You remember where you should be able to look for runes, namely when you saw Edwin working on them! Of course, it's hard to remember their shape, but somehow the name sticks around. You know most of them already, as the book remembered that one for you. The one you didn't have before was Pargon, at least...
Your book glows, and a ring dotted three times with a circle begins spinning. slow at first, but it rapidly begins to speed up. Soon, it's just a blur that makes audible grinding noises. After a little while, a second ring starts spinning, one with five rings. Noticeably, this one has a red glow to it that seems out of place. It's... Well, look, it's a magic book, so it gives you the idea. The five rings don't properly belong to you, but something else is granting them just enough power for a single spell... Most likely, the power rune was part of the spell. If you had to guess, Pargon is that very rune, and is likely just a nondescript addition to an existing magick spell.
This system is dreadfully inefficient compared to normal magic, including ritual magic. Still, at least the book keeps all the information without you having to expand a lot of effort. It even shows off how to do a few spells, including a Summon spell and a Magickal Attack spell. The attack spell is mostly useless if you read this right. The best thing it has going for it is that the size or toughness of the foe doesn't matter, it'll always work and do a decent amount of damage. "Decent" being a tad relative. You're pretty sure a doombolt is just more practical, provided your enemy has a soul.
At any rate, you may know the rune, but you don't know the spell. You can only power up ONE spell. You're pretty sure a sacrifice won't come from attacking those hooks, so maybe a summon would work. You don't
quite know how to do that, but maybe you'll think of it later. You're fairly certain something got summoned once with Magick, you'll just have to look back.
The rings quickly quiet down, though, as if sensing that you're not quite ready to solve the puzzle of releasing Chattur'gha yet. You're sure you can get going on it at your leasure, just do it before you skip town.
Now, other than that, you considerin a way for you to get an arm back, using pinworks. It's... kind of a harebrained idea, honestly. The black mark on your stump of a shoulder is a pretty clear sign you can't put something new there. Pinning it to yourself with pinworks would be a very painful and very temporary solution at best. You're still susceptible to infections, not to mention that you're not sure how the magically necrotized tissue will react to the magic inside the pinwork spike. Honestly, you're not too jazzed on trying it at all.
Grafting on a limb would be an easier choice regardless. Given enough time and mana, you can permanently graft something new in just 20 seconds. Of course, it'll just be attached at that point. Getting it working is another trick entirely, as you've learned at the tower. There a good reason you don't see many multi-limbed necromancers around, it's a pain in the ass to get a limb to cooperate with you. On average, it takes six months of work before the limb properly works, and a year before it's comfortable again.
And, again, your shoulder is not really a possible place for an arm anymore...
You wonder if you could just graft a bunch on, get some four or even six armed action going. Probably not, the mana requirement alone is nearly impossible, and having to work on getting your body to accept even one arm is a year or toil and trouble.
Best to keep moving.
In the meantime, you order Yunikki to find you a dead bird, for the purpose of getting the area scouted, at least. A lizard would be fine too, as you can hardly expect your swordfighter to kill a harpy by herself. The male birds are flightless, thank god.
You just don't remember where your old familiars might have fallen, and there's honestly a good chance they've been eaten in the meantime. Maybe you should get some of the remaining vermin, but your spiders have been very thorough in EATING every little bit of vermin that comes in. They're hungry little cutie-patooties!
But it's hard to get a familiar on your own.
Yunikki got a bird in short order, a small one. It's starting the scout, but it will take a while before you've got a proper map and an idea of what you're facing. If it's lizards, it will take even longer!
Basic Stats
Level: 14
Health: 40/60
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 46/50
Items and equipment
Items:
410 gold coins
Magic Cookbook.
Book On Far Eastern Royalty
5 rations
Equipment:
Scimitar
D-VA armor
Skills and spells
Magic:
Summon Tome: You can take out your piece of the Tome of Eternal Darkness from seemingly nowhere. Others cannot see the book unless you want them to, and it's still headache-inducing to do so.
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell. Allows creation of free zombies.
Cantrip
Spark: Allows you to set something on fire, provided it is flammable to start with.
Skills:
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Incredible experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer
Spiders
Lieutenant (Really large spider. Can use magic and is really smart for a spider)
3 Breedlings (White spider, slightly larger than average. Their stings spawn spiderites)
2 spiderites (small, weaker spider that is still highly loyal to you. Expendable and toxic.)
Undead
1 Beak (currently scouting)
Also of note: tying a zombie to your back wouldn't be efficient. The average zombie is not exceptionally well coordinated, and there's a small amount of input lag when giving orders. One MIGHT be able to get somewhere with a familiar, but anything larger than a dog cannot be made into a familiar 
Author
Topic: Web of Life: A Drider's Adventure (Ended) (Read 189554 times)