather wrappings. "So that makes, seven hundred and three for the tenday. Not bad, eh?"
The half-orc at least seemed to agree, smiling under his whiskers, while the four-eyes watched the barmaid, mumbling something excitedly to his reptile. Her own attempt at joy, however, quickly succumbed to the haunting number. "Webbed pits, Sandor, at least make yourself useful and get me another drink." she drained the remainder of her glass, a sticky concoction of local rotgut, herbs and grape syrup (the latter two components valiantly attempting to obscure the taste of the former), before looking at the notebook again.
Seven hundred and three.
The tenday was a little below average, yes, but even so, they hardly made more than thirty-forty silvers a month, a pitiful sum to someone who has handled sums easily twenty times bigger every day, merely a couple years in the past, and that's not even talking about Menzoberranzan. Unfortunately, between the Cult of the Dragon's defeat doing away with the need to supply front lines, and certain disagreements between her and her immediate superior over the accuracy of her accounting, the best option seemed a change of venue. Unfortunately, the only line of work that combined her own wishes (To avoid anything resembling living on the rough, ever again.) with the will of her Zhentarim superiors (Not to let her near ledgers, ever again.) was the one under the ever-watchful eye of the moneylender and his bareheaded bodyguard, and, truth be told, that spider only spun copper thread.
Burmice frowned, first at the notebook, then at her associates, unable to quite decide what was more pitiful. At least, the maid was back with a jug of the answer, topped her glass up, then scuttered off with a nervous look, leaving the vessel on the table. An implicit agreement existed between the trio and the owner of the Witty Ox (Originally named Witty Fox, but some joker thought better, and the new name stuck), formalized the first time an armed troublemaker got cut in half by the studious mongrel to her right - they got their food and drinks for free, whenever and how much they liked, and in return, their presence (and occassional judicious action) kept the customers well-behaved and polite on what sort of became her personal tiny fiefdom. She took a sip - she was sort of starting to grow fond of the concoction - put the notebook away, and dug out an even more worn text, the title "A Sorceress Can Still Dream" still visible on the peeling spine, ready to replace her own dismay with the feelings of an entirely fictional arcanist, if only for a while.
Besides, it's still better than mercenary work. Now, where did my Goddess-damned bookmark go.
She flicked through, scowling at the pages, finally finding the spot where a guard sergeant asked the eponymous sorceress to accompany her for a ball. As she reached for her drink again, about to find out whether the beautiful, witty mage agreed, or favoured a suave conjurer colleague, she noticed the chair opposite to her empty.
She looked around for an instant, already anticipating what she was about to find with most definitely mixed feelings. Of course, her wonderful underling was somehow already at the bar, chatting up some tart, a dirty blonde with a somewhat ratty face, clearly dressed for travel. However, while usually, his not-so-clever lines and terrible attempts at acting suave have resulted in eyerolls, slaps, and the occassional kick to the groin, this woman, as surprising as Burmice found it, seemed actually interested, smiling at the bespectacled sorcerer.
"And, why not? Any suggestions?"
"Well, we could start with a gin… and end up at my place." the mage spat out, clearly surprised by his own success.
"Hah, why the rush? Someone expecting you there?" she gave him a grin that caused him to dig that pit further, much to Burmice's amusement.
"Not at all! Unless you have an equally adorable twin you've just gotten off a Sending to." Sandor smiled in a way that'd have put an otyugh off. However, the woman kept toying with him, this time mock-sad instead.
"I'm afraid you'll have to make do with a very singular, twinless me, unless my parents /really/ hurry up while we have a couple drinks. By the way, whom do I owe the pleasure?"
"I'm Sandor Munkas… but you can just call me Sandor." he made his best intense (or, in Burmice's opinion, unhinged) expression, before patting the snake on his arm. " And this is Arpad. Now, what about you?"
"I'm-"
Lecture part 1
"A pleasant evening, ladies and gentlemen. I suggest you go help yourself to some snacks - your brains will appreciate an extra helping of sugar when trying to absorb information, and besides, at least you won't ruffle and shuffle about once I've started. There will be a proper banquet once we're done, and for now on, there's a selection of pastries sweet and savoury, cookies and cupcakes - my favourite have got to be the ones with lemon buttercream frosting, they're just amazing - and of course, there's coffee and tea and all manner of other drinks. But, anyways."
"Today's topic shall, once again, be necromancy. I know, I know, some of you are groaning by now, given there already has been a lecture on the topic a couple months ago. However, for all her undeniable virtues, I can't help but feel that lady Drae'syndora's lecture was affected by a certain lack of erudition, yielding information whose relationship to fact could at times be described as distant common ancestry. In contrast, I happen to hold the title of a mistress of arcane arts for my work in the field of bioenergetics, a century or so of practical experience, and currently, the post of a researcher at the Arcane Brotherhood. But, enough about that."
"Necromancy - the term itself comes from old Netherese, roughly meaning divination using the dead, and indeed, extracting information from a corpse is one of the first necromantic spells an adept learns. However, and thank the Goddess for that, the field is considerably broader, including bioenergetics and pavorics - the latter, some feel, would be better fitted among the sub-schools of enchantment - Quates transforms and spectral manipulation which, while distinct, tend to be so intertwined in actual use, they're usually referred to together as 'true necromancy', and finally, some aspects of conjuration instrumental in carrying out any of the prior. Tonight, I shall be talking about said true necromancy, as it is the field most associate with our discipline, and one perhaps most yielding to demonstrations in civil company."
"Perchance the most natural approach to understanding the not-quite-split nature of the field is to link it to one of my other favourites, which is making pastries. I think you would agree that making crispy, succulent dough and delicious filling are very distinct skills, yet both are vital to the success of a pastry chef. In our little analogy, the field of Quates transforms concerns itself with the 'dough' an undead servant is made of, while spectral manipulation is, this time without the air quotes, concerned with the filling."
"The first thing you're likely asking yourself at this point is, "Why /Quates/ transforms?", and if you're like a fifteen year old me, closely followed by "Goddess, why should a clearly important field of study be named after a human of all things?" To answer these questions, we must come to a time long past… around the Year of Plentiful Wine, some-such eighteen centuries ago. Back then, the field of necromancy was, on the surface, viewed with either fear and suspicion or wild-eyed dedication, most tomes written were either chock-ful of religious nonsense or worse, insane ramblings, and even down below, where the field perhaps flourished the most, the power over dead was considered a direct attribute of our Goddess, the rituals in question taken as holy rites to be replicated without thought, rather than procedure to be studied, understood and improved."
"In this situation, it was understandable that most academically-minded arcanists had little but scorn for their necromantic colleagues, and admitting to study the discipline was somewhat akin to one claiming to distill grey essence or forge the philosopher's stone - namely that one is either a kook, a madman, or most likely, a healthy mixture of both. Such was the story of a mage by the name of Archibald Baal. At the time, it was thought that the act of animating a corpse required direct or indirect divine action, and while Baal had successfully argued against this view, he was unable to explain the mechanism through which a corpse becomes suitable for animation, or manage the feat without basing his methods on a - pared down of most trappings, but still - religious ritual."
"His persistence attracted the attention of the then-recently promoted arch-mage, Janos Albert Quates, a conjurer specialized in the planes - why, I believe he had collaborated with the mages who discovered Shadowfell around that time. Anyhow… our friend, or rather, object of of course professional admiration became quite cross with Baal and wanted to prove him a fraud, through showing him to be but a glorified cultist - and to this end he had argued with the man, spent hours poring over his writings, and finally, decided to observe and participate in his sanitized ritual where dead flesh was animated through specific exposure to the energies of the negative plane."
"In the end, it was a trivial observation. In short, Baal's own description of the ritual had an implicit assumption, one that is almost invisible in our world. To state it fully, his ritual, through specific exposure to the energies of the negative plane, animated dead flesh /borne of, and linked to, the positive plane/. As the simple orc whose move on the sava board brings elggor to the foe's matron mother, the realization brought forth an end to ignorance and confusion, and it is a testament to divine love of irony that rather than ending the brief and unpleasant career of his academic foe, Quates had made Baal - and himself, of course - into the fathers of a new and modern academic discipline. The two worked together for decades, and for instance, the very emanations I wrote my dissertation on bear their names."
"But what was the importance of this discovery? As is, I very much hope, obvious to all of you present, a body dies when enough of its functions are impaired in such a way it ceases to function, upon which point, the soul departs, leaving the broken husk behind. To reanimate this body, you either have to fix the damage, then bind the soul - or something else, but that shall come later - back into it, making for resurrection, or give up entirely, and simply use the matter of the body as a building block, yielding a flesh golem."
"However, there is a nice trick in place. It turns out that, if we describe it in the form of a symbolic matrix, a body that has sustained a whole range of fatal wounds is, when remapped from positive into negative energy-space, equivalent to an intact body, or can be made so with trivial alterations. The set of physical rituals used for this remapping are called Quates transforms, and, if you wanted to be glib, you could say it makes the lot of us into the arcane equivalent of a peasant tailor, who turns a coat over to fix the worn fabric."
"The two most trivial Quates transforms are the ones used to create skeletons and zombies, the trusty, in the second case a little redolent, companions of any necromancer. If you look at the way the matrices come out, the two are a negative-planar equivalent of an ooze, having but a single "organ" to their body. In the case of the skeleton, it is the bone it is made of, while for a zombie, it is the dead flesh that hangs on its. This has some interesting implications about their observed properties - for instance it explains why a zombie won't readily yield to a warrior's mace, or why the simple trick of rattling apart a skeleton's spine with a single hit doesn't work once it's animate, but it also shows the reason why, if it is ineptly made, one can cause it to fall apart by stepping on its toes."
"Both of those are the most trivial of uses. Masterful ones include the creations of more complex 'higher lifeforms' such as ghouls, conjoining dissimilar bones by means of symbols and inlays that make them into either the equivalent of whole bone, or that of a joint, under the appropriate Quates transform of course, allowing one to create wonders of the Art such as a skirr, or, and here I'll mention some of my own work, recreating the dread warriors of Thay by, effectively, making a single corpse into a zombie and a skeleton simultaneously, then linking them together and a few more little catches I obviously won't tell you."
"And that is all I have to say, before moving on towards the art of spectral manipulation to fill the 'crust' one has made in this way - though I am afraid that, due to a certain shortness of time, I shall have to leave it for later, if not outright next week. Now, before we all move towards enjoying the truly mouth-watering selection of meals and beverages, stimulating conversation and compelling gossip, are there any questions?"
Part 2
"And so we meet once again, ladies and gentlemen, to discuss the topic of necromancy - specifically the part of it concerned with creating undead forms. Once again, I'll remind you there are refreshments of all kind present, courtesy of our dear Shi'an who is an excellent chef and Goddess, I so wish I haven't had to miss her lecture on cooking. But, here we are."
"Last week we have talked about the means to create an undead body by effectively cheating nature, or perhaps overcharging it just a little bit.Today, we'll talk about the second part on the equation, or if you're in love with my baking analogy, the filling to the pastry crust. The control process itself."
"Now, I believe there's a particular flavour of obvious to the idea that one should have at least some understanding of a thing before she attempts to replicate it. Without going into needless detail best saved for clerics, the operation of the living is quite simple. One has a soul, containing one's personality, memories, knowledge, and just about everything else their mind holds, which interfaces with their body through a brain - a quite wondrous, if fragile structure. Damage to the brain can result in destruction of interfaces, causing loss of memory, knowledge, changes to personality, even the basic abilities are apt to break down. To understand this best ,we can picture a book. The letters in it would be the soul, while the paper represents the brain. One can erase the words or tear up paper, damaging the contents, but, they can always be written back, in the same libram or in a clean copy - the latter forms the basis for reincarnation spells. But, I digress."
"The simplest creation, then, is what one replaces the soul with in a skeleton or a zombie, or some analog thereof. An onyx gem carved with sigils, a little like this one-" she lets a round-ish shard of onyx, its surface pitted with little glyphs, circulate, "-when properly activated, will embed itself in the body, and act to relay your commands to the formerly dead flesh, much as a messenger relays commands of the matron mother to her daughters and vassals."
"Now, there's a surprising amount of variation and perhaps even improvement that can be done to a spell like this. While strictly limited, one can chisel autonomous routines into the gem, allowing the servant to act with a modicum of usefulness when not given instruction, one can include…special features, such as embed a proficiency in the use of tools and weapons and even scribing - anything that can be taught to do without thinking much - and finally, one can even use different materials. Black ice, for instance has shown very, very promising as a replacement to onyx - even in its natural state, it'll sometimes cause the spontaneous animation of human and animal remains, and Goddess ,you should see the way they animate."
"For more complicated entities, however, the process becomes more complicated. The so-called interface, in this particular case, will also host a soul, or some reflection of one, at any rate, which makes higher undead autonomous, conscious and sometimes even intelligent beings. However… all is not champagne and strawberries."
"In most forms, the soul is only interfaced with partially. For instance, a ghoul has a simple, animalistic mind, with its sole drive being hunger - and it is this through this simple mechanism of need and its satiation that a necromancer weaves a spell to control such a servant of hers. Similarly, other forms exist with their minds reduced to simple needs, such as that of thirst for blood, of destruction and slaughter, and in a few particularly repugnant examples, a foul desire to procreate."
"This, however, can be true for higher forms yet. A revenant, for instance is driven by the need of vengeance, a mummy generally desires to protect an object, person or location, and a special kind of undead, most like the former, can arise from certain geases, driven to accomplish in death what it failed in life. Some of these can and are often created by skilled mages, while others arise naturally, as is the case with the vampire."
"This product of a bloodborne curse is shrouded in much mystery, but its sad reality is as follows. While intellect and the capacity for rational thought is preserved, the personality undergoes a drastic change - the only desire left within the creature is a lust for blood. This, however, isn't obvious to laypeople - the vampire can appear suave, is undeniably powerful and is often ready to deal with, and charm the living… but remember that no matter how long its chain of purposes is, there is someone's neck at its end."
"Finally, we move on to the lich. A perfect form, a pinnacle of necromantic mastery - a lich is a perfect receptacle for a soul, preserving all of its atrributes as they were in life, much as a brain does, except no more burdened with the, well, burden of death. Goddess, are there any synonyms for burden? Anyhow, the process of creating a lich is known only to a handful of mages in Faerun, and given the process includes one's death…there's an understandable reluctance to experiment. As such, I will be fairly sparse on the details."
"Some of which is known, though. A simple misconception, but a popular one is that a lich /has/ a phylactery. A lich, in all actuality /is/ a phylactery - she.. or he for that matter merely takes control of a dead body, often her own, and warping it to her purposes.Such a body is almost always superior to a random one, but given a couple hours, a lich can inhabit any corpse within the range of a couple hundred feet, the process far quicker if it is an undead already. Why, some enterprising liches have been known to control several bodies at the same time, giving entirely new, possible meanings to the phrase "go screw yourself." Similarly, if the phylactery is destroyed, a lich will, as many eyewitness accounts show, die rather quickly, given there's precious little keeping their body animated. Other than that… I'm afraid you'll have to find out for yourselves."
"Well, that would be all. Now, are there any questions, or can we just go enjoy ourselves?"