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Necromancer

"The dead are quiet, predictable employees. The living should be more grateful."

Role: Dark caster. Drains life, commands spirits, debuffs the living. Necromancers do not have a good time with most factions - plan accordingly.

At a glance
Stat bonuses Spirit +4, Willpower +3, Guile +2, Intelligence +2
Allowed weapons Staff, Dagger
Starting skills Necromancy (4), Drain Life (3), Channel Spirits (3), Staves (3)
Starting kit Bone Staff, Dark Robes, Spirit Tome, 2× Mana Potion, Bandages
Best faction None openly - the Pale Order if you find them
Best merc team Shadow Hands (or unaffiliated mercs) - they don't ask why

First 30 minutes

You start with a problem: nobody likes you yet. Stay quiet about the spirits.

  1. Don't cast in town. Town Guard sees a necromancer ritual in Ghelmyon's market, you go to jail. (See Town Guard rep for legal-cast spell list.)

  2. Walk out of the city. Greenweald is fine. Darkhollow is better - its locations naturally accept Necromancy without rep loss.

    walk to gate
walk to darkhollow

  3. Find the crypts. Cemetery basement, abandoned tombs, the catacombs under the Old Temple ruins. Spirits + corpses.

  4. Practice on hostile undead. Skeletons + ghouls let you train Drain Life with no moral fallout.

Skills to focus first

  1. Drain Life (3 → 5) - your damage. Heals you for a fraction of the damage dealt.
  2. Channel Spirits (3 → 5) - summons a temporary minion. Buffs from rank 3 onward.
  3. Subterfuge - you'll want it. Necromancers get questioned a lot.

After Necromancy rank 5, branch into Reanimator (minion focus), Soulbinder (debuff/curse focus), or Lichlord (self-buff, late-game specialty).

Suggested merc team

Shadow Hands (one of the bigger merc companies, not Grigg's trio) - they're scouts and thieves, they don't care what you cast. Of Grigg's teams, Old Guard would fit thematically but Maelis is a fire-mage with strong opinions about dark magic.

The unaffiliated mercs (Ravik, Hale, Crag) are also fine - they're cheaper and ask no questions.

Quest or grind?

Grind, in the dark. Necromancer questlines are rare in Ghelmyon proper; Darkhollow has more, but the real questlines unlock once you find the Pale Order (a hidden faction of necromancers and mortician-adjacent NPCs).

Pre-Pale Order, grind Drain Life on undead in the crypts. Each skeleton kill is SP + a small chunk of HP back. Sustainable.

Mid-game arc

  • Find the Pale Order. Hidden faction. Rep here unlocks real necromancy training.
  • Hit Necromancy rank 5 - specialty unlock.
  • Acquire a Reanimation focus item - a bound skull or spirit shackle. Lets you maintain a minion across combats.

Known pitfalls

  • Casting necromancy in front of guards = bounty + Town Guard rep hit. Always check /here first.
  • Some NPCs refuse to talk to you once they know what you are. Stay vague about your class in social encounters until friendly.

Training & Practice

Where the work happens between adventures.

Head to the Crypt-Keeper's Duty Room (cemetery_crypt_keeper_duty, the small office attached to the Ghelmyon cemetery's mortuary). Talk to Verlow Mortmain - he runs the desk on the magistrate's warrant, signs the ledger, and decides which civic work you're ready for.

Verlow is a civil servant, not a sinister figure. His office handles the legitimate, licensed side of the trade - tending the registry, banishing unquiet spirits before they alarm the neighbours, and cataloguing the restricted shelf of theoretical volumes the city holds under seal. The work is steady and tired.

How it works:

  1. /shift start at the duty room to take a 4-hour civic shift. Verlow posts a queue scaled to your rank - a grave that needs re-warding, a wraith the night-warden filed a complaint about, a stack of unsorted memorials.
  2. Resolve tasks with the room's verbs: tend <site> for ward maintenance and registry work (credits Necromancy), banish <spirit> to put a complainer back to rest (Death Lore), catalogue <volume> to file restricted-shelf books with their proper bibliographic apparatus (Identify). Each resolution credits SP plus a small stipend from the magistrate's purse.
  3. /shift end to close early (or let the timer expire).

Tier ladder (Verlow decides which you're ready for based on rank): easy → standard → challenging → esoteric. Higher tiers pay more and open the restricted-shelf work; new clerks start with grave-tending and earn the catalogue tickets by handling the easy stack clean.

Why bother:

  • A legal venue for a class that has nowhere else legal to practice Verlow's warrant covers the work, no bounty exposure.
  • Steady SP without the moral fallout of training on the living.
  • Small stipend per resolved task (the magistrate's purse, not adventure pay).
  • Twenty clean shifts typically earn a referral letter that other cities' mortuaries honor - opens doors at sibling duty rooms elsewhere.
  • Verlow teaches up to rank 70 in Necromancy, Death Lore, and Identify.

Capstone - Soul Harvest

Unlocked at rank 30 in necromancy. Drain HP from every undead in the same location and channel it into yourself (capped at your max HP).

You reach into the empty spaces between the undead's bones. They give up what little life they had stolen.

Once per long rest. Best used on crypt runs where 4-6 undead are in the room. Turns a battlefield into a full heal for you and a body-cleared room for the rest of the party.

See also