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Speak With Dead #35: Lingering is Such Sweet Sorrow

Coming to you from across the cosmos tonight, our in house advice columnist, the Necromancer with the Answer, has collected a few letters from folks with death related problems. Tonight, Maxillae the Mad draws out two questions and offers her sage counsel.

Stay tuned after the article if you, too, are a fellow seeker and desire guidance, to find out how you may get in contact and Speak With Dead.

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Dear Maxillae,

We buried my grandfather over the weekend. It was very sudden; I know it’s strange to hear of an eighty year old human dying in battle, but it was his way and his desire and he never let himself age into being a properly old man. It was a worthy death.

The problem is just that…well, it didn’t stick?

I’m not even talking about a haunting! If he were a ghost we could just tell spooky stories about our wispy lingering remnant of a grandfather, but what happened was far stranger and more difficult to explain.

We interred him in the family vault, you see, and the very next morning he’d just…shown up for breakfast? Changed out of the clothes we buried him in and into something more casual even? He greets all of us like he did three days ago. You know, before he died.

The entire family is freaking out. We can’t have neighbors over or they’re going to think we did necromancy on our poor dead Grandad. I think he knows he’s dead, he keeps going for raw meat in the cupboards and at one point made a joke about not having a pulse. He’s obviously fine with this, so…what do I do? What do I tell him? What do I tell the family?

Struggling Grandson

Dear Struggling,

That is most irregular indeed, and you are right to be concerned. The dead do not often just sit back up on their own and start acting like nothing has happened. The way I see it, this is one of two issues.

The first is that your grandfather is like me, a revenant. An undead that has unfinished business that felt so important and urgent, they stand back up and continue pursuing it. A revenant will drop

dead properly once their business is completed.

I strongly suspect that mine never will be (the thirst and drive to create is a strong one and one never really completes themselves as an artist after all), but if your grandfather has something it is very likely that he’s mentioned it already even if you haven’t noticed. In that case, all you have to do to help him pass on is help him complete his business.

However, it is also possible that someone set him up to rise again on purpose. Check his resting place for markings etched into the tomb and things that might have been interred with him. You are looking for sigils that are still arcane in nature in spite of the darkness of the magic involved.

If someone did raise him intentionally, the next thing you will want to check is to see if his soul returned with the body. If it did, you’ll have to free him from the sway of his necromancer. Unless, of course, his raising was consensual in which case there isn’t really anything that needs fixing here.

I know you’re worried about the neighbors. Unless there becomes a problem, however— a real problem, not just ‘rot smell’ or ‘someone is not dead when they should have been’—then start trouble shooting to see how to fix it.

Right now, count your blessings. Say all of the things you did not get to say before. This is a chance not many ever get.

Regards,
Maxillae the Mad

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Do You Have a Question for Maxillae the Mad?

Please, if you have anything you would like to inquire of our resident necromancer, leave your inquisitions in the comments below. Unfortunately the avenue by which one could ordinarily tweet out ‘speak with dead’ has become corrupted with dark energies and is no longer safe to interface with, but we are at present working on a way around that.