"In the morning we leave the Saturn's Luck, trailed by tight-lipped looks of reproach from our erstwhile innkeepers.  We must find another inn to take us... in.  We wander the dusty alleys of Xambaala all morning, drawing hostile and suspicious gazes from the denizens of this squalid pesthole. I may have been mistaken, but the eyes of some of the seediest seemed to follow us with a yearning and desperate hunger. One ancient wreck goggled at our somewhat pink and plump barbarian with a slackjawed look, drool running into his matted tangle of a beard.  He wiped it away with the back of his hand and leered after him, licking his lips until he caught me looking and his eyes darted away, his visage resuming a blank senility. The youngest of the ubiquitous hollow-bellied beggars clawed at us, beseeching in their mongrel street Ixian for a half-copper venghk, or a thin tin rilk in return for some half-understood but certainly iniquitous service.  At my curt denials, they would give a start with eyes wide and cry "ai! ai! ai!" and run off.  Quickly we were left alone.  I realized my Ixian is flavored with the harsh gutteral accents of its ancient form and is more suited to dire invocations and curses, not curbside palaver in some dank alley over a crippled whore or a morsel of roasted goat meat.  I was marked as one to be avoided." - Bytorr the Necromancer, the streets of Xambaala

"We closed the window behind him.  With his cunning uncivilized ways, he would easily scale the rotting brickwork of the inn like the howling man-ape he was no doubt scarcely a generation or two descended from.  I put him from my mind, and I took my new familiar from my cloak.  An opportunity for close study of my newest companion was a worthwhile pastime while we waited.

My only indication of danger was the ripping of the air as an axe blade passed a mere hairsbreadth from me.  Taken aback, I looked up into the drawn white face of the Viking who had unaccountably attached himself to our party.  His eyes were wide and his lips were drawn back from his chattering teeth, and he trembled with his excess of passion. His axe was clenched in both hands and it waved as if in the wind.  Such fear of a natural thing, a dead rat.  What of its somewhat stiff movements and now silent chittering?  Twas a pity his small mind could not comprehend the dark vistas I surveyed.  My hand flashed out, and my mouth uttered words of power, dread mind wrenching syllables that would send him cowering in terror before me.  He would know fear, and know indeed I was his master!

Unfortunately, a morsel of my earlier repast was caught in my teeth, and I tripped over a critical fricative ululation in the second stanza. My incantation glanced off him and caromed into a corner of the room, where it struck the drunkard on the temple, fizzling out with a pop.  The Viking and I both stared in amaze at his sleeping form, our quarrel abated.  Was he dead?

We were not so fortunate.  The derelict snorted, drew his threadbare blanket over his recumbent form as he rolled away from us in his noisome cot, emitted a stench, and fell back to sleep.

I glared at the Viking and to his credit, he glared at back.  Someday he would meet his doom at my hand, but for the nonce we came to a mutual agreement: for him to not wave his axe at me, and I would not annihilate him with my dark powers.  The t

"The carrack wallowed on the purple breast of the sea, groaning and straining with every wave.  It seemed to us that only vast consumption of rum, the unlikely enthusiasm of her scurvy crew and undeserved luck kept the leaking hulk of a ship afloat.  On the horizon, the ancient city slouched like an old whore, beckoning with arthritic fingers, whispering obscene promises through rotten teeth.  Our destination: Xambaala.  We couldn't get there soon enough.

Many times in the last weeks I had wondered what brought me here, to the ends of the Earth, to this place.  To lose myself, to die, to be born again. To forget. Maybe all these things. When I looked in a stranger's face looking for my beloved, all I saw were the bones beneath.  I needed to be away, in a place whose ubiquitous imbecilic depravity matched my own, and would provide my soul with comradeship if not oblivion.  Xambaala."  - Bytorr the Necromancer, at sea.

Starting a game log for our AS&SH  sessions, and I have 2 sessions to go before I catch up!





 

"Hydrusale’s Infernal Lexicon"
Bound in smooth black hide tainted with a sulfurous reek, this slim volume details the words and phrases used when summoning, binding, controlling and banishing malign entities of Underborea. Extensive notations define specific accents and intonations that maximize efficacy, as well as dire warnings concerning the consequences of mispronunciation, stuttering, slurring and other speech defects when attempting to impose one’s will on the infernal. The knowledge imparted by mastery of this book will improve a sorcerer’s mental focus and verbal precision in all summoning spells, allowing for a save vs Sorcery when a result indicates failure.

While Hydrusale’s sudden fiery disappearance came as no surprise to the cognoscenti, it was still counted a great loss. However, the recovery of this work and others from his scattered library enabled his work to be continued. Alongside the author’s Bestiary, this book, is considered by many to be a foundational text of infernal scholarship.

In reference to the Dark Treasury, I really like these ideas.  They emphasize the "dread knowledge Men were not to know" aspect of weird/Lovecraftian fiction, as well as being direct homages to the fictional books in the genre, which are all just awesome. Who doesn't like the Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Friedrich von Junzt! However, I've always thought there was a need for mundane texts in rpgs: there is a lot of hand waving around the activities of magic users in their "off time": research, reading, deciphering mystic prunes (sorry, Pratchett), collecting arcane materials, learning new languages, dissecting alligators, etc...  But the only books found are serious magic items or artifacts, or spellbooks, rarely anything lower powered or mundane.  In a skill-based rpg, you could use such books to increase skill ability, add bonuses to certain activities and such.  Isn't the main power of the mage the mind? Filling it with forbidden knowledge gained at the cost of sanity itself should be their primary activity, and would remain truer to the mage archetype.  In a non-skill-based rpg such as ASSH, quantifying the effect of a mundane book is more difficult, since you just can’t slap a percentage bonus on to a skill check, but that doesn't reduce the utility of a book in role-playing a spell caster.

Mundane books can serve a variety of functions, not the least providing adventure hooks.

For instance: our intrepid explorers come across a shattered monastery overlooking a desolate valley from a high cliffside.  After some difficulty getting up there and slaying the nest of rabid ape-men terrorizing the valley below, they find behind an old closet door hidden behind a pile of debris and bones the mummified corpse of one of the hermits that used to live there, curled about an old leather satchel.  The satchel contains scraps of papyrus and four books wrapped in stiff cloth:

"[b]Epigrams

Well, my necro didn't get a familiar, but he does have ma's head in a jar and several levels in weirdo.  Currently, he is salting and smoking a hog carcass, upon which he will cast animate carrion.

Mobile bacon.

Just wanted to mention I had finally acquired the Gollancz omnibus hardcover of The Complete Lyonesse, so I gave my best friend my paperback copies of the trilogy. He had never read his work before, but I made an instant fan.

rhialto wrote:

Hackhamster wrote:

Looking at playing an Norman Bates-style Necromancer (quiet, unassuming, polite, but crazy and homicidal) that just happens to carry his mother's head around with him in a pickle jar.  He talks to it. It answers him. Among other things, it tells him to leave the girls alone, they are only trouble.

Either that, or "What if Tom Bombadil was actually a grave robber?"  Then I could have my own undead Fatty Lumpkin.
 

Again, I'd welcome this kind of creativity in my game: well done! 

Once Jerry the Body-snatcher is able to animate dead, he's gonna sew mom's head onto a convenient corpse and then it's on like Donkey Kong.
 

I am thinking of using a Necromancer this weekend, and my GM is figuring out if I can have a familiar. If it is permissible, I am working up a list of familiars:

Avian:
Vulture
Raven
Crow
Bat, Vampire

Reptilian:
Asp
Newt
Frog
Gecko

Mammal:
Lemur
Rat
Mole Rat
Black Cat with a milky eye

Weird:
Zombie Head (lips sewn shut)
Animated Head in a Jar (his mom's)
Hand of Glory
Skull Staff
Eyeball
Giant Centipede

Thoughts?