The Massacre of Erossus

Subject: The Massacre of Erossus Tue Apr 08, 2008 5:10 am

Jacob Deegan’s plan had worked, at first. A spellwolf who had hated Callan, Mutamu, had charmed dragons into attacking the nation for him, leading to a war between Callan and the Winter Archipelago. As a result, corpses were abundant, so it was only natural that the eldest Deegan son would form an academy of necromancy. After all, he sought knowledge of necromancy, and an entire school could collect information more rapidly than a single necromancer, no matter how talented.

The trouble, of course, was harvesting corpses to meet the demands of several dozen aspiring necromancers. Scavenging after the battlefields where dragons were victorious was easier to pull off unseen by Callanian soldiers, but such battles seldom left the corpses sufficiently intact to be of any use. The massacre of Lynn’s Brook lead by Mutamu himself was a boon to Jacob and his subordinates, but the time had finally come when he would need to take the initiative.

The academy had established itself in an abandoned prison not far from Lynn’s Brook not long after the massacre, and Jacob assembled his subordinate teachers that were present: His original students that he had taught personally. Of the original six, the only one who was absent was Shari, an androgynous young prodigy who had been infiltrating the Winter Archipelago in the skin of Nimmel Fenix until Mutamu’s uprising forced him to return to Callan.

“We all know the problem. We need more corpses.” Jacob looked over those assembled, all bearing elements of undeath save one, a former white mage who had balanced the two schools of magic to preserve his teenage youth despite being in his early twenties. The other four all had skeletal limbs or bone armor, but all five had the typical blacks and dark reds necessary for one who worked heavily with corpses and in hiding. “We need to start making them.”

The teacher opposite the table from Jacob, a man in a dark cloak with a raven familiar on his shoulder, merely glanced at his familiar to signal it to speak on his behalf. The undead bird always had trouble speaking at the beginning of the sentence, so it would always say the same word to start. “Nevermore! My master agrees. Do we have any idea where to strike?”

Another cloaked figure, this one doing so to hide the fact that he ripped his face off, tapped on the table with a skeletal limb to gain the attention of those present. “It has to be someplace poorly defended, yet populated.”

Jacob nodded in agreement. “That goes without saying. However, it will also need to be an artful stroke, a target with a culture that opposes what we stand for.”

The former white mage, Ganurath, leaned forward with a smirk. “From the sound of it, you already have a target in mind, Master Deegan.”

Jacob merely nodded, although he would have smiled if he still had the lower half of his face. “Erossus.”

Ganurath smirked and looked at his peers, and the other two necromancers present who still had all their faces smiled eagerly as well. The raven cried out its jubilation, and Faceless gave the target a bony thumbs-up. Jacob nodded at the universal approval. “We’re in agreement, then. Nevermore, send your familiar to inform Shari that he is to be in Erossus as soon as possible.”

-=- -=- -=-

The undead bird landed on Nevermore’s shoulder, coughing and croaking in preparation to speak. “Nevermore! Shari is in the mayor’s office, waiting for an appointment regarding local security. He’ll decapitate the leadership as soon as they know there’s an attack.”

Jacob nodded, glancing over his shoulder at those assembled behind him. Each teacher stood in a line with Jacob at the end, their students behind them Jacob had Shari’s students behind him, and was appraising the lot carefully. Ganurath’s students were lacking in augmentations, while Shari’s students seemed… on edge. Nevermore’s students were subservient, almost undead themselves; while Faceless’s apprentices were lively and eager to apply the knowledge they had gained. Of the three dozen apprentices of the academy, only the remaining dozen reminded Jacob of the days when he was teaching himself. He turned back to look at the city, and nodded. “Then Erossus dies today.”

As one, forty-two necromancers sunk into the earth. They quickly began gliding about beneath the soil to the various crossroads and tactical locations within the city. Jacob made his way to the local military base where the most difficult fighting would be, while the teachers would emerge at the five major roadways out of Erossus to block escape. The students were all assigned key locations in the city guaranteed to have plenty of defenseless targets: The pleasure houses.

In one heartbeat, there was peace, serenity, silence. In the next, there was fear as figures clad in rotten robes of black and dark red burst out of the ground. It was on the third heartbeat that the silence was broken by screams of pain and death as the students slaughtered the civilians surrounding them. On the fourth heartbeat, the blight of undeath assailed the battlemages opposing Jacob as they realized what a threat that he was. On the fifth, the teachers called up the undead subordinates they had brought with them to block off the escape of the people fleeing the city.

In less than a minute, a tenth of the population of Erossus was dead or dying.

-=- -=- -=-

Sergeant Marsco was in a bad position. They had been fighting the necromancer for five minutes, and he was now the highest ranking battlemage remaining. Drawing upon what energy he had available, he blasted the necromancer with a column of wind cold enough to freeze a foe stiff.

That is, it would have done this if the necromancer hadn’t used his weblike tendrils to fling a wounded comrade at Marsco, forcing the Semashi immigrant to freeze his comrade solid. Webs pulled the ice statue off, tossing it against the wall to shatter it. “I never liked ice magic. Ruins corpses.”

Marsco felt the webs creeping over him, and sent a javelin of ice clean through the necromancer’s left arm, tearing away the cloth to reveal the limb was already missing the flesh he sought to tear through. It was the last chance Marsco had before he was practically cocooned in the webs, the necromancer using his skeletal limbs to sends bolts of the blight at his panicing subordinates. “You’ll still be a good corpse, though.”

Showered in blood, Jacob devoted his attention to finishing the fight with the battlemages.

-=- -=- -=-

James Draegun called in his next appointment, a wandering student of magic named Nimmel Fenix. The young boy took a seat across from the mayor, waiting for permission to speak. “So… Nimmel. I understand you have concern about the security of Erossus.”

Nimmel nodded, glancing out the window behind the mayor as a scantily clad police officer was smothered by the blight of a student of necromancy. “Erossus is a populace city, with defenses weak in comparison to its size and economic wealth. It’s only a matter of time before the dragons attack.”

Before James could raise a counterpoint, a courier burst into the room. “Mayor Draegun! We’re under attack!”

James raised an eyebrow at Nimmel, who had turned to look at the courier, before turning his attention to the new arrival as well. “The dragons are this far in country?”

The room was suddenly filled with blackness, and James heard screaming where the courier had been standing. He groped around blindly, and then felt something tightening around his neck… a garotte? No, it was something else… human skin!

Nimmel spoke again, but it was strange. His voice seemed to change as he spoke from nervous and pubescent to effeminate and mocking. “Actually, it’s the necromancers who are attacking, Mayor Draegun. I imagine the city would be lost without your guidance. Fufufu…”

-=- -=- -=-

Officer Xejan had always been a sycophant. However, with the commanders trying to supervise an evacuation through a wall of undead shock troops, Xejan was forced to rally the police into a sort of militia. A firing line formed at the main exit from Erossus, matching the hooded necromancer and his undead legion man to man.

Xejan stepped forward, visibly fearful but standing tall. “Necromancer. Stand aside so that the city may be evacuated.”

The necromancer shook his head. “None shall pass.”

“If you do not allow the civilians to be evacuated, we will-”

The necromancer shouted out to interrupt Xejan, revealing a scythe with a blade visibly pulsing with the blight of undeath. “Go kiss a slime!”

Xejan glanced nervously at the militia gathered, and the civilians behind them. Stepping back into the firing line, Xejan took up a crossbow. “So be it. On my mark! Ready!”

The Erossus police in the firing line wound their crossbows, the civilians glancing around nervously as they heard screams in the streets getting closer. Xejan finished winding, and a quick glance around confirmed that the rest of the line was ready as well. “Aim!”

The firing line took aim, targeting the frontmost zombies will Xejan aimed at the necromancer. In reply, Faceless pulled back his hood.

Xejan saw what was under the hood, and like the rest of the firing squad and the civilians who were looking at the time, dropped dead from pure fear.

-=- -=- -=-

Ganurath was unlike most necromancers. Of course, he had a background as a white mage, which explained why he was able to use a Weight spell to force a militia to drop his ax. Sure, he balanced it with necromancy, which explained why his scythe was coated with the undead blight. However, what was most interesting is that he was the first to provide knowledge that Jacob did not already know: How to fight effectively with a scythe.

It was a dance of death, really. A sword was intercepted by the handle of the scythe, and Ganurath sidestepped while levering off the sword’s blade to spear the temple of the militia with the scythe’s tip. Some lawyer named Sturtz tried to run past him, and got tripped up by the butt of the weapon before the momentum of the trip fueled a decapitating coup de grace. Every motion lead into the next, a fluid dance of death that killed with the slightest cut.

It was when he paused to look skyward as he ran out of foes who got past his zombies that Ganurath saw them. The concept of their presence had just been a strawman to get Shari in the mayor’s office, but it seemed that the argument had more weight than predicted. As the one who dabbled outside necromancy, it was ganurath who cast Voice of the Gods. ”Dragons are attacking. Students, go to the nearest teachers. We need to kill them before they ruin the corpses.”

-=- -=- -=-

The first dragon to arrive came after Nevermore, the teacher who didn’t have any students near him by the time the dragons came down. It breathed in deep, fire igniting in its belly…

Nevermore spoke without his familiar, and the dragon crashed dead into the ground behind the zombie barricade.

Ganurath and Faceless were able to get their draconic kills in a similar manner: shield the students and zombies present from the opening blast of fire with a shroud of the blight, then propel the shroud upward like a net to ground the beast before delivering a killing blow. Ganurath opted for his scythe out of taste, but Faceless used more blight, animating the dragon to send it after his former brethren.

Four dragons remained, but all were killed in short order. Two fell at the last two chokepoints as blasts of fire were matched and surpassed by columns of blight. The third died in an aerial battle with her undead brother, crashing into the city square to join the necromancers as she was infected with the animating blight. The last died as it was entombed in a combination of webbing and animated skin, as Shari had joined up with Jacob to target critical locations.

Ten minutes in, and the dragons attacking had died along with half the city. It would be another hour before everyone was dead, and the corpses were relocated in piles to be put to use later.

The Academy of Necrotic Lore had found a new headquarters in the Ruins of Erossus.
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Mischief and Mayhem Joined : 11 Oct 2007 Posts : 3669

That's a pretty awesome story there Ganu... And you couldn't have picked a better person to be in someone else's skin than Faceless. Heh.

Also:

Subject: Re: The Massacre of Erossus Tue Apr 08, 2008 5:25 am

Mischief and Mayhem Joined : 11 Oct 2007 Posts : 3669

Oops sorry. Tiredness does that. >.>
You saw nothing!
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Subject: Re: The Massacre of Erossus Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:40 pm

Cross-posted to keep, I gather? It's kind of funny running into every ones cameo appearances. :P

Fic is good. It was a shock to see that this section had actually... updated.

Subject: Re: The Massacre of Erossus Thu May 29, 2008 12:19 am

amzing.. i mit be putting my up soon.
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Subject: Re: The Massacre of Erossus Tue Jun 10, 2008 6:08 pm

That was totally awesome. >> You should write more and update. Yes yes.
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Shivering Isles Resident Joined : 27 Mar 2007 Posts : 9475

Very good story, though I think you overpowered the necromancers a bit... Jacob might be able to take down a dragon with ease, but the others would have to fight and struggle for it, likely dying in the process.
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