Bump In The Night: Burial Rites of the Yet-Living

Editor's notes are in ^[brackets]

You may had thought I had died or given up my adventures, dear reader. You are thus happily mistaken, for nothing could kill the mighty Rothras - not a murk-beast of Black Marsh nor a troll of cold Skyrim!

This is my second account of one of my adventures, and it happened not too long after our first deadly adventure!^[1] As you know, I sustained serious wounds and found myself stumbling into a lost and forlorn Temple of Arkay in the Alik'r Desert. What happened in that lone Temple is a tale worthy of my readers!

I cannot recall what happened when I collapsed through the doors to that Temple, but I awoke to a Redguard priest chanting under his breath. He was pouring a salt solution over me, and I laid in a large sarcophagus. Imagine my outrage, reader! They were going to inter me, instead of giving me my rightful return to the ash!

I gasped as I was recalled to life, and the Redguard jerked back in surpise and dropped the ewer of the solution onto my head. I fell once again into unconsciousness. I soon awoke again and the blasted fool was repeating the rights, thinking I was dead - again!

This time I grabbed the ewer and proceeded to bid the Three Goodly Daedra to curse the stupid priest. "Do you not know how to tell if a mer yet lives? Foolish priest!"

The priest recovered from the shock of his twice-revived subject and humbly bowed, "My apologies, sir. I am most humbled to be in your mighty presence, my attempts to inter you were most foolish."^[2]

"Where am I? I must return to Taneth at once, I have quite the bounty waiting for me to collect!" The priest bowed again, and spoke "You are in the Alik'r Temple of Arkay, we provide the Law and Ritual of Arkay to the nomads of the desert."

"Yes, but where am I?"

"Sir, the Alik'r is an ocean and the sands upon which we are based shift as the currents."

What did I expect, dear reader, other than such a confusedly primitive outlook?

"Yes, yes, and I'm an ash vampire. If you don't wish to help me, I'll rely on the help of the stars."

I rose out of the basin and walked towards the massive set of stone doors that marked the exit. The priest gasped and grabbed a hold of me. "Sir, you mustn't open the doors, it would do horrible things to the air in here and my subjects are terribly delicate."

I swatted the fool's hand away from me, and opened the doors. Reader, I must admit the folly of my choice, as when I opened the doors I was hit with a blast of sand that threw me backwards. The air around me screamed with the presence of the many particles of sand, and I had to force myself up and slam shut the doors. The priest's robes were frayed and he was coughing up the sand he had accidentally breathed.

"You damned fool, you have ruined two year-long projects. Do you have any idea of the necessities to prepare bodies for utilization?!" The priest ran over to two open coffins and spat on the corpses, "By the Worm King, you've broken the salt barrier and exposed the corpse to the elements! Do you have any idea have difficult it is to find bodies in this hot hellhole - let alone bodies of the descendants of the Ansei!"

The priest whipped around and glared at me, while I held an admittedly confused visage. "You'll pay for this you idiotic Dark Elf." I was, to say the least, insulted - but still confused, "So, you're not a priest?"

"Gods no! Honestly, has my Lord become so censored that the common-folk don't know his name? I am a servant of Mannimarco, God-King of Worms, Bane of Arkay, Bringer of Unlife!" As he spoke, he began channeling profane magics, and blackness began to storm around his hands.

When confronting a necromancer, reader, you must always think of your environment and the amount of possible bodies available to the foul sorcerer. I was unfortunate to be without my blade and in a temple devoted to the interment and preservation of bodies.

Without my blade, I would have to face the necromancer with the power of the arcane arts, and so I did what any rational person would do when faced with a necromancer in a burial crypt - I used my experience in Illusion to cast a cloak of invisibility over myself.

The necromancer was unfazed, and the blackness of his right hand quickly transformed into a blue wave. I was not sure what he was doing until I looked down and saw that my invisible frame was actually emanating a blue aura. Curses! A spell for the detection of life. No matter, I released my cloak and began to channel the power of lightning.

The ground under me rumbled, which I attributed incorrectly to the sandstorm, and I struck at the priest with a bolt of lightning. The bolt was blocked by a skeletal hand that shot up out of the ground. More began to shoot out of the ground around me and grab hold of my legs. Servants of flesh began to emerge from the labyrinthine tunnels that descended into what must have been the necromancer's store of subjects.

The normal adventurer would begin to panic, but not a mighty Telvanni Spellsword such as myself. I thought back onto my training against the Black Arts, and remembered that both fire magic and restoration magic are effective against the undead. A single consecrated blast would leave me defenseless, but would be the only way to eliminate the hoards of undead.

So, instead of fighting, I succumbed to the forces, and covered myself in a ward. That foolish necromancer was haughty, and decided to flex his entire undead force to pile on and around me. Exactly what I wanted.

It took nearly an hour's time before I sensed that all the necromancer's forces were marshalled around me - it must have been over three hundred undead minions. They were pounding away at each to reach me, but the ones nearest to me were repelled by my ward. The premise of my plan was easy, to imbue the ward with an element of fire and then to rapidly expand the ward's space. A fiery explosion that I hoped would also capture the necromancer in it's blast.

I began to channel fire magicks into the ward, and quickly funneled all my stores of magicka into the ward, rapidly expanding it and forcing back the undead forces. A catastrophic boom echoed down the tunnels as I stood in the center of a mass of dead bodies.^[3]

I saw a hand pop out of the mass of bodies, which began to channel the black magicks. I quickly grabbed a ceremonial burial scimitar from one of the bodies and walked over to the hand. I raised the blade and sliced off the hand, before kicking aside the body the necromancer hid under and impaling him with an efficient plunge.

And that is how I killed the Necromancer masquerading as a Priest of Arkay in the Alik'r desert.

[1] The editor would like to note that Arlugbur was, chronologically, not Rothras' first adventure - rather, it was his first listed in his ordering documents. As previously mentioned, the listing system is nonsensical but maintained for sake of posterity. The editor would also, for posterity, like to point out the irony of Rothras' introduction.

[2] The editor would like to point out that no burial rituals of Arkay, specifically in Hammerfell, utilize a salt solution in an ewer poured over the subject in a basin.

[3] I consulted with a destruction mage in the College of Whispers and gave him a description of the technique used by Rothras which upon hearing he grew incredibly pale (for a Redguard.) After rushing me into a backroom filled with tattered scrolls and broken alembics, he whispered to me in a hushed tone: "These magicks, wards infused with destruction, are secrets of the Elder Council - not yet deemed of proper safety to be released by the public. However you gained access to this magic, know this, my superiors will kill you if their secrets pass from thought to whisper." That was two years ago, and at the time of release I'm sure any well educated person would know of the recent release of Wards as Offense: Treatise of Destruction-Restoration and Workings of the Magicks Involved by the College of Whispers.