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The Veteran Necromancer Teaches The Greedy Party A Bloody And Valuable Lesson (Part 2)
Make sure to check out the first part if you haven’t, link is in description.
My hands clasped around the metamagic rods.
My first spell was devastating.
After all, I DID have them all surprised, and ranged touch attacks are easy when the
target is flatfooted.
A Chained, Quickened, Empowered, Split Ray Enervation seemed like a brilliant lead-off.
They looked confused.
The casters in the party were dazed.
After all, the sorcerer and pixie had never paid too much attention to anything that didn’t
specifically mention damage dice.
The cleric had mainly focused on buffing herself in her role as combat monster.
The growing horror on their faces as the DM explained to them what level drain was tasted
of the sweetest ambrosia to me.
I decided that the first to die would be my killer, the rogue.
Now, our rogue was rather well built, with some gear I had shared with him to improve
his abilities.
It also meant nothing now.
People may argue that 3.0/3.5 was “wizard edition omg wtf”, and some may argue that
it is more balanced.
All I know is that for someone who has played since he first found a torn Players Hand Book
in the clearance bin during the sixth grade, wizards can be a terrible thing.
My use of a scroll of Mordenkainen’s Disjunction and the Maximized Reach Shivering Touch provided
by Haste proved that.
The party was somewhere between fury and pure panic as initiative was rolled.
The rogue was having trouble grappling with the fact that his character was currently
a drooling mess on the floor, paralyzed and unable to do anything but exhale.
I was calm.
I had, after all, brought my A game to this scuffle.
I won initiative with ease; gloves of dexterity do more than JUST make you good with rays,
you know.
I then slapped the cleric with an Empowered Twin Ray of Clumsiness.
I told her that her character slumps to the floor before the DM did.
While she responded with something akin to rapid-onset rabies and the DM looked at me
like I was overstepping the line, I explained that 2d6+10 times 1.5 DEX drain is a real
downer.
Wanting to hold back any more really big spells unless the sorcerer or pixie threw something
crazy at me, I slapped the fighter with a Finger of Death.
Now, he would have had trouble with the DC 25 Will save, even without the -9 penalty
from my Enervation.
As it was, his look of shock as his character simply stopped breathing tasted like aged
wine.
I reigned in my bloodlust.
I knew the intoxicating power of player-vs-player combat, and I readied my next action to counterspell
the first thing the last two players might throw at me.
They were rapidly exchanging words, but it didn’t matter.
There was blood in the water now, and I wasn’t even close to being done.
The pixie did exactly what I knew she would do.
The words “psionic disintegrate” hadn’t left her mouth and I was already laughing.
After the DM explained that she no longer had access to those powers, I laughed harder.
She spat out the name of some direct damage power, and as it blew apart three of my Mirror
Images, I simply smiled.
She turned on her racial invisibility, and I knew that my bloody harvest was almost into
its final act.
The sorcerer, for once thinking with a tactical mind, threw a dispel magic at me.
I counterspelled with my own Dispel Magic, and looked for what horrors I had left in
my prepared spells.
My first order of business was to again call upon my metamagic rods and cast a Quickened
True Seeing, bringing that filthy pixie back into view.
A Chained Empowered Split Ray Twin Ray of Enfeeblement lashed out, putting both of my
deliciously low-strength opponents on the floor.
A quick jaunt over to the cleric, and my boot knife opened her throat.
It seemed far more seemly than casting Extract Water Elemental.
I took a moment to survey my handiwork.
Three turns after I had appeared, the entire party had been neutralized.
With an almost shuddering breath, I exhaled and blew out my battle lust.
The first stage of my plan was now complete, and the remainder would require a clear head.
With something akin to a flourish, I opened my Heward’s Handy Haversack and grasped
around for the correct scrolls.
Now, let me explain a little bit about necromancers.
Specifically, wizards specializing in necromancy.
It is not, as many people think, the way to a skeleton army.
That is for clerics with a narrow selection of domains and a few feats, who are capable
of having around eight times their hit dice in undead with the correct builds.
Neither is it for the creation of undead dragons or similar huge, nasty bruisers.
That falls solely on the shoulders of the Dread Necromancers, who can do some damn nasty
stuff in that department.
No, wizard necromancers deal primarily with Save or Die spells, focusing on the soul,
a character's physical attributes, and the always effective fear effects.
Strange now that I try to remember it, but there is a metal mentioned in a random splatbook
that captures the souls of those who die close to it.
The name presently escapes me.
The joy of the spell True Creation is that it can bring into existence specific materials,
and it was with a few of these scrolls that my left hand emerged from my bag, along with
a scroll of Fabricate.
Narrating all the while, I began to cast these scrolls.
A quick casting of Animate Dead brought the lifeless fighter and cleric back to life to
drag their still-breathing companions into the now assembled cages, and I commanded the
lifeless zombies to slay their former companions as I munched on an apple and a cheese wedge
that the cleric had intended to have for her breakfast.
The wine was warm, but a quick casting of Prestidigitation cooled it to my liking.
Throughout the campaign, our DM had allowed me to use the wonderful “Souls in lieu of
EXP” system of item crafting once I had graduated to a high enough level to take advantage
of such things.
My Ring of Mind Shield had been paid for entirely with the soul of a rather powerful genie pasha,
and I made sure to mention this to the powerless survivors of my arcane blitzkrieg.
Once all was ready, I ambled over to our--sorry, MY--treasure horde which the others had kindly
dragged down into the dining room, and with the help of my raven familiar, selected several
of the largest gems.
Another dip into the Haversack for the correct scrolls, and my final round of casting for
the day began.
Trap the Soul is a wonderful spell, and it was with this that I captured the very essence
of my former companions, ripping their shrieking spirits out of their bodies.
A quick casting of disintegrate and a Shadow-Evocation Gust of Wind to help me clean up, and I was
done with plenty of time to spare.
I retired to the main gate to read a tome from the tower’s library, and had my zombies
serve me some more wine after they had finished loading all the treasure AND all of my former
companions’ equipment into several Bags of Holding.
Going over my inventory, I realized just how much I had tapped from my scroll library,
and resolved to set to correcting that problem once I returned to my sanctum.
The merchant’s guards arrived as I was finishing the fourteenth chapter, and after a few quick
pleasantries, I relinquished control of the tower to them, took the chests of gems and
platinum trade bars, and bid them all a good day.
It would take several weeks, but the fighter and the cleric would eventually be revived
by friends of theirs.
The fighter left a note at a tavern we used to frequent, and it was with something akin
to mild embarrassment asking that I return his gear to him.
The exchange was generally pleasant, and I reimbursed him for casting the Limited Wish
to raise his CON score to what it used to be.
I explained my need to be sure of my victory, and even offered to cut him back in on his
share of the loot if he wanted to join back up again.
He declined, and went off to become a minor lord along the trade roads, where he eventually
came to rule a small barony and had a pile of kids as he grew old and fat.
The cleric was another matter.
Incensed at her death by my hands, she spent the better part of three months trying to
find where my sanctum was.
She finally gave up when she actually had her greatest success.
My sanctum was lined with lead and covered in so many abjuration spells that I couldn’t
even remember what half of them did.
Her attempts at scrying upon me got her nowhere, until I had to make a short jaunt to a major
port city for components for the creation of some magical items.
She just happened to be scrying at the right time to trigger my Scry Trap, a wonderful
spell that directs a nasty amount of feedback at anyone who tries to scry against you.
Specifically, it directs it back at the eyes.
That more or less ended her active attempts to track me down for revenge, although her
grudge did eventually shift the views of her church.
As she aged, she found herself as a mid-level authority in what had once been a small, regional
faith with no views on undead and necromancy.
Her zeal and force of personality changed that, and now what was once just a small sect
is perhaps the biggest sponsor of undead-hunting crusaders and slayers on the continent.
I occasionally still send her holiday cards, just to keep her blood up.
As for myself, I would eventually achieve lichdom as I felt the icy cold fingers of
death catching up with me.
By that point, my lair had grown to something that would have made Alokkair jealous, and
the first wave of defenses, traps and minions could have stonewalled Pun-Pun.
I was nothing more than a Spellstitched Corpse, bleached bone and two points of light for
my eyes.
I continued my arcane studies for decades, plumbing the depths of the Underdark for the
outer Planes, matching wit and spell with the best of them.
The DM ended the campaign with those little after-notes.
The session had gone late, and it was around one in the morning.
I had to work in a few hours, and I knew I would be miserable, but I couldn’t help
but chuckle and smile sheepishly at everyone else around the table.
Their looks were somewhere between blind fury, mild amusement, and confusion, as if they
really couldn’t believe that dozens of sessions and hundreds of hours had ended in this.
I opened another bottle of water and pulled a half dozen character sheets from my bag,
fresh and crisp except for the line of player names, where I had taken the liberty to jot
down the names of everyone at the table.
I was pretty surprised when almost everyone said that yes, they were very interested in
what my campaign would be.
Complete and utter humiliation!
That’s what happens when a group of newbies get big heads and don’t show respect.
I guarantee the other players weren’t expecting that to happen!
Have your games ever resulted in your party turning against one another?
Or have you managed to out-smart your greedy party members that didn’t want to play nice?
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