I Can Summon the Dead
In the latter days of the Fifth Age, when the great concord of wizard-towers was broken and the laws of high sorcery torn, the planes themselves groaned beneath the recoil of their own power.
The Source, that ancient well-spring of ordered magic, ran dry. The rules whereby reality had been woven were violated. The star-bridges snapped, the void-rifts yawned wider, and many of the mightiest works of mortal and immortal hands were swallowed into darkness.
The Spire of Ilmarin, tallest of the wizarding towers, stood silent, its crystal engines stilled forever. The War-Fortress of Andúral fell through a wound in the world and was seen no more. The wizard-plane, once a garden of ordered flame and living rune, withered under the long winter of its own making.
In those diminished days, in a remote and wind-scoured corner of that dying realm, there came
Máric, who awoke in the body of a stranger, in a mean hovel upon the edge of Greyleaf, a small town clinging to the hem of a greater fief. With him awoke a gift from beyond the veils:
By the measure of his relevance in this world, it promised, he might call forth the dead, not as shades or rotting husks, but as Death Warriors, steadfast and loyal.
At the first degree of fame he could summon two each day; their strength of body would mirror his own, and each would bear one gift of craft and one deed of war, granted by chance.
Two were granted to him alone:
{Consciousness Transfer} that he might divide his thought and ride within their flesh, seeing through their eyes, speaking with their tongues, wielding their hands as though they were his own.
{Undying Soul} that though his mortal frame should wither and fall to dust, yet while one of his summoned host drew breath, his spirit would not be extinguished from the world.
Thus began the long road.
He would raise high walls of bone and iron, store granaries against the long winter of the world, bide his time until the hour was full.
And when at last the horns of his making sounded through the starry deeps, the planes would remember why the elder wizards had feared the dead more than fire or storm.
For the dead do not tire.
The dead do not forget.
And the dead, once called, answer only to their lord.
