Dungeon Mastery: The Necromancer

The Dark Arts
If you want to throw in Polis, it is descended from pele meaning citadel or highplace central to the settlement (sel). Polis is a different word with its own meanings. But back before the appearance of e, i, w, y, the form was ku so before settlements, it was along the lines of nkuku-polkus: pol meaning to touch/shake, kus being a vessel containing things of a sacred nature so necropolis before settlement was a portable container you took with you. In igbo (nigerian) okpukpu is bones and I would surmise necropolis in its pre settlement form of nkuku-polkus is a container of ancestral bones that are touched/shaken. And taken with you as you travel. So the necromancer is initially some family member responsible for/trusted with ancestors remains.

The nek used is the same nek (protoindoeuropean) in corpse and nectar (of the gods). So the later Necromancer is searching for immortality and healing magic. Necromancers are not just digging up corpses and animating them. Necromancers are searching for immortality and they know the gods drink of it. Philosophically they might think the only thing gods drink are the lives of mortals through war, hecatomb (ritual mass sacrifice), pyramid building. Others might think the drink is some obscure fruit distilled down to its seed oils or juices. Honey is something of an antibiotic.

The necromancer lives in a world where enemies are contaminating artowheads with the plagues and bacterium of corpses and the sick (lepers). Knowledge of undetectable or incurable poisons is passed through the tribe elders. Something as simple as a termite mound can contain material which when powdered is a fine glass that will kill the victim slowly from the inside when blown in their face while they sleep. This is a brutal world... before and after the first human settlements. Necromancy is about medicines and poisons, healing knowledge, care for ancestral remains. This means you can have necromancers of any alignment and culture. A portable jar necropolis or a city of the dead.

The BX Necromancer
Access to both cleric and magicuser spells, though animate dead seems a chaotic act and thus the necromancer would be your cleric, and magicusers would be outcast necromancers. Because your cleric gets his or her spells by worshiping ancestors, something as simple as a reversed bless spell (desecrate) could eliminate a rival clan's necromancy by desecrating the bones of their ancestors. The world is a nasty place with little respect for the bones of others.
The Necromancer might be initially a cleric, but at a certain point a magicuser capable of animating dead to send the walking dead out for revenge on those who desecrated the family ancestors and took their cleric necromantic abilities.

Beyond the Periphery: Art History

 Slaughtered Ox by Rembrandt (1655). Here we have an animal carcass splayed out, the ribs visible. Those exposed ribs evoking an architectual appearance of steps on a marble or wooden spiral staircase. A style consistent with Renaissance Architecture.

Carcass of Beef by Soutine (1925). Here we see the jaring colour boundary of reds and blues. A style reminiscent of church stained glass windows. Where older stained glass images were built from individual colour fragments, later styles would separate the larger colour boundaries, and painting of the subtler variations in the imagery would be applied within that sectional limit.
This staircase of ribs is carpeted in scarlet. Though torn and revealing an older architecture beneath the wreckage of a decedent wealth.



Why bring you here? The idea that there is an older age hidden beneath the modern ruin. In art, in inspiration, in architecture, in civilization. The desperation to connect the current through continuity to ancient. Church and State building on a foundation of marble and wood slit timbers to sunlit stained glass and ending in ruined Scarlett carpets.


For Dungeons and Castles there is a progression from caves, and huts of piled stones through timber and stained glass gothic cathedrals to disused, ruined and abandoned edifices taking up space in crowded cities.

Age of Warp: the star chart

 Age of Warp Starchart is now available on drivethru as a pdf for two dollars a download. Useful if you simply need a quasi accurate map of the star systems out to four parsecs from Our Solar system. Enjoy. I probably need to build a new generic Scifi Age of Warp card set. If the map sells a couple thousand copies, I'll look at getting a scifi concept artist to create an actual generic setting game deck for sale.

The snapshot of the map centre shows I have numbered the hexes... so you can pause your game and come back later.

Its odd that our oort cloud is some distance from our star while it is jammed up against the Alpha Centauri/Proxima Centauri system. Perhaps thats an effect of stellar gravity exceeding solar pressure.

Linguistic Archaeology: Merlin the Magician

Merlin the Magician. Replacing E and I with KU, we get the celtic clan Mkuarlkun (McCulkin). So Merlin is of the McCulkin family tree just like that little kid who terrorized cinema screens in the 90's. He may be a bit on the wayward side, but you can see that Wizard in the Culkin family tree staring back at you.

Updated: 17 June 2018

Mkuarlkun in runes on a vertical staff.

The Incredibles: Violet Parr

Violet Parr

Powers: she has Sue Storm's talent for invisibility and forcefields.

Single Real Power: Telekinesis

Existing Power Potential
Initial: erect a spherical telekinetic bubble to act as a forcefield.
Continuous Adjustment: body-shaped field telekinetically bending light becoming invisibile.


Potential Development Trajectories
Violet needs a Power Trainer (mentor character) who can take her beyond her own development trajectory.

Shape Adjustment
Initial Adjustment: telekinetic fist shaped bubble to block an opponent.
Continuous adjustment: A giant telekinetic crushing hand to grapple a foe.

Diameter adjustment
Initial: Contain air in a forcefield
Continuous Adjustment: crush oxygen into solid oxygen

Single to multiple simultaneous fields.

Initial adjustment: flat floating disc steps
Simultaneous fields: multi-step staircase
Continuous single field adjustment: fly, space travel

Character Development: In the Trailers for the Incredibles 2 she struggles to form relationships with boys, is relegated to the "Mind Jack-Jack while we deal with this" support character status, and is becoming 'Moody', and socially isolated. If they are setting her up as a gay relationship character she might establish a friendship with another female character.

The Funnies: The Hyperloop Comics

Age of Warp: cards 89-100

Hope you enjoy it. I will put up the final version of the starchart game board as a PDF so you can get it printed off to play.

Mystaran Campaign: The Great Crater continuous ejecta deposit

The edge of this plateau of boulders is around 116 feet high rising several thousand feet at the crater rim. As this is a deposit layer, the existing landscape, even up in the mountains at 18,000 has upward of a thousand feet of new rock. It pretty much extends to the subsidance of the caverns of the shadow elves.
Accessibility to the crater would in the aftermath be via the lowest point on the plateau, which is where it dips below the mostly drained Lake Amsorak creating a bay.

Age of Warp: cards 82-88

 A bunch to get you to those systems beyond the reach of your Warp 2 engines.

Age of warp: cards 71-81

Bayeux Tapestry: Something fun...

Here is a rather interesting piece of software for those looking to create tapestry style art.

Bayeux Tapestry Generator

Seems like the tower of the wolf might not be as safe as the woods...

Basic Expert: An Archer named Gabriel

Gabriel in earliest form of gabar-kukul is originally an archer. Gabar is Gabe (Sheaf)+ar (Arrow) Kukul (maian: Leper) or (cahuilla: owl). The very first Gabriel is an archer who either had arrows with white-grey owl feathers or used arrows dipped in leprosy. And somehow that idea is conveyed through religious mythology in eurasian religions much later. The angel Gabriel is depicted with a Scroll and a white lilly (Mary's Rose). The scroll is likely the sheaf of arrows, and the lilly an arrow. It seems odd that they would have a native american word for an owl for its fletching, and a papuan word for leprosy is just as far, yet just as likely to be both if they all come from a common point of origin. Where is the convergance point for all these ideas? It would need to be protoindoeuropean or earlier?

4th century BC: According to Herodotus, Scythian archers infect their arrows by dipping them into decomposing cadavers and the idea that an archer would use leprosy as a biological weapon should scare the crap out of you. By comparison ancient egyptians employed archers from the African tribes who dipped their arrows in poison.

Setting aside the church politics and a message that an artist might be hiding in religious art that Gabriel's message from God was 'we use biological weapons!' and/or 'Mary's flower' had leprosy, we are looking at something we can add to the D&D game. 

The Paladin taking Oath of the Leper is one stricken with a terrible sickness. Now imagine Gabriel as a Paladin of the Oath of the Leper who becomes an Antipaladin. Rather than suffer leprosy, he used it to taint arrows and spread it to others.

Leprosy: a contagious disease that affects the skin, mucous membranes, and nerves, causing discoloration and lumps on the skin and, in severe cases, disfigurement and deformities. Leprosy is now mainly confined to tropical Africa and Asia. 

BX Leper

You have been stricken by a terrible corruption raising sores that dont heal, and in worse cases a deformity that inhibits dexterity. You are outcast of society, denied entry into towns, and movement in public spaces. 

Weapon: any Bow, dagger

Armour: none (cloth bandaging)

Alignment: Neutral or Chaotic

 Level         Hit Dice       Experience      Notes                            

    1                 1d4                           0            Afflicted with Leprosy

    2                 2d4                       800            -1 charisma penalty

    3                 3d4                     1600            

    4                 4d4                     3200              -1 dexterity penalty

    5                 5d4                     6400               -2 charisma penalty

    6                 6d4                     12800                 

    7                 7d4                      25000              -2 dexterity penalty          

    8                 8d4                     50000              -3 charisma penalty 

Hit roll: as thief

Save as: thief

Magic items: Rings, Potions (poisons), scrolls, bows, arrows, daggers

HD: d4

Thieves skills: 

Hide in shadows

Move silently 

Dice Drop: random Village on a pre-existing terrain

 Gothridge Manor has done a village on a pre-existing terrain map. So I thought I would add that to a dice drop method. So now we have a gully through which a river cuts, and a few trees.

A broad scatter of dice with a few buildings sitting in the gully and others up on each side.

Building populations noted in the bottom corner.

The Village of Waskun
Population: 78

Age of Warp: cards 61-70