Speak With Dead #15: There’s Always a Bloody Adventuring Party
Each week, our resident necromancer Maxillae the Mad takes time from her busy life as a alchemist and practitioner of death magic to offer her unique insights and advice to denizens of any world or setting. At the bottom find out how you can Speak with Dead and ask your questions of our necromancer with the answer. Until then, welcome to the crypt!
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This week’s Speak with Dead was delayed due to scheduling conflicts. Who knew hallow took 24 hours to cast? But once she gets started with a project, Maxillae the Mad always sees it through.]
Dear Maxillae the Mad,
A zombie as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
Signed,
Raising a Family
Dear Raising a Family,
That is absolutely going to depend on how long the family in question was dead. If you get to them within a week, a raise dead spell will do you. If they have been dead longer than that and you have enough power to do it, raising them as a revenant would be reasonable as well, but realize that any revenant will die upon accomplishing that unfinished business and most are not capable of refraining from going after the goal in question.
I’m not going to ask what happened. I have a strong feeling I would rather not know in the first place. Suffice it to say, most of the methods by which an undead can retain a measure of its personality must be set in motion prior to the death so depending on how powerful you are you may be SOL.
Best of luck,
Maxillae the Mad
Dear Maxillae the Mad,
I was beset upon by some adventurers who ruined some carefully laid plans of slowly taking over a dwarven mountain. I had cursed several dwarves by poisoning their food supply to make them stupid, summoned demons, gained an army of goblins, ogres and troglodytes, even some zombie ogres from my master another powerful necromancer. I think he said he was an academy friend of yours at one point, but anyway these adventurers.
I had a pretty sweet set up. I had built up an army, I had started luring monsters and the undead into several key dwarf settlements. I had made other dwarf settlements under the mountain stupid via poisoning. I was set to take the whole damn place over. It took years of preparation and it was all foiled by a traitorous dark elf, a wood elf monk who has a penchant from dropping on people from on high, a growing ever more popular folk hero named Barry and a surly dwarf. They came charging in on an elephant, almost killed me and destroyed everything, freed all my prisoners, killed all my soldiers and demons. I was lucky to get out. They even took my boyhood diary… and Master well he isn’t very pleased all I had left was one goblin named Bubbles.
I want to get back at this quartet of mischief makers. I want to make them suffer can you offer advice to a dark elf mage down on his luck?
-Dantrag
Dear Dantrag,
That does indeed sound like a crazy bout of happenstance. Was that academy friend you mentioned Releloth? It sounds like Releloth and I wouldn’t put it past that bastard to have sabotaged you, he is absolutely that kind of person. In fact, he forked my lawn recently and I haven’t gotten over it enough to continue talking about this.
One question. Dwarves are typically subterranean, how on earth did these adventurers get an elephant into the tunnels for this assault in the first place? I may be mistaking them for another creature but the last I checked elephants are too big to really do well in the close quarters of the underground.
Whatever the case may be, my advice is this; focus down on one of them next time. Send all of your forces at just one adventurer, and then switch them over to a different one only when that person is dead. Losing one of their own often breaks the morale of such groups and gives you an advantage.
Oh yeah, and get a real necromancer to help you next time. I was top of the class and Rel’s never forgiven me for getting valedictorian over him. You deserve better than second best that’s for sure.
Regards,
Maxillae the Mad
Dear Maxillae the Mad,
I am an enthusiast of the dark arts, and have found your words inspirational.
I am planning an attack on a powerful group of adventurers, and need assistance deciding what type of undead to use. The party consists of a goliath barbarian, an aasimar warlock, a naga monk, and an elf ranger. They are powerful, and have overcome my previous attempts to defeat them (including a warlock friend of mine and a tree blight). Your advice on defeating them?
Sincerely, Cyrian Darkshard, necromancer extraordinaire.
Dear Cyrian Darkshard,
First of all, let me commend you on your name, I’m sure it strikes fear into the hearts of those around you. Well met.
Now, I think the party member that is going to give you the most trouble of these four is going to be the aasimar, as they are resistant to necrotic damage. Have you any idea what the warlock’s patron is? Any way of getting into contact with this entity? Sometimes it can be possible to lure them away from giving their agents proper support, particularly if you have a good sacrifice. If not, I would suggest focusing down on that particular nuisance first.
Have you considered starting a riot? Find a town they are bound to pass through and sew rumors of a wicked goliath and naga that have caused trouble in the past in other places and turn the townsfolk against them before they ever arrive in the first place.
Another thing that matters in this instance is whether or not they are righteous folks. If they are, perhaps you could use the villagers as hostages and overwhelm them that way. Arrange to have poison slipped into their ale. Hire an assassin. Do as much of this fight from a distance as you can before addressing them directly, and when you do, make for absolute certain you have a safe way out.
I wish you the best of luck, Cyrian, and I look forward to finding out how this goes for you.
Regards,
Maxillae the Mad
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Brain-Food
November 6, 2017 at 5:14 pmDear Maxillae the Mad,
I realize that most undead feast upon the living in one form or another; brains, blood, flesh, souls, etc. My question is, have you adopted the macabre eating habits of your minions and aquaintences and, do you have any recipes the world simply must try?
Signed,
Brain Food
Professor Bill
November 6, 2017 at 5:51 pmDear Maxillae the Mad,
I am a small-time criminal in the Marvel Universe, just trying to earn my bread through robbing banks and knocking over the occasional armored truck. Recently, I’ve began trying to form a small villainous group so that we can try and get into the big-time.
Yesterday, some amateur necromancer joined forces with me and promised to be able to raise the dead and create a small army. Now, normally I wouldn’t complain but when we aren’t making our less=than-honest living, they want to eat. I figured these guys would want brains and stuff because, you know, George R. Romero and stuff, but all they want to eat are pancakes.
Look, the necromancer is cool and all but these things go through boxes of Aunt Jemima’s like it’s nobody’s business. It’s expensive as Hell (excuse the pun) and there’s maple syrup everywhere!
It actually gets worse.
As you know, the dead tend to rot away and, uh… many of them don’t have stomachs. These things eat and eat and the pancakes just end up chewed and on the floor. There’s a mess everywhere. I tried trying double-lined plastic shopping bags to their hips to substitute for a colostomy bag but they take them off and try to sit on the toilet. Can you imagine, my secret hideout with only one bathroom and there’s a line for the bathroom? I’ve got a line of pancake-eating undead lined-up at the toilet so they can sit down and do nothing because they already dumped everything on the floor where they were eating through their rotted stomachs.
I tried getting them to at least do the “Thriller” dance while they wait in the line so I could film it and try to make some money on YouTube but they don’t like Michael Jackson, they only do “The Twist” like Chubby Checker (God rest his soul) and you can imagine what that does with the maple syrup leaking over their pelvises.
Please give me some advice for this rather unique situation?
Yours truly,
Mr. Cyber