Dear Lynxiana,
Okay, so I have more detail about the Necromancer ...
The Elf did not start out a Necromancer...
He started out as a wizard priest of a very specific religious order.
The Di''Jinn.
The order requires all of it''s priests to have Psionic powers (mental magic, such as mind control, being able to press one''s will on others to control their actions and make them your thrall).
In his world, Psionics is an in born ability, it''s not something you can learn.
Near as I can tell, it''s rare and not many are born with it, but those that are born with it are hunted down by this cult, kidnapped, and forced into being priests wither they want to be or not.
The Di''Jinn priests have extreme mental control and are able to force the new "recruits" to do anything they want them to do, so no young Psion has ever been able to escape kidnapping and being forced into the priesthood.
The Di''Jinn priests then teach the young Psions how to control their mental powers. The most Psions remain priests of the religion once they reach adulthood, but the most powerful Psions go on to become wizards as well, such was the case of my Necromancer.
A Guild of Wizardry exists, that regulates who can do magic, when, where, how, and why.
They demand fees, taxes, etc, and place absurd restrictions on every minute detail of the magic arts. Most magic users oppose them.
The Guild has it''s own army and keeps a list of "the most wanted wizards", who are magic users that practice magic without paying tribute to the Guild and or are not "approved members" of the Guild for any of various reasons.
A few centuries prior to the time he''s in now, there was a war started by a warrior Necromancer who was also King of the Faeries.
His lover.
The one I''ve been telling you about.
The Phooka who pretends to be a Unicorn.
His armies killed millions of people, nearly bringing the Elves to extinction in the process. He was practically undefeatable because he had in his control 12 powerful Liches. Eventually he grew old and retired, remaining undefeated, but the fear that another like him would rise up, resulted in the Guild''s creation to regulate magic arts, and resulted in a ban on Necromancy.
Anyone found practising Necromancy is sentenced to death.
The magic of this planet is so different then what we are used to back home on Ptarmagin. Magic here is closely related to religion. Females RARELY take up magic studies (because this is largely a male dominated society and females are thought of as having their place in the home, can you believe it? So there are few opportunities for them career wise; if they do study magic it''s often done in secret.) Boys who become wizards ALWAYS started out as priests. Wizarding being seen as an advanced form of priesthood, thus most why wizards are old.
Young boys (pre-teens) are sent off to live in temples with priests, to learn to become priests themselves. It''s not a path they choose, but rather one adults pick for them, based on specific attributes a particular religion demands for it''s priests. (In some religions it''s almost bordering on slavery, with many boys actually being kidnapped by temple priests, in some extreme cults, the boys being kept in chains to prevent their escape while they are being trained in priesthood.)
Rarely does a boy seek to become a priest and even more rarely do they seek the advanced priesthood of becoming wizards, as was the case of the poor little frightened Moon Elf. He was taken to the temple - from his frozen icy snow covered home in the arctic North to a burning hot desert on the other side of the world - when he was only 9 years old, with his mother being killed while trying to keep the priests from taken him. He spent the next 30 years of his life in chains, forced to learn the priesthood and magic arts against his will, beaten and starved if he disobeyed.
Because of the way they are treated (often tortured for many decades) most of the boys are raving mad, utterly insane, by the time they reach the status of wizard. The poor little frightened Moon Elf escaped the temple, by killing the priests and fleeing back to his home in the frozen North, but he was 75 years old by the time that happened. (He''s an Elf, so 75 years to him is about 18 years old for a Human)
While any race can become a magic user here on Vesonta, it''s Elves, Faeries and Demons who are more likely to become wizards then any other race, simply because their long life span allows them to devote several hundred years to studying magic arts. Elves typically live 500 to 750 years, while Faeries and Demons live about 1,500 to 2,000 years. Half Elves, Gnomes and Dwarves are the next most likely become wizards, again because of their long life spans (300 to 500 years each).
Because everyone knows the treatment they had on the path to wizardry, most of this world lives in mortal fear of wizards, as it''s a known fact that wizards are insane and can not be trusted. Because of this, the general population also fears magic and many religions have now risen up to preach against magic use as evil.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Some wizards (the most "powerful" ones) are sometimes seen by other people as being gods or demi gods, thus religious cults pop up here and their, with the cultists worshipping a certain wizard as their god. The poor little frightened Moon Elf is a Necromancer who has 2 such cults devoted to him (though he''s disgusted with both of them and wishes they''d just leave him alone - being a Necromancer means he''s wanted by the law - the Guild - and wants to keep a low profile and these cultists followers make it difficult for him the stay under the Guild''s radar) - one cult worships him thinking he is a god, while the other cult hunts him down to kill him, thinking he "the evil one" (something akin to Satan, I guess?)
Magic itself is seen as being what all life is made out of (energy?) and thus anything/one can use magic IF they know how to, and everything is capable of being a magic/cursed/enchanted item. It requires chants, prayers, and elaborate rituals to change the natural (magnetic energy?) force that flows through an object, in order to bend it to your will, thus magic arts are difficult and not easily mastered. There are however those who''ve mastered the art of manipulating magic just by use of thoughts or hand gestures, but they are rare and have to have a huge about of mental self control, being able to meditate and focus on their goal.
Because magic is an energy source it can be "powered" and "stored" (think of it like solar energy, when solar panels collect energy from the sun and store it in a battery to power electricity). Thus why wizards have wands, staffs, orbs, magic swords, seer stones, etc. They can "charge" a wand with certain spells for use later. This poor little frightened Moon Elf for example has a wand that can contain 6 spells at a time, as long as he remembers the charge it with magic ahead of time. If he uses a spell, it then only has 5 left, until he recharges it again.
Spells that are cast by words/phrases, are similar to wands, in that the wizard has to have pre-prepared said spell (often by use of spell scrolls). Once the spell/scroll is powered, all the wizard has to do it read the words on the scroll to activate the spell. If he has the spell memorized, he does not have to look at the scroll or even be in the same room with it, for it to work.
Some wizards can "pull" energy out of objects and "put" it elsewhere, thus resulting in being able to briefly levitate objects. For example a wizard wants to sit on a chair that is floating a few feet above the ground, he can pull the energy from a cloud and move the cloud under his chair causing it to "float".
So, our little wizard here, the First Grand High Emperor of the Triple Planets, Roderic''s grandfather, Quaraun Swanzen, he was forced against his will to become a priest, further forced against his will to become a wizard...and then only became a Necromancer because his lover died and he was desperate to bring him back to life. Thus we see an Elf who is not evil become a Necromancer
Before being taken by the Di''Jinn priests, he was just a simple Elf who loved nature, especially flowers, most especially pink roses. So as an adult, when he finally escapes from the Di''Jinn priests and goes off on his own, he gets himself a wizard tower and surrounds it with a vast rose garden and spends most of his days doing absolutely nothing at all but tending to his many acres of roses.
If left to his own and nothing ever bothered him, he''d do absolutely nothing but fuss over flowers and butterflies and feed song birds, simply because that''s the type of person his is... the problem is, that by killing the Di''Jinn priests to escape enslavement by them, he''s now wanted for murder, and a Psion who has used his mental powers to kill another Psion, the punishment is death of sight, simply because his mental powers are so advanced that they know they couldn''t take him alive.
(Or so they think, they don''t realize he''s not a violent person and wouldn''t fight back. They also don''t know he only killed the Di''Jinn priests because they were torturing his lover to death and their deaths was not intended.)
Then on top of that he went and became a Necromancer and has a Lich (his resurrected lover, the Unicorn) travelling with him every where he goes, so the people are just scared out of their minds that he''s going to use his mental powers to control them, then turn everyone into an undead army.
Rumours are flying all over the place, with people saying he''s building vast armies of undead to take over the planet, when in fact, he''s not doing anything but sitting in his rose garden, listening to song birds.
So people end up hunting him down, because they let their own over active imaginations run away with them, forcing him to constantly be on the run. Usually he just runs. He''s
not a fighter. He''s a peaceful person who just wants to be left alone. But because of what he is, people are scared of him, so they keep attacking him.
Usually he runs, but sometimes he gets cornered, caught, injured, or worse case - his lover gets cornered, caught, or injured. His lover, being undead, isn''t quite so peaceful and matters are made worse by the fact that in life, his lover was a serial killer who every body was quite happy to have left dead.
In fact, he''s the Necromancer King who killed millions with an army of Liches and was the very reason the Guild was created and a ban placed on Necromancy, which is doubly why people are so terrified of the Necromancer, because they ASSUME (falsely) that the Necromancer resurrected the evil King in order to finish his work. Plus, now in undeath, the Lich King more violent and more dangerous then he was in life.
He also loves the Necromancer very much, and while the Necromancer turns to run, the Lich turns to fight.
People assume the Necromancer controls the Lich, they don''t realize the Lich is not under the Necromancer''s control and is acting of his own free will, so when the Lich attacks in order to protect the Necromancer from harm, people think it''s the Necromancer, using mental powers to send the Lich he built after them, which in turn makes the situation worse, making people come at the poor frightened wizard with much more force then they really need to.
The poor Elf is scared out of his wits, which angers the Lich to see how much the people are terrorizing his Elf, making the Lich even more violent.
The whole thing becomes a vicious circle of the people attacking the Necromancer on mistaken beliefs, then the Lich attacking them to protect the Necromancer from harm, the people fighting back because the Lich attacked, but attacking the Elf thinking he''s controlling the Lich... in a never ending circle.
So you can see, the way his life is. I wish we could do more then observe these events from the past.
The poor Elf, he has no idea what he''s going to become.
He''s not evil.
He doesn''t want to be evil.
But to interfere... we''ve changed the past so many times as it is, and every time we do, something worse comes of it. The Gremlin is right, we have to be careful now.
Change the wrong event, and we could bring about something far worse then Ongadada.
~Love From Your Sister, Miss Citten The EelKat