Drunken Cricket on 1/12/2005 at 05:48
Garret suddenly fell to his knees. He didn't understand what had happened, but he could not get back up. His hands started getting a little numb as he turned to the stranger and yelled "WHAT WAS IN THAT BRANDY?"
kamyk on 1/12/2005 at 19:54
Esme
OMG,
Quote Posted by Esme
"will there be invulnerable slimy betentacled monsters breathing fire, belching acid and farting noxious fumes, that strangely I will be able crouch and avoid their attacks as they will aim at head height ?" queried garrett
the group muttered to each other for a few minutes, garrett could not make out the words, then one said "erm ... yes"
"mighty chasms ? evil warlocks ? lots of torches and conveniently dropped weapons and sources of water arrows ?"
"um yes... look how do you kn" began the same member of the group"
Quote Posted by Esme
"The twelve sat in stunned silence at this revelation, the Arkelle of Flenge was in their grasp, and no one had had to die, no mighty deeds had had to be performed, no oracles had had to be consulted ... frankly it was a bit of a disappointment, although the word 'had' got a bit of a workout, the group liked short words, finally one voice said "I told you we didn't need so many candles, look quick blow them out we might be able to sell them as slightly used or fire damaged or something" another voice wearily said "oh do shut up tarquil you're always whining on about something or other"
This is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time.:thumb:
Back to your regularly scheduled story...
kamyk on 1/12/2005 at 19:59
"Do you really want to know what a Necromancer might spike someone's drink with?" The Necromancer replied in a nasty gurgling way, as Garret slipped into unconciousness...
Esme on 2/12/2005 at 12:06
His head pounding Garrett slowly came to.
"I really must take more water with my drink" he thought as he took stock of his surroundings, "hmm stone walls, straw on the floor, the lock on the door looks like a child could open it".
He checked his pockets, his weapons had been taken but his lockpicks were still in the secret pocket on his belt, he sighed with relief "Now if I can just get this damn chain off my ankle and get to the door I'm out of here"
He examined the chain attaching his ankle to the wall, it was a little rusty but very sturdy and sadly rivets had been used to attach the cuff to his ankle instead of a lock that could be picked "Taff" thought Garrett and tried to slip his foot through the gap.
A voice from the door behind him gurgled "You are wasting your time you know, that chain will hold a zombie"
kamyk on 2/12/2005 at 20:49
As Garret blinked the fuzziness out of his eyes, the blurry form of the Necromancer began to come into view.
"Incidentally, Garret" the Necromancer began. "It is rather ironic that those shackles would be holding you instead." He chuckled nastily.
"You see, I have brought you here because you have been interfering with my works in progress for years now, and quite frankly, I am sick of bringing corpses to life, only to have you put them back down."
Garret sat up and put his head in his hands. "So you are the source of all of the undead I have had to deal with over the years", he groaned.
The Necromancer sighed in agitation. "You have singlehandedly wiped out well over a hundred of my creations, and I am heartily tired of creating fodder for your skills", he replied. "I have concluded that the best way to solve this little dilemna is to have you working for me."
"I don't work cheap, and I don't like undead", Garret responded.
The Necromancer began to laugh. "You misunderstand me. You will be 'working' for me, AS an undead! Quite possibly the most powerful of my creations to date."
jtr7 on 3/12/2005 at 04:53
The Necromancer continued expositionally: "You've already partaken of two of the four alchemical preparations I've devised for my scheme." Garrett groaned with the realization that the mushroom dust and brandy were more than mere knockout drugs, and he couldn't know what may have been done to his unconscious body while he swam beneath the dark waves of strange medicinals.
"You'll recall a certain mad and terribly insecure revolutionary, formerly of the Order of the Hammer, with a regrettable speech abnormality...?"
"Karras..." Garrett muttered. He felt nauseous.
"A ge--(cough!)--A genius." He coughed twice more. "Oh sure, he would have put us necromancers out of business and taken away all our fun, but he was a genius all the same." He jammed a bony forefinger into the arrowmade hole in his throat and adjusted something. He withdrew his finger and sniffed it. He coughed again, harder this time. Then he continued, his strangled voice rising in pitch and volume and chest swelling proudly. "A--aaa-annnd I gleaned... from him some crit-i-cal new knowledge of alchemy and ne-crommm-ancy that I've nearly perfected. With you... I will gain that perfection.. at last." The Necromancer trembled with excitement or exertion or both.
"Great," Garrett mumbled, remembering how it felt to be entangled by Viktoria's shrubbery-of-death in Constantine's mansion and left to die after... after...
He pulled the chain taut and strained against its resistance, listening and feeling for the bending of a link or a loosening of moorings.
"I'll need your eye..." The Necromancer bent down and reached out a hand.
"Oh come on!" Garrett, finding his strength, rolled away and sat up, tucking his feet beneath him.
"No no..." the Necromancer waved the idea away as if it were a foul-smelling wisp of smoke, "the one Karras made for you." And he stood back up, noting himself how Garrett's strength had returned.
"Oh, heh heh," Garrett said sardonically, "that's a relief." The Necromancer ignored Garrett and dug around in one of his many pockets.
"Unfortunately for bo--(cough)--both of us, I need you awake for the next step. Quiet now..." The Necromancer pulled a piece of what looked like green cheese from a large envelope of waxed parchment.
"Door. Amy. Fossil. Law Tea Dough!" he incanted and tossed the cheese at Garrett's feet. Instinctively, Garrett closed his eyes against what he half-expected to be a flashbomb's coruscation. There was no blinding burst of light, of course, but where the cheese should have been was a rat. But this wasn't a your typical smack-it-with-a-broom sort of rat. This was an undead rat. It's fur was torn open to reveal ribs. It's intestines had fallen through the tattered skin and broken off. And it was as big as a frog-beast egg. It snuffled about and fixed its empty eye-sockets on Garrett. The Necromancer observed Garrett thoughtfully as he once again, though more vigorously, tested the strength of his restraints.
"Remove your eye and roll it over to me, please," the Necromancer instructed.
"I'm not sure I want to do that, Necroman'." The Necromancer breathed a phlegmy sigh, and pulled another piece of cheese from the envelope. He repeated the incantation with a marked emphasis on "Fossil." When he cast the cheese to the floor, two undead rats, a little smaller than the first, sprang into existence. Garrett could smell the death-odor and quailed. He reached up a surprisingly steady hand and popped his mechanical eye out. He felt the tissues of his socket relax and he glared back at the eyeless rats with his empty socket as much as his full one.
"It needs cleaning. I was going to replace the fluid in it tonight had I not been side-tracked." He sent the eye rolling hard and accurate at the first rat. It caught the brassy orb neatly and held it. The Necromancer stepped forward waving a hand over the rats. They moved out of his way, leaving the eye, which he picked up and wiped clean of dust, grit, rat hair, and moisture. He wrapped it in a white cloth and pocketed it.
"Oh, I don't need the eye itself--though it is a nice trophy and, eventually, will undoubtedly provide me with hours of amusing experimentation. No, I just needed the eye removed so I have a cleaner access to your brain." Garrett couldn't keep his heart from pounding like a cornered Hammerite. The rats could smell his adrenalized blood and shifted from paw to paw, looking up at the Necromancer for permission to chew into a jugular, or at least, to gnaw at a toe. He tried to visualize a way out of his situation. All he could think of was strangling the Necromancer with the chain if he could get him close enough. And why, he wondered suddenly, didn't the Necromancer take his eye while he was unconscious? The Necromancer seemed to read Garrett's mind.
"I didn't know with a certainty how this device connected to your brain. I didn't wish to risk damaging you or killing you too soon. I need you as whole a man as possible. So I let you remove the eye. Reanimating a dead person will only result in a mindless, blood-thirsty zombie. But if I can transform a man from 'living' to 'undead,' barely skimming death, I can create something that can control its own impulses... and think. Karras' masked servants were close to this, but he was more interested in his fleshless utopia... So then, I need you try not to struggle too much. I admit this will probably hurt."
He spilled the remaining contents of the envelope onto the floor. Over two hundred crumbs of green cheese. He repeated the incantation a third time, with heavy emphasis on "Door," "Fossil", and "Law." Each crumb of cheese became an undead rat, each proportionate in size to each other as each crumb was to the other crumbs. Garrett swore off ever eating cheese again, if he survived this madness. The rats stumbled about and spilled over one another as space in the room became crowded.
"Clawtooth Baroda Nicktoe!" At this, the rats all surged forward in a concerted effort. Swarming disgustingly over his body, the rats attempted to fasten Garrett's arms to his sides by riveting the cloth of his garments together with teeth, claws, and even ribs. He scattered many across the room by swinging the chain back and forth. He back-handed a few, crunched several beneath his boots, crushed some against the wall behind his back, and lost the fight anyway. The rats that remained, including those that still had a skeleton to move with, bound his legs together. The Necromancer pulled a purple phial from yet another pocket, unstoppered it, and moved to Garrett's side. He tilted Garrett's head back with his free hand.
"Now... Hold still, please," he said, as a doctor might say to a patient. He spread open Garrett's eyelids to expose the fleshy socket. "This will preserve your brain even as it bends it to my will. Then I can kill your body and reanimate it." He began to pour the cool liquid into the socket. "You'll need to let it seep down into your brain, so keep your head still. Otherwise, the results will be disastrous for both of us." The liquid tingled and sent sparking sensations all around the socket. Rats maneuvered to brace his head.
"Why me?"
"Hm?"
"Why do you need me?" Garrett asked.
"Mainly because of your connection with Karras, so to speak. How do you feel?"
"Tingly. Like when your foot falls asleep. I want to scratch my eye out but it's already gone. But no, I think you chose me for another reason."
"Now what might that be?"
dlw6 on 4/12/2005 at 22:36
Garret spat out a dessicated rat's paw that had slipped into his mouth. "I think you let something slip earlier, namely that you want me for my skills. You tried to cover it up by claiming now that you chose me due to my connection to Karras. Unless you're a moron or your conversation to lichdom has completely addled your brains, you'd know that connection is long severed, due to Karras being a pile of reddish dust. Your plan will not work."
The Necromancer replied, "Suddenly you're an expert on Necromancy? Do you think the destruction of Karras' body would hinder me? What do you think I plan?"
Garret replied, "As a matter of fact I AM an expert on Necromancy. I have read thirty or so books on the subject, thanks to my many adventures in dark and forbidding places, the surprisingly high rate at which high priests turn to the black arts when their career aspirations are thwarted, and of course the recent fashion trend last summer for the wealthy to decorate their coffee tables with such tomes. I spend a lot of time in the homes of the wealthy, you know."
"Hmmph!" responded the lich. "Those wanna-be's! And what does your expertise in the black arts tell you, that you can somehow know my plan and think it will fail?"
"Well," responded Garret, "I became aware of your plan when I read that interview you did in Evil Genius Quarterly last summer. You let that question about your world domination plan get to you, and in response you bragged about your efforts to create a new more powerful undead creature. Then you went on a minor rant. As I recall, your exact words were 'They will respect my authori-TIE.' Very amusing, but it got my attention."
"Yes, that interviewer was an a**. I was going to turn him into an undead slave, but he refused to pay me until the inverview was over," responded the lich. "So you read our professional journal and learn about part of my plan, big deal."
"That's just the beginning," Garret responded. "Since I don't like dealing with the undead, your insane rant led me to do some research. I made some deals that got me access to the collected expertise of the Keepers, the Mages' Guild, and the Pagans, and gathered a great deal of information about 'the art' as you call it. I also consulted some of your rivals, independently of course, so none of them knew the whole story and I could cross-check what they told me."
"You're bluffing!" responded the Necromancer.
"Am I?" Garret asked. "'My face is covered with rats, but don't you hear the smirk in my voice? I'm famous for it, you know. I'm also famous for going to endless amounts of trouble to meet simple goals. Look at what I did in Shoalsgate Station to frame that Hagen guy, when it would have been much easier to shoot an arrow into his neck from a rooftop, or all the stuff I did just to boost my retirement fund by stealing the Eye."
"Fine," grumbled the lich, "what did my pathetic rivals tell you?"
"It's complicated, and there isn't time to explain it all before your potion does its thing. The short of it is that I determined that you intend to convert me to an undead, with memories of my skills but also a slave subject to your will. It won't work because you lack the missing chapter of the Necronomicon, whose magic prevents it from being copied and which I destroyed last year to prevent this sort of thing. Depending on which error you made in your calculations, I'll either come out a snappily dressed but mindless zombie, or a powerful creature with a free will of my own that will destroy you rather easily. So you have to ask yourself one question: do you feel lucky?"
Esme on 7/12/2005 at 01:08
Reaching inside his robe the necromancer revealed a hefty tome
"you mean this missing chapter of the Necronomicon I assume, it is magical you know and it protects itself from attempts to destroy it, it made you think you had succeeded, this book will still be here when the sun dies .... hmmm an undead sun ... I wonder"
He turned and left Garrett in his cell not bothering to close the door
Cosmos on 7/12/2005 at 07:40
"Hmm... what a hefty tome." Thought Garrett, "And so cleverly concealed in his robe. I thought I was the only one capable of carrying about impressive numbers of infinitely large items. Wait a minute... Cleverly concealed yet infinitely large... that's it!"
Esme on 7/12/2005 at 12:39
He was hallucinating again, but the drugs he'd been given were having their effect, his skin had a greyish pallor and he was shocked to realise he wasn't breathing anymore.
"I wonder if I have any other undead attributes ?" he thought and reached down to the cuff rivetted around his ankle, the rivets gave way like so much straw "...now that is a handy trick!" muttered Garrett, impressed
"Where's that taffing necromancer ! I wonder if he has an antidote along with my eye ?, I'll make a point of asking him after I rip his arms and legs off for doing this to me" he gritted
Shrugging the rats off like so many dead leaves, Garrett slipped out of the door
