The Road Necromancer

Stub-class article · First seen: s20 · Last seen: s20
The Road Necromancer
Road Necromancer (Session 20) · The lone necromancer · the lone human controller
The Road Necromancer — portrait.
Character
StatusAlive
First seens20
Last seens20

The Road Necromancer is the unnamed lone human who watched the session 20 road ambush from the tree line and directed five ghouls and two ogre zombies against the Laura Bennett caravan [1]. He never acted on-screen, never rolled initiative, and fled into the forest when his undead broke [3]. No description was obtained [8]. His affiliation is unknown: the DM did not tie him to Aurelia (where necromancy is banned, [5] or to the sky-flash of earlier in the session. Caelumn read the attack as targeted while Laura Bennett framed it as ordinary road robbery, and the question is left unresolved [6].

Overview

The Road Necromancer is a homebrew, unnamed antagonist who appeared only as a silhouette during the session 20 ambush on the Umbrafall road. He is a lone human puppeteer: he directs undead from cover and never engages in person. Because no one rolled to make out his features, nothing is known of his appearance, and his name, affiliation and purpose are all open questions.

“you see a lone human that stands beneath the trees watching everyone roll initiative.” — Nick (DM), [1]

The road ambush

On the party’s second travel-night guarding Laura Bennett, five ghouls burst from a roadside ditch and two ogre zombies lumbered onto the road, and behind them stood the lone human at the tree line, roughly fifty feet back and “definitely with the bad guys” [1], L1427). He never rolled into the initiative order and never took a visible action; the undead did all the fighting. When his forces broke, with four ghouls dead and the rest turned or routed, he slipped away at the exact moment the surviving ogre zombie fled.

“As you see the ogre run away, you notice that the person standing in the forest line disappears into the forest.” — Nick (DM), [3]

The undead he commanded were built on published statblocks: the Ghoul chassis, with a homebrew necrotic rider added to its bite (a bite dealt piercing plus necrotic, seven plus four in one instance and twelve plus ten on a critical, [9], L1631), and the Ogre Zombie chassis [10]. The full encounter is recorded in the combat log.

Affiliation and motive (unresolved)

Post-combat the DM confirmed the black spider-veining left by the bites was “just Necromancy magic” [4], and explained that because necromancy is banned in Aurelia, necrotechs cluster around Umbrafall, buying cheap materials from House Tallow and experimenting on the region’s plentiful corpses; “in general, they’re not much worse than bandits” [5]. That places him in a known regional trade rather than any named faction.

Motive is contested and deliberately left open. Caelumn read the strike as targeted and pressed Laura Bennett on who might be hunting her cargo [6]; Laura offered no lead and framed it as the common road robbery she had hired guards against [7]. The DM tied him neither to Aurelia nor to the sky-flash the Aurelian Binder left to chase earlier in the session.

Status as of session 20

Alive and at large, fled into the forest beyond pursuit. Unnamed, undescribed, and unaffiliated as far as anyone can tell; a candidate to reappear, especially given the forced storehouse and still-twitching severed hand the party found near Umbrafall as the session ended [11].

See also

References

  1. ^ Session 20, line 1309 — A lone human stands beneath the trees watching everyone roll initiative.
  2. ^ Session 20, line 1427 — Positioned roughly 50 feet back in the forest line, "definitely with the bad guys".
  3. ^ Session 20, line 1613 — Disappears into the forest as the surviving ogre zombie breaks away.
  4. ^ Session 20, line 1712 — The spreading black wound-veins are confirmed to be necromancy magic.
  5. ^ Session 20, line 1714 — Necromancy is banned in Aurelia; necrotechs cluster around Umbrafall for cheap materials and abundant corpses.
  6. ^ Session 20, line 1736 — Caelumn reads the ambush as a targeted attack and calls the figure a necromancer.
  7. ^ Session 20, line 1737 — Laura frames the ambush as ordinary road robbery, no lead offered.
  8. ^ Session 20, line 1751-1752 — No features made out; passive perception was not enough and no one rolled to look.
  9. ^ Session 20, line 1471 — Inline citation.
  10. ^ Session 20, line 1307 — Inline citation.
  11. ^ Session 20, line 1757 — Inline citation.
This article is a stub. You can help Nickipedia by expanding it.