Tale of the Necromancer is an original dark fantasy/horror story.
It tells the story of a craftsman, a potter living in an ancient land. Making funeral urns makes him reflect on the nature of life and death, and then follow the path of black magic.
The text version of the story can be found here
and audio version can be found here on Youtube.
Tale of the Necromancer contains examples of the following tropes:
- A World Half Full: This is how the protagonist perceives the world at the beginning of the story. Yes, there is love and pleasure in it, but what good is it if final death ends everything?
- Bad Powers, Good People: The protagonist aspires to be such a person, at least at the beginning.
- Creepy Mortician: Part of the protagonist's initial profession was making funeral urns.
- Devil, but No God: One of the reasons why the protagonist decided to turn to dark powers was the lack of any evidence of the existence of the gods worshiped by his people.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Potter/Necromancer cares deeply about his family and wants to share his immortality with them.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: The protagonist finds this out when the use of dark power ultimately leads to him losing everything he loved..
- From Nobody to Nightmare: protagonist starts as humble craftsman, but at the end of the story he is powerful necromancer able to create army of undead.
- Immortality Seeker: This is main motivation of the Necromancer.
- Irony: The Necromancer notices her at the end of the story. His people were afraid of the legendary undead wraiths, so the bodies of the dead were cremated. This led the potter to produce funeral urns, which led him to contemplate death and become a necromancer, the creator of true undead.:
- Jerkass Has a Point: The local buther is not a pleasant person. However, he is somewhat right in warning his compatriots about the protagonist.
- Human Sacrifice: The Necromancers powers are powered by life energy. Initially, he plans to obtain it only from animals. Initially.
- Life Drinker: The Necromancer learns how to drain life energy from other beings. He can also transfer the absorbed energy to other people, healing them from diseases.
- Magic Is Evil: Probably the case. Only functional magic we see are the Necromancer's dark powers. However, people from whom he gained first scraps of the magical knowledge, like local priest and witch-doctor, were not necessarily bad people.
- Mercy Kill: How the Necromancer sees draining energy from the people dying of the plague.
- Mystery Cult: Potter starts it when he gains magical powers and occult lore and becames popular among the peasants, who are not aware of true nature of his abilities.
- No Name Given: Every character is called according to its profession or relationship with the protagonist.
- Our Zombies Are Different: From what we can see, they are completely obedient to the necromancer and created by him.
