M.J. Markgraf

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 91

Anna was a bit lost about what to do. While her life before hadn’t been easy, she at least felt like there was a direction to go in. Now she wasn’t sure anymore. She could clearly recall that day Norman left her.

***

She watched with tears in her eyes as Norman vanished into the deadly fog. She couldn’t quite believe he had abandoned her. Eventually, they left Grothlosburg when Toby learned about a teleporter that connected to New York. Her brother was adamant that they go d...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 90

For the most part, Norman avoided Anna. What did he have to say to her? Honestly, he hadn’t thought about her hardly at all in the year before the Brotherhood attacked, and now she was here. He didn’t need the distraction or the headache at a time like now when he had more important things to focus on. And she was a distraction since he was alive again.

Norman had been forced to once again restore himself to life. He had a lot of work ahead of him and didn’t need the adde...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 89

Norman woke up in a field, surrounded by the forces he had left outside the wall. A man was waiting nearby and handed him some clothes. “Thanks,” Norman muttered as he got dressed.

Dying again sucked, but at least the anti-mind control device he had had Grobert build for him worked. Although maybe next time he would tell the man to use a less destructive explosive circle in the design.

When Norman failed to come up with his own solution to defending against mind magic, he had ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 88

The walls of Ashvale slowly appeared in the distance making Norman smile. He was returning at the head of a victorious army like some sort of conquering general. Which was not something he had ever expected to do.

The town looked much the same as it did when they left. This didn’t surprise him, it had been only about a month. They had also only left about three dozen non-combatants behind. The rest had joined the army for their bit of revenge.

Not everyone that came along surviv...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 87

Norman was pretty sure karma had it out for him.

The transition progress was moving along rather quickly and everything was going smoothly until the people that had fled the city started filtering back in. Once the returning people heard what was going on they all wanted their voices heard. That caused everything to ground to a halt as arguments flared between those that stayed and those that fled the city. The ones that stayed thought they should have more say, but the ones that fled o...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 86

Despite what Norman had said, he was sad to see Pedro go. Norman was sure the man could have been another pillar of Ashvale like Grobert and Eugene if it wasn’t for the man’s disruptive form of magic. But Norman couldn’t dwell on losing a possible friend, he had more pressing matters to worry about.

“How many of our people disobeyed the rules I set in place?” Norman was upset.

Eugene had come to him, letting him know some of the greykin, that had accompanied him on this ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 85

It took another hour or so for Norman’s forces to secure the entire city. He was surprised they had managed it so easily. Surprised but happy. He had expected it to take much longer for his forces to eliminate the rest of the Brotherhood forces.

A few of the enemy forces had tried storming the temple, but Rex drove them away or killed them outright. Norman had deployed the large dino in a hallway with small entryways on either end. While the hallway was large enough for him to move ar...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 84

Noorani jerked out of her seat as a group of knights entered the sanctum. All but one of the knights faced the closed doors with weapons drawn.

“Why are you here? What is going on?”

The knight bowed, “Please forgive our intrusion, Priestess, we must get you to safety, the enemy has broken through our walls.”

Noorani looked at the man with incredulity. “How is that possible? Where is General Atalon?”

“We do not know, they just appeared as soon as the Gener...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 83

After the Brotherhood forces took care of the nomads, the attacks in their territory came to an end. Whether or not the nomads were the culprit, it seemed Noorani’s message had been received loud and clear.

Within a few weeks, the city of Apolonia started to return to normal. Some of her priests had left of their own accord to return to their cities. The rest she was still debating with, trying to get them to go back to their assigned tasks. With so many opposition priests within the ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 82

Noorani tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair in irritation. When she had originally taken over after the High Priest choked to death on a stupid grape, she had thought to change the Brotherhood into her idealized version of what it should be. Instead of an organization run by base criminal elements.

She could have even resurrected the idiotic man if he hadn’t had that defensive magic on him from Apolon. But the idiot sealed his own fate and his body was reduced to ash when she t...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 81

When Eugene set off from Ashvale, he took forty of the death knights with him, although, he didn’t take them all with him into the wasteland to attack the Brotherhood.

He decided to assign half of them to guard the border. With Ashvale being so vulnerable he didn’t want to risk a patrol of Brotherhood forces possibly slipping through.

Having the extra guards also allowed Eugene to send the three guards – that had been down here for nearly a month – home for a bit of rest. ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 80

Grobert’s premonition that the next few weeks were going to be exhausting, turned out to be a gross understatement.

Norman was lucky if he managed to get four hours of sleep a night between helping clear rubble and reviving more of the townsfolk. All of the work ran on the gron idea of hard work, dialed up to eleven because the dead didn’t need rest.

It wasn’t all bad though.

Grobert managed to locate Eugene’s phylactery after speaking with some of the revived guards...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 79

After reviving nearly ninety people, the process came to a bit of a halt. There were a few reasons for this. The first was that Norman had run out of magical powder. You might think just make more. Well no shit, sherlock. The problem with that was there was only a finite amount of blood in a body, especially Norman’s skinny body, and it took time to recover after drawing half a liter.

A few other magically inclined people had donated additional blood for the cause. That’s where the ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 78

Norman felt exposed without his clothing, but there was no way in hell he was putting those filthy things back on. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to retrieve anything from inside the clothes but Grobert convinced him otherwise.

Norman used the strings from two of his necklaces to form a crude loincloth out of the wide-leafed plants in the area. It wasn’t much but it at least got Grobert to stop complaining about having to see his ‘dangly bits’ flopping about in the wind.

It...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 77

Norman spent another full day in the cell without so much as an ounce of water or a scrap of food. It was clear these boxes were meant more as a way to torture someone until they died, rather than punishing them for a day. If it wasn’t for Pedro’s kind help, and the fact that the knights hadn’t taken Norman’s canteen or food, he probably would have died due to dehydration by now.

It was shortly after nightfall when Norman got his first visit since being confined.

As he sle...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 76

After leaving the hostel, Norman quietly tucked the smoked meats from his bag into his clothing. The threadbare attire had many pockets and other storage spots underneath the folds of fabric. Norman probably would have done this sooner but he didn’t want to walk around smelling like meat.

He also felt bad about stealing the clothing and would need to find a way to repay the people he stole it from at some point. Seeing how hard the people worked around this zone, losing a set of cloth...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 75

Norman returned to Ashvale with only one large dino, two twenty-footers, and ten of the smaller ostrich-sized dinos. Not ideal, but it was better than nothing.

It did mean he would have to rethink his plan to unleash feral dinosaurs on the unsuspecting town of the Brotherhood though. It was too bad too, Norman was looking forward to surprising them with that one. He would have to devise an alternative plan and keep the dinos in his back pocket for another day.

They were a good rep...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 74

It took a few days but Norman did eventually come up with a plan for moving forward.

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to resurrect his people until either Eugene or Grobert returned to the city to help him move the slab of stone that hid the spell anchor, but not knowing when they would be revived, Norman knew he needed help.

The only person that might be willing to help him in this situation was the gron president. Even if the man wasn’t willing to help directly, Norman could...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 73

In a small copse of trees, a hand burst forth from beneath the ground. Soon another hand followed. The hands flailed around ineffectually for a bit before a head pushed its way out of the ground. A mouthful of dirt was spat out by the grey-skinned thing crawling from beneath the earth. Its eyes blinked a few times to clear away more dirt as it looked around.

“Fuck!” Norman stated, spitting out a bit more dirt from his mouth. “I shouldn’t have buried that damn orb so deep.”

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 72

Atalon of Razaria checked his pocket watch for the time. The beautifully crafted watch had been a gift from a very dear friend. The hands ticked over and he sighed.

“It’s time. The enemy city should be under siege by now. Gather the men.”

Atalon watched as a hundred knights of the Brotherhood gathered in this remote forest. They were taking no more chances with this wily enemy. It had cost them too many of their decorated knights already and the High Preist had ordered him t...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 71

Norman had finally managed to figure out how to power his AOE spells after nine days of exhaustive experimenting. Thankfully the plans Eugene and Grobert had implemented seemed to be working as there were no attacks by the Brotherhood in that time period.

It also gave the stone masons time to lay down the magical arrays – yes there were more than one – along the border of the town. Some spots weren’t covered as the array needed to be circular to function correctly but for the most...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 70

Grobert worried about Norman’s mental state. The kid was doing rather well dealing with being in charge and overcoming obstacles. It was a good way to learn who you were and what you were capable of. That being said this war with the Brotherhood was a bit much, especially for someone not used to being in charge or having so many lives riding on your decisions.

He was mainly worried about how Norman would deal with all the deaths. Norman was coping so far, but Ashvale had been lucky, o...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 69

The bastards that they were, the Brotherhood did not give Norman the time he needed to come up with a solution to powering the spell before they next attacked. He wasn’t even sure how they were traversing the distance between their city and Ashvale so quickly. It certainly wasn’t with just the snake horses.

This time the enemy brought their own classers to the fight. After they repeatedly bombed the front gate, the enemy forces pushed their way into the city in a bloody melee.

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 68

I'm back! And with that comes a few changes some of you eagle-eyed patrons may have already noticed.

That's right! A new tier and an update to the $5 tier. Those on the $5 tier now get access to 15 advanced chapters as of today.

Anyway, enjoy the new chapter!

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Grobert, Eugene, and Norman sat at one end of the long table while the chef brought out food. Yeah, an actual chef. It was another change ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 67

Norman stared at the recently revived greykin from his throne. God, he hated it, his throne, not the greykin. The greykin were all kneeling, hands over hearts in four ordered lines within the throne room. Ok, so maybe he hated the kneeling part.

The long table that normally took up a good portion of the room had to be removed for the occasion, but Grobert easily accomplished that.

It had taken two weeks to gather and revive an additional two hundred people for the village. Norman ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 66

Norman spent the next few hours along with six guards, digging through the ash and rubble remains of the ooraki village. They recovered the remains of over half the ooraki males Norman had turned into greykin but no sign of the last surviving female, the Priestess.

All of the bones of the dead went into his storage for use on other projects. There was no point in being sentimental about some bones. With all of the bodies burned to char, Norman couldn’t use Glimpse from Beyond on them....

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 65

After a week of no reprisal attacks, Norman thought they might have been in the clear. He was proven wrong on the ninth day.

Alerted to the attack by the bell – someone in town had erected – Norman jolted out of bed. His sleep-addled mind took a moment to figure out what was going on. It was still dark out but Norman could see the early rays of the sun peaking over the horizon as he hurried to get dressed.

There was a distant boom that shook the castle and almost knocked Norma...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 64

Grobert laid out his reasoning for Norman to declare himself the leader of the village. It was the same tired argument Norman had heard time and time again from him.

“I told you before, I don’t want that responsibility. And who in their right mind would want me leading them?”

Grobert slapped a stack of papers on the table and slid them over to Norman. “These people.”

Norman flipped through the sheets, seeing the names of many greykin he recognized.

It had to ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 63

There were two main goals Norman was striving for with this newest line of research. He needed offensive and defensive magic.

Technically he had both already covered. His offense was covered with his Orb of Decay, Corpse Explosion, and Conversion Bolt spells. But the orbs were only effective as far as he could throw them unless he imbued a feral zombie with the energy, but they weren’t exactly fast or smart. Conversion Bolt required a spell circle, making it not an ideal spell to use ...

Norman the Necromancer Chapter 62

The group exited the home and paused. About a dozen young men were waiting outside with angry expressions on their faces. What surprised Norman was the fact that they weren’t wearing any headwraps, which couldn’t be good in this sweltering sun. Then Norman spotted sun-shaped patches or even crudely hand-drawn logos on their clothes. They clearly matched the ones from the attacker's clothing.

Noorani took a step forward and was about to say something before Norman clasped her on the ...