The Power of Ten

Chapter 1-9: A New Night

Ding! Ding!

That mental alert was very unwanted, even coming as it did on the heels of the healing rush that once again eased some of my ability damage (and my feet stopped throbbing). My guts didnt feel so horrible, and I just felt understrength and stiff, not aching in all my joints.

I Assayed myself and found that I had for some reason been assigned a Level in Ur-Priest.

Ur-Priest!

I hit my head as I looked at it. That was a Class for Evil characters! It was intended for con men and agnostics who didnt believe in gods, and stole the power of faith from the gods for their own use, typically setting up false churches and cults and things like that. They had no respect for any of the gods or their servants, and considered divine magic just another type of magic to be mastered by those smart enough to take it.

The gods didnt exactly think the same, and so Ur-Priests were one of those people that tended to have multiple faiths and gods hunting them down for their theft of divine power.

I glared at it, even as I read the benefits.

Divine Casting Class, Prepared Caster, Wisdom-based... Okay, that meant... I got an additional Wisdom-bonus Spell, which I could fill right now.

I actually got two Divine Domains (but only one Slot, of course)... Darkness and Death. The first gave me Blind-Fighting as a bonus Feat, and a potential Domain Spell of Obscurement, a minor fog-producing spell. The second gave me Command Undead with Channeling, and a potential Domain Spell of Invisibility to Undead.

Well, that second one was definitely useful. I Slotted it, then Wrote it to Einz on top of that.

The connection I felt to the magic went up into the sky... and stopped right there in the Haze as I cast out for the connection, far shorter and more immediate than the ethereal link to an actual deity.

Because the Shroud stopped connections with the Divine... Under the Shroud here, you couldnt contact the gods, and even the souls of those who died were trapped in it. The only way to get rid of it was to crush the Dead March that had brought it here...

I was stealing the faith and prayer power offered up to the gods and stolen by the Shroud... because I couldnt reach the gods as a Shrouded character, anyways.

Since I could, I slotted Bless Water in my new Wisdom/Divine Slot. This was the spell that made holy water. There were some half-size Mason jars downstairs for canning, sitting on a shelf. They were a little on the big side, but if I could only make one and it proved useful, that was fine enough for me.

Through a crack in the window, I watched a zombie peel itself up out of the ground, literally pulling itself up out of the withered grass, clothing and all, as if it had been sleeping there and just decided to return. The flannel shirt and rough pants that hadnt fallen off yet indicated it might have been a guy at some point, and it kind of stood there, gazing with withered eyeballs in the direction of the vanished sun, and then sort of looked around.

I kept an eye on it as it began to wander, wondering if it would investigate the dark window. The room I was in was completely dark now, and there was no sound and I wasnt moving... but it could see in the dark as well as I could, so nothing to do about that now.

I could Channel Negative Energy and Rebuke Undead, as a Death false priest...

Ugh. Introducing negative energy into the world was a Bad Idea. WTF did it give that ability to me? I would have chosen positive energy every time!

It did allow me to instead Rebuke Undead and take control of them as I wished... all 2 HD I could control at this time.

Fine, fine, it was what it was. Had it invested the skill points for me?

Yes. I rolled my eyes when I saw they were popped into Faith, all two points, bringing me to 3 there.

Glorious...

Still, Invisibility to Undead could be a total lifesaver. Unfortunately, it left me with only a Mastery for me to grab to upgrade my offense...

And what Feat had it chosen for me this time, praytell?

Beyond Good and Evil.

I lifted an eyebrow. That... wasnt that bad, for me?

For Alignment-based attacks, you are considered to always be of the most favorable Alignment. You can ignore most consequences of violating your Alignment, as these are considered minor matters to the greater truth in your heart.

So... acting as an Ur-Priest and stealing faith was not consequential for me, nor was using negative energy, or controlling undead. I could probably even make undead without any real consequences, as I wouldnt do it without a good reason.

It meant I could Cast Evil spells without Alignment repercussions, too...

Huh. Basically setting me up to be a necromancer who wouldnt damn their own soul for using that kind of magic...

Left me with the Mastery. I sighed and took the only choice that was feasible at the moment: Sanctified Spell, first of the Holy Metamagicks Mastery.

The Holy Metamagicks were some cheap and powerful Metas, if all you wanted to do was fight against evil creatures and undead and stuff. Against non-Evil creatures, they were next to useless, and against Good creatures... well, you could drop a Sacred Fireball on top of a party of Good people fighting Evil people, and wipe the latter while not harming the former a bit.

And, oh yeah, you definitely had to be a Good person to use them.

Sanctified Spell was the first of those Metas. It had a +1 Valence modifier, and the first effect it had was making a spell Good. That was important for several reasons, the most important being passive Metas and Domains that increased Caster Level and Save Potency... like my Arcane Empowerment had.

The second thing it did was do some holy damage, i.e. to evil creatures. This amount was +1d6 per Passive Good spell-modifying ability. My racial ability of Good Spell Focus was one such Passive. Getting the Good Domain was the usual common choice used in tandem with this. Getting another Mastery or Feat was a third or fourth.

The maximum damage bonus possible was +3d6, for having three different types of passives. It was only against Evil creatures, but generally speaking, that was enough, because that was a pretty big bonus. Maxed out, it even trumped Banespell.

All it did for now was give me +1d6 damage to each of my Shard-type spells. Still, 5d6+4 damage, x2, endlessly repeatable, was a pretty good showing, and I should be able to handle quite a few undead with it.

It could also be built upon substantially, if you handled it right, surpassing Sieged Spells and Reserves, for the most part. Just took a lot of hoop-jumping... and that nasty Good requirement, which wasnt actually easy to keep for a lot of people...

Still, it was enough for now...

------

The number of undead began to climb, and they were all moving east.

My hackles were rising watching them stumble, shamble, lope, trot, walk, bound, and fly on past. A general migration became a stream as wandering zombies in random territories flocked to the assembly of undead, and began to stream towards those walls to the east.

That included the incorporeals gliding over the ground and low in the sky. Filling the whole damn sky...

Shadows were the most numerous, inky black forms moving slowly just above the ground. Wraiths stayed about at head height, dark masses with burning cold points of light for eyes and nebulous arms, trailing away like robes below.

Spectres looked like phantom people, semi-transparent, with faces distorted by the evils theyd wrought in life, or rage at their fate, eyes like dark suns. They and the wraiths fairly streamed past, out-distancing everything.

Above them came the ghosts, wrapped in spectral chains that trailed off into nowhere, bitter and vengeful, condemned by awful fates, curses, or deeds to suffer, eyes as empty as the void...

There were phantoms flittering here and there, and the janky sparkles of poltergeists.

Ah, look at that. A winged shadow... there were shadow demons here...

It was trailing after the undead out by the road... I should be safe from any ability to Detect things. I certainly didnt need to be Possessed at this point of things...

Most of the undead were zombies... withered, aged, shrunken about the bones, but still intact. Both genders, all sizes. Occasionally a larger animal zombie, like a bull or horse, would clomp heavily on past, and I had to wonder what had Animated it, as non-Sapients werent subject to the Shroud; something intelligent had to animate it...

The oldest undead were obviously the skeletons, where the meat had fallen off them and all that was left were clacking bones bound by the remnants of sinews and threads of negative energy.

The ghouls loped on by, moving much faster than the zombies. They were purple-skinned, with long trailing tongues, their teeth and nails grown long and sharp. Zombies who ate enough flesh could advance to ghouls, and humans who died after eating undead flesh, or on tainted ground after eating human flesh, would rise as ghouls.

Unless you were in old lands, where you might rise as a wendigo instead...

Leading groups of the ghouls and some of the zombie hordes were the ghasts. They were taller, more muscular, fleshy, with bulging guts from having their fill of carrion at some point, and being exposed to energies to spur their evolution. Like the one Id killed, they were fast and powerful, and mini-nobles among the undead.

The last of the common undead were the wights, distinguished by their paler, stony skin, stiff but strong movements, and sparkling black eye pits. Normally, wights rose as tomb defenders from well-preserved corpses... but anyone they killed would rise as a wight spawn, and here, if they died and respawned, the lord/master relationship would be broken by death, allowing them to quickly advance to full wights on their own.

They were roughly as intelligent as ghasts, but their rage at the living was more about defending territory. They probably considered everything under this Shroud their territory, and if there were humans on the wall, they were intruders who only deserved to be killed.

I was specifically looking for chimera or corpsecrafted undead: fast zombies, bone giants, bonetaurs, and the like. I did see some Burning Dead, black bones blazing with ghastly green and black necroic flames; Shockers, who had twisted red hate lightning sparking about them; and a few Frozen, covered with fellrime as they strode along.

No sign of corpsecrafting... thats almost a criminal...-

Soft black flames suddenly flickered up around all the undead.

-misuse of the time and power of a Dark Minister..., I finished, cursing the thought, and immediately withdrew to the stairs, getting the greatest volume of the house between me and the controlling undead that was now coming up quickly.

It meant I didnt get to see it, but when I looked back and out through the window above the kitchen sink, and the scattered undead wandering past, I noticed them immediately shifting course towards the road, instead of wandering around between the houses, trees, and fences, even though many of the last looked to have been destroyed deliberately so they wouldnt get in the way of the mass movements of the undead.

If I met a Dark Minister, I was dead right now. I simply had no way to kill it.

I hated being low Level...