Runelords 41.1 - Going Even Further

Luna drummed her fingers while flipping through books; this was a painfully interesting library, filled with ancient texts of all sorts, but she was stuck researching a single spell. She sighed; this was stupid. Her mind wandered about lazily, not particularly well-focused on her task, and it eventually wandered to the thought of the outcome. When they completed this ritual, they would be at the Runeforge, the Forge Between the Planes, where she was told she could find the ‘undying bones’, the essence of necromancy. With it, she could restore Aldern’s looks. The more she thought about it though, the more she was faced with a question.
Eventually, she couldn’t keep it to herself. Turning around, she pulled up Zara, now twice as thick as before, merged with the section that had once been carried by Nisa Redfern; her cover, and true power, was still at large. Zara, she directed her thoughts towards the book with which she had a telepathic connection, ...could I bring an undead back to life?
The book’s reply held a note of derision, Why ever would you *want* to?
Because Aldern...Aldern isn’t really cut out for the whole thing, really. He’s not happy. He’s never going to be happy. And I was thinking...if I can restore his body with a ritual and this essence...well, what’s stopping me from going the whole way?
Zara’s voice became intrigued, ...Go on…
The way I see it, she explained, flipping through Zara’s pages to stop at rituals and spells as she mentioned them, highlighting her points, people can’t be brought back from the dead. That’s common knowledge. But why not? She tapped on a page, Revivify brings people back from the dead, if you cast it soon enough. But it has to be quick, because otherwise the soul degrades and is lost; you can’t bring back someone after that. Once the soul is gone, it’s gone. She flipped to a page illustrating a ghast, But Aldern is an intelligent ghast; he died, and in the process his soul was bound to his corpse, which allowed him to retain his mind. His soul isn’t lost, it’s right where it needs to be: in his body. Something like Revivify *could* work, if it was modified and overpowered, and made negatively aligned like the other spells we’ve made. She continued flipping pages, But that’s the next complication: his body. Even if you could get a modified Revivify to work, his body is decomposed. The spell heals injury, but it won’t cure disease, poison, age, anything like that. If the body itself can’t sustain life, the person will just immediately die again. His body would have to be restored fully; a rotten corpse can’t function. Further, we’re fairly certain he died from illness, probably the ghoul fever that caused the problem in the first place. She was getting excited by her line of reasoning, Now normally, you can’t stop an undead from rotting, and certainly can’t reverse the process. But that’s what we were planning on doing, were we not? With the undying bones, we can restore his body to the moment of death. Precisely the time when Revivify would work. The damage caused by the disease that killed him should be healed, as part of the restoration process. Even if the source of the illness lingers, there will be time to cure it; it’s not fast. We can make the spell leave him in near perfect shape other than, of course, the fact that he’s still dead. But with a body preserved at the second of death, healed from the damage the disease caused, with the soul present...I ask again: what’s to stop me from just going the whole way? What’s to stop me from bringing Aldern back to life?
Zara was silent for a moment, before she began to laugh: a low, melodic sound of deep pleasure. Now *that*, my dear, would be a feat worthy of the *highest* order. There would certainly be no one who would question your standing as a necromancer should you perform *that* task! Her voice oozed satisfaction, To wrest a being back not from the brink of oblivion, but from the deep embrace of undeath: that is truly mastery over life and death. Yes, my dear student: with the power of the necromantic essence of the forge, let’s see what can be created. Luna smiled with a tinge of smugness, and began to take notes.
Category:Rise of the Runelords