Norman the Necromancer

Norman returned to Ashvale with only one large dino, two twenty-footers, and ten of the smaller ostrich-sized dinos. Not ideal, but it was better than nothing.

It did mean he would have to rethink his plan to unleash feral dinosaurs on the unsuspecting town of the Brotherhood though. It was too bad too, Norman was looking forward to surprising them with that one. He would have to devise an alternative plan and keep the dinos in his back pocket for another day.

They were a good replacement for his pocket zombies, only on a much larger and much more dangerous scale. He certainly wasn’t going to convert them into greykin. He didn’t need mindless killing machines with no qualms about eating him running around. With the ferals, he at least had a modicum of control, because they simply ignored other undead and whoever raised them.

There was still no sign of Eugene or Grobert, even though Norman had been gone for over two weeks. Norman thought about using the large dino to move the stone slab so he could get at the spell anchor to start reviving the greykin. But he had to reject that plan. The dino was too large to fit inside the building, and Norman didn’t have anything to attach to the creature to get it to pull the slab.

With enough time and effort, Norman was sure he could cobble together some rough rope from the long field grasses that surrounded the town. But it was time he could better spend doing more important things. Like getting revenge on the Brotherhood.

He had gone through many possible plans over the past two weeks. Most of them were just flights of fancy that Norman didn’t have the resources to accomplish. Or too dangerous to consider, like unleashing a bunch of undead plague-spreading rats into their city. He could do it, but then his enemy would know they were back. And he wasn’t sure if the spell would even be effective on the living.

While most of Norman's plans weren’t feasible, they did help get his mind off of his annoyance with his current situation.

The biggest annoyance Norman had started with the citizens all being dead, the city being in shambles, and his most trusted advisors missing. Oh, and let's not forget being cut off from Grothlosburg. That was gonna hurt their future prospects quite a bit unless they figured out how to deal with the dinos, the magical creatures, and the thick jungle.

Norman needed to decide what he was going to do if Eugene or Grobert weren’t back by the time he returned.

When Norman arrived back in Ashvale, he made sure to check all of the locations he left notes. There was no sign of his advisor or guard captain having come through since he had left or anyone else for that matter.

He couldn’t just sit around and wait an indeterminate amount of time hoping they would return. It could take years for them to resurrect if they put their phylacteries in a bad spot as he had. Or even worse, what if they had resurrected years ago and decided this town was simply not worth staying around any longer?

That thought made him hyperventilate a bit, but he managed to calm himself, which was easy since he didn’t breathe. Stupid muscle reflexes from when he was alive. Norman discounted the idea that both Eugene and Grobert would abandon the town without so much as an indicator that they had been here.

He needed to do something, anything. Ever since Norman started to figure out his magic, he had trouble doing just nothing. It made him feel like he was wasting time and potential. He also didn’t want those Brotherhood asshats thinking they got away with genociding the entire greykin race.

Their motivations for war made no sense to Norman. It seemed ridiculous to fight a war over something as petty as calling someone out on their religion, even if these people were fanatics. He could understand the general sentiment against the undead as not being good, but the war and subsequent destruction of Ashvale went far beyond that. At most, it should have been a few small raids, like the first one they suffered.

It's not like they wanted the land, if they had, the city would be bustling with people by now. So what did they want?

Norman really wished he could have grilled Noorani more. It was obvious now that she had held something back from Norman and the others.

What Norman needed was more information. He knew how to go about getting it too, it just irked him to even consider the option. He was finally getting used to his new undead state. But if he wanted to figure out what was going on, Norman was going to have to infiltrate the enemy city and try and find some clues. That meant restoring himself to a living breathing human.

It wasn’t an issue of the spell, he remembered it clearly. Norman was more concerned about the Brotherhood figuring out who he was. Then they would know he could resurrect himself. At that point, they would return and scour Ashvale or leave a posting of elites here to ensure the dead remained dead.

That meant Norman needed to keep a low profile while he was in their capital. He ran his hand across his bald scalp and sighed, he really missed his hair but this way was probably better. His plan hinged on him not being recognized, and what better way to hide who he was than being completely bald? It would mean ditching his clothes and sunglasses as well. He would have to take care to hide this last pair of shades, the bastard Brotherhood had absconded with his other set when they stole his head. Bunch of dicks!

***

Norman arrived outside of a large walled town after weeks of exhaustive walking. He forgot just how tiring it was being in a living breathing meat suit. And all the little aches and pains that accompanied it.

Even getting back into his living breathing form was an effort that Norman would rather forget. It started with having to lure one of those stupid grazers into the spell circle without them screwing it up. That took him ten attempts and two of his healing potions to accomplish. But he did eventually succeed.

Then there was the actual conversion. Norman wasn’t sure which was worse, the magical overdose, or having his entire body broken down and rebuilt. He decided they both rated about the same on the shits-fucked-up scale.

Then there was the trip just to get to this accursed zone, with its scorching sun and hard unyielding rocky surface. He didn’t understand why these people didn’t just move into the deadlands and take that over. Their lives would be so much easier if they did.

At least Norman had managed to snatch some clothes from one of the smaller outer towns during the night. The threadbare clothing and sandals along with the head wrap made him blend in quite well. It wasn’t a perfect disguise though since he didn’t have the same purplish skin tone as the locals. At least, after weeks of travel, he now had the sun-scorched skin to match theirs. Even just getting to that point without turning into a lobster had been a grueling process. If it wasn’t for Norman’s potions, he was sure this much sun exposure would be giving him rampant skin cancer at this rate.

Two guards in full white enameled plate armor stood guard outside the town. Neither was sporting a head wrap, marking them as Radiant Brotherhood followers, as if the armor wasn’t enough to give them away. The guards passed their gazes over everyone as they walked through the gates but they did not stop anyone. They did pause a bit longer on Norman, but he kept walking, keeping his head slightly bowed similarly to everyone else that entered the city.

A few things had become clear to Norman as he traveled closer to the main city. Most of it overhead from other travelers on the same road. The first was that everyone gave the sun-touched a wide birth. At first, Norman thought sun-touched was just another name for the Brotherhood's members since they didn’t need to wear protective headwear. But that turned out not to be the case.

The sun-touched were people who had exposed themselves to the sun for too long and had gone insane or had been cursed with some malady like cancer or blindness. In Norman’s eyes, that insanity applied to the Brotherhood as well but that was just him being salty. As with most religions, the sun-touched were used as an example. ‘See that over there, that’s what happens when you don’t worship our god or if you go against our god!’

They could do that because true followers of Apolon, or the radiant one as most of the locals referred to the god, could go without coverings and wear metal armor all day long and be totally fine. It was complete bullshit, but these simple people bought into it without question. It also made Norman realize why these people hadn’t left this zone to populate the deadlands. If they thought of the sun-baked ground as some sort of holy land, they weren’t likely to ever leave it.

Norman couldn’t even blame the people for their ignorance. Humans fell into the same traps as they did.

Another thing Norman learned is that the Brotherhood’s influence had spread way further than it had when he last visited.

He had stopped at that first village he had visited the last time he came down here with Grobert and Noorani. This time he came as a simple beggar asking for food and water. Norman used the visit as a test to ensure he could pull off this plan. If the people of that town recognized him, he would have called this idea off and gone back north to think of something else. But that hadn’t happened.

The people had been kind enough to offer him some shade and water, but Norman felt the eyes of the new clergy upon him the entire time he was in that small town.

It was probably because Norman didn’t have proper attire for the scorching wasteland. The priest probably thought Norman was on the verge of becoming sun-touched himself. He couldn’t blame the man for his suspicions. Norman probably looked like twice-baked shit.

While the people's hospitality and kindness hadn’t changed since Norman was last there, he didn’t fail to notice the people looked quite a bit more underfed, bordering on malnourishment. It was a stark change from the last time he had seen the villagers. And the former city official’s house now belonged to the Radiant Brotherhood clergyman that had eyed him like a cold glass of water. Norman noticed the priest looked well-fed, even a bit plump around the middle. As for the old city official, there was no sign of him.

Norman saw none of that same malnourishment in any of the faces of the Radiant Brotherhood members as he walked through the capital either. A fact that made him irrationally angry for some reason.

He worked his way through the crowded city streets with his satchel on his hip. Only the long claw he had turned into a spell anchor hung in clear sight. The glowing symbol at the top of the bone was covered over with a janky bit of copper that Norman had wound around the claw to make it into a simple necklace. It was Norman’s ‘Oh shit everything has gone tits up card!’

While the Brotherhood was dealing with a thirty-foot undead dinosaur, Norman would be getting the fuck out of Dodge.

He hoped it didn’t come to that though, or it would mean his trip down here was for nothing.

Norman eventually found a building that acted like a hotel but was more of a hostel. Straw-filled mattresses lined one long wall of the building. It looked like a very uncomfortable place to stay, but Norman wasn’t exactly rolling in money. He had to barter with the proprietor of the establishment with some of the smoked meat he had made from one of the grazers he killed. He didn’t have any actual money. At least not the type of money that these people used.

The man that ran the establishment actually seemed perfectly fine with trading food for a night's stay. Norman wasn’t all that surprised, the man looked a bit underfed, although not nearly as bad as the people in the outer towns. Norman didn’t miss the greed in the man’s eyes as he looked at Norman’s satchel. He probably thought it was full of meat. Which was true at the beginning of Norman’s trip. But now, Norman was nearly out. He had enough to last him another week if he ate three meals a day. Norman was going to have to stretch that to make it last though. But he was used to going hungry for extended periods, just not so recently.

Norman used the satchel as a pillow and laid down to rest. He was going to wait until early evening when the sun wasn’t blazing overhead before he explored the town and got his bearings.

It didn’t take long for his exhausted body to fall asleep even on the scratchy straw mattress.

Norman was jerked awake as some skinny youth tried to snatch the satchel out from under his head. If it wasn’t for the fact that Norman had wrapped the strap around his wrist before dozing off, the kid would have gotten away with it too.

When the kid noticed he wasn’t going to get his prize, he actually slapped Norman across the face and bolted out of the building.

Left stunned, Norman wasn’t able to chase after the kid before he vanished out the door. He also noticed that the proprietor hadn’t bothered to even get off his stool during the entire encounter. The man even had the gall to look disappointed that Norman still had his satchel.

‘What the fuck is wrong with these people!’

He would probably need to find a better place to stay.

None of the people he had interacted with so far in this city had showcased any of the same qualities as those in the smaller villages he had passed through on his way here. Sure people behaved differently in larger cities versus the country, but this city wasn’t even as large as where he had lived in Colorado. It was only large in comparison to the other tiny villages that dotted this zone. To have such a drastic shift in morality and ethics meant there was probably another factor at play. Certainly, the lack of food had something to do with this madness.

Norman could guess as to what was causing that issue, but he had no proof that the Brotherhood was behind the shift other than they looked well-fed. It also didn’t matter. He wasn’t here to fix these people’s way of life, he was here to find out more about the Brotherhood. And if possible find a way to take them down. Then these people could figure out their own issues.