Book of The Dead

Tyron was expecting a lot out of his new Class feats. As an Ascended Skeleton Artifex, he had poured the bulk of the power for his Platinum Class into the creation of more powerful undead. He’d reaped the rewards in many ways. Noctic bone, better basic skeletons, stronger constructs, the dimensional conduits, even the creation of his first lich in Master Willhem had only been truly possible thanks to moving Arcane Marrow into the crest and learning how to make soul marrow. That had been key in his development of Spirit Bone and saved him months of work.

Going in, he expected to see a range of selections that made his ability to create minions stronger, but he was extremely curious to see in what ways the Unseen saw fit to empower him. Where was he lacking?

Eagerly, he read through the list of ten options that were presented, then frowned and read through it again. This selection... was going to be difficult.

Skeletal Supremacy - Empowers all Skeleton-based Undead.

Applicable Bone - Apply the benefits of your skeleton-related feats to one other form of Undead.

Soul Eater - A new spell may be engraved on Skeletons, enabling them to cage a Soul and absorb its memories.

Multiplicative Death - Increase the rate at which Skeleton Minions share Death Magick.

Artifex Crafting - Knowledge of Bone Smithing will be granted.

Skeletal Titan - Design of a powerful construct.

Miasmic Confluence - Skeletons can absorb Miasma to empower themselves.Essence Sap - Skeletons drain vitality from those they injure or slay, converting the energy to magick.

Reanimation - Engrave Skeletal minions with a ritual that will allow them to pull themselves back together given time.

Arcane Pathways - Skeletal Weaves become more efficient when converting magick into kinetic energy.

Each of the options provided Tyron with something that he could use. Skeletal Supremacy would stack with his Skeleton Mastery feats, increasing the strength of every minion he had. Although it wasn’t flashy or impressive, it would be a small but tangible increase to his strength, likely greater than what he got from the feats he already had taken that provided similar benefits. Most likely, were he to choose this option, he would be able to take it again in another five levels, stacking the benefits even higher. For that reason alone, he was tempted to lock it in immediately. Working hard on the fundamentals was never a mistake, and his undead needed to fight against even more powerful opponents in the future.

The second selection, Applicable Bone, would allow him to spread the benefits he received from his Bone and Skeleton feats to another form of undead of his choice. An incredibly useful and versatile option that would allow Tyron some space to diversify into new types of minions. In the Realm of the Dead, he’d seen what was possible were he to devote his attention to ghosts or ghouls and, even as weak as they were, he still used ghosts for scouting and taking people by surprise. Were he to take this, he would almost definitely choose ghosts as his second form of minion. Thinking of the possibilities, it was difficult to pass this option over.

And yet, each feat he looked at would be useful in one way or another.

Soul Eater was... somewhat grisly sounding, but still intriguing. A teaching feat that would give him the knowledge of how to inscribe a new spell onto his skeletons that would enable them to... trap and consume a soul? Since revenants and wights were already in possession of a soul, this would be useless to them, but for his rank and file skeletons, it would solve a problem that had long plagued him. After all, his basic minions were still operated by relatively simple artificial minds. Although he had worked hard to improve them, and the Raise Greater Undead ritual had done a great deal to alleviate the issue, they were still... simple. His undead were better at moving and handling their weapons than they had been before, their decision-making process more nuanced, but they still relied heavily on their leaders to micromanage them and ensure they weren’t doing anything stupid.

With this feat, were he to defeat an army of Soldiers, not only could he raise the rank-and-file Soldiers as basic minions, he could then have the skeletons consume the Soldiers’ souls, gaining their knowledge and perhaps even their skills.

But then, what would happen to the souls? Destroyed? Consumed? Or would the pale remnants that weren’t eaten by the spell fade into the Realm of the Dead, there to be preyed on further? Yet, even aside from the benefits it would provide for his base skeletons, Tyron was tempted by this feat for an entirely different reason. More knowledge of the magick that affected souls was of particular interest to him. Now that he understood how potent Soul Magick could be, he had to master it. This feat could provide a window into the secrets he so desperately craved.

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Multiplicative Death was as straightforward as it was useful. With the size of his horde growing into the tens of thousands, even a tiny increase to the rate his undead generated their own magick would be of enormous benefit. Given the absurd lengths he’d gone to in order to make his base skeletons as efficient as possible, it wouldn’t take all that much to make them net magick generators. At least, when they weren’t too active.

But then... he could create constructs to gather and store that excess energy... and with it they could do any number of things.

Before his mind could run away from him, he forced himself to calm down. There was no guarantee his minions would go into positive territory with this feat, so he shouldn’t start to make plans as if they would.

The next two feats both promised to improve his crafting, the first by imparting knowledge of bone crafting, the second by giving him a design. Both were enticing to Tyron. Although the description was typically vague, the name, Artifex Crafting, told Tyron all that he needed to know. Any time a feat or ability shared a name with a Class, it was bound to be powerful, or at the very least, heavily contribute to improving whatever it was the Class was designed to focus on.

If he selected this feat, he had no idea what he would learn. Something about Bone Smithing, that much was clear, but what? How to make better armour? That would be nice, but how? Perhaps it would be improved techniques for shaping bone, perhaps it would be ways to modify the material beyond what he had already done. He could turn normal human remains into noctic bones, which were much, much harder and heavier, but that didn’t mean noctic bone was the pinnacle of what was possible.

Though there were many Bone Smiths in Granin working on improving their craft, grinding out levels and supporting each other with experimentation and research, how long would it take them to develop the kind of knowledge Tyron could gain by planting a bloody thumbprint on this page?

It was tempting.

Tyron had already designed his own skeletal giants, and he didn’t think this feat ended up named the way it was by accident. He knew enough to understand that the Unseen was responsive, even intelligent, in its own way. Selecting this feat would grant him a significantly improved design for his skeletal giants, which was interesting, and would be a powerful asset in the battles to come, but that wasn’t what primarily interested Tyron about this feat. It was what else he might learn by teasing out the details of the design that could apply in other areas.

If this construct was worth five whole levels at the platinum rank, then it would be special, of that he had no doubt. The chance he could glean secrets related to artificial minds, bone crafting, weaving, perhaps even corpse preparation wasn’t low. Then he would not only have these Skeletal Titans to fight alongside his horde, he would be able to utilise that new knowledge to improve his undead in other ways.

Knowledge was power, Tyron believed that, ironically, in his bones. The more sigils and methods he managed to tease out of the Unseen, the more he could piece together on his own. That was how many of his greatest breakthroughs had taken place.

Miasmic Confluence would enable his skeletons to draw in miasma to make themselves stronger, which suited Tyron down to the ground. He already shrouded his horde in a cloud of Death Magick miasma when they fought, which triggered several abilities and helped to blind his opponents, levelling the field for his skeletons somewhat. If they could draw in that power to fight better, then he would ensure that even more of his cauldron constructs were created, giving them a near-bottomless supply.

Skeletons being able to drain vitality from those they hurt in order to fuel themselves was an almost suspiciously vampiric ability, which predisposed him against it somewhat. Another way for him to gain more efficiency with his horde, reducing the demand on his personal supply of magick during battle. The stronger and better able to harm his foes the skeletons became, the better this feat would be. In a fight against weaker enemies, it wouldn’t matter as much, but in a long, grindy battle like what he had endured against the Golden Legion, a feat like this would be incredibly useful.

Reanimation was certainly interesting. A ritual that would enable basic skeletons to reassemble themselves? How in the realms would such a thing be possible? Tyron’s mind spun as he tried to consider the implications and he couldn’t help but attempt to conjure methods by which he might make it possible, but he ran into dead ends over and over again. There was something here that the Unseen was holding back from him, something Tyron hadn’t yet realised was even possible, and he was sorely tempted simply to learn what it might be.

Finally, Arcane Pathways, another feat that seemed simpler on the surface than it was in reality. At first, it would be easy to think that this feat would simply make his minions more efficient, using less power as they moved and fought, and that was true. Yet it would also make his minions stronger, as they would be able to hit harder when drawing on the same amount of magick as they were now capable of. Perhaps the thing Tyron had spent the most time on since he had Awakened as a Necromancer, and what occupied the most pages in his notebooks, was weaves.

Creating weaves that wasted less energy, that could handle more power, that were durable and simple to repair, that weren’t vulnerable to damage, that were timely to implement. There were a thousand different considerations and variations that went into every design, and he had refined even those patterns he had at first considered to be perfect time and time again. This was the fundamental Skill that made skeletons what they were, and getting a helping hand from the Unseen was something Tyron would gladly welcome.

Each of the feats was appealing in its own way, but there were some that he simply couldn’t pass up on. Skeleton Supremacy. Multiplicative Death. Artifex Crafting and Arcane Pathways. Although he was deeply, deeply frustrated at not being able to take some of the others, he knew he had to prioritise what would work best with his current selections and give him the best chance at growth.

There were pros and cons in every direction, but more power was never a bad thing. After deeply weighing his options, he sighed and placed his thumbprint next to Multiplicative Death. The moment he had began to think of his basic skeletons as a source of magick, rather than a drain, he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head.

Still torn over the selection, he ended the ritual.