Re: The Necromancer Fleet

More ideas for Necromancer Fleets, Black Fleets, and just plain
Big Menaces.


Black Fleet factions.

Anti-life factions.  These include undead who have a great hatred
for some specific nation, race, creed, or individuals.  The Death
Knight Soth may want everything on Krynn to suffer, or just all
beautiful elven maids, or something in between.  He wouldn't be
very enthusiastic about attacking say, the City of Greyhawk,
Shadowdale, or Bral.

(This assumes that most forms of undead can pass through the spherewall
into the Flow without adverse affect, your campaign may vary.  But
unless at least some undead can make use of the Flow they can't become
a Big Menace.)

When an anti-life faction plans its first major targets, there is
likely to be a great deal of contention over precisely what targets
will be hit first.

Empire Builders.  At the other end of the scale are living empires
which make use of undead as just another tool of military and economic
power.  Undead would make great sewer workers, or miners.  Imagine
a legion where the legion's 'doctors' sometimes return the new undead
to their units.  If the units are heavily armored, to the point that
their base movement matches that of Zombies, they could be integrated
well.

People might joke that the only way to tell the difference between the
living and the dead legionnaires is that the dead ones smell better,
(because of the Embalm spell).  The sooner after death a zombie is
animated, the more of its skills will be retained, and if it is set
to the same tasks in death that it performed in life it should be
pretty good at it.

It may sound like a good idea to the mortals in this empire at
first, after all, it will be the dead who will bear the brunt of all
the fighting.  However, as time goes by, the immortal undead will
gain more and more power, and a larger proportion of the population
will be undead, tilting the political power balance further.
Where once the undead served the living empire and emperor, soon
the living will serve an undead empire with an undead emperor.

Somewhere in between will be those undead factions which are ruled by
their appetites.  Vampire lords hunger for blood, and Greater Mummies
seek abundant servants to serve them as they were served in life.
These factions seek to control mortals in order to satisfy their
appetities, and they are often very leery of creating competition
of any kind.


Those undead factions which don't depend on the living to sustain
themselves can go into hiding for long periods of time.  They may
slowly accumulate ships, expanding their power slowly while
concealing their existence.

A faction led by a powerful spellcaster will often have powerful
intelligence gathering tools that are used to identify easy
targets.  Those targets are attacked by overwhelming forces,
with the best helms and fastest ships in order to ensure that
word of the Black Fleet's activities isn't reported to anyone.


So, a couple of ships a year would disappear entirely, no explanation,
no wreckage, no sighting of any crew or items from the ships.  After
a couple hundred years, the faction would burst out of its hiding
places and start attacking larger targets.  For a long period of
time, the Black Fleet's expansion would be limited by the number
or ships and other targets that they can take out secretly without
arousing particular alarm.  Only later will it be limited by what
sized foe they can overwhelm.

Undead forces can take huge losses _provided_ that they hold the
field afterwards.  If they can't hold the field, all the bodies
that they want to recruit will be safely buried in consecrated
ground, with spells laid over them to prevent their rising again.

If the Black Fleet is sufficiently unified in command, they can
do some nasty strategic things.  They could do low level raids
in some spheres, but conspicuously avoid others.  At the same
time, they would build up huge armies of corporeal undead in those
spheres on lifeless rocks.  Then they radically increase their
activities in some nearby sphere.  By the time refugees from
their attacks reach the surrounding spheres, and relief fleets
have been launched, the Black Fleet is already preparing to
head for a sphere hopefully denuded of powerful paladins and
cleric.

They then descend upon that sphere in tremendous force, preferably
by a Flow River which will take them out of the path of the
relief fleets heading to the sphere(s) that the Black Fleet
first attacked in force.  The goal would be to attack while the
relief fleets are in transit in the Flow, and therefore impossible
to contact magicly.  Any "Big Menace" can use a variant on that
tactic, attack one sphere with a highly mobile force, operate
in a highly aggressive fashion until relief fleets are in the Flow
on their way, then leave the system and make for a system where
they have prepositioned troops.

Black Fleets have an advantage in that they can preposition troops
on lifeless worldlets with polluted atmospheres.  Also, they have
far fewer logistics worries about feeding their prepositioned troops
and therefore aren't bound by a logistics determined timetable.

If the sphere has a limited number of permanent portals, the Black
Fleet posts powerful guards on them to enable them time to digest
the sphere.  With all the sphere's dead to draw upon, they can
put very potent guard forces on the portal.  The Black Fleet would
then be able to sally forth from a secure base to ravage other
worlds.  Given the 'lifespan' or awareness-span of most undead lords,
it is quite likely that they will know of some sphere which would
suit their needs, lots of life, few portals to defend, not terribly
powerful locals.

It is important to remember that if the Black Fleet kills all the
people in the sphere they will never get any more undead either.
Undead don't reproduce.  If they keep people as cattle or slaves,
then they will have a continuous supply of dead bodies to animate.




Relevant Magic Items:
The Horn of Final Peace:  When blown, all the dead within sound of
the horn are prevented from rising again, by any means short of
divine intervention or full wishes.

Aidan's Promise (magic sword):  Every soul which dies on a battlefield
on which Aidan's Promise is wielded gets the choice to go to the
Outer Plane associated with the wielder, and their body to be protected/
owned by the ruler of that Outer Plane.  It is possible to reject that
choice and attempt to go to the afterlife destination they would 
ordinarily go to, but there is some hazard to their soul that way,
and it will be considerably easier for their lifeforce to become
unstuck, undead, or just plain warped.

So, if a necromancer who sold his soul for great powers to an malign
entity dies on the battlefield where a Paladin of Odin is wielding
Aidan's Promise, that necromancer's spirit would get the option to 
have his soul and body protected by Odin.

Likewise, if the Death Knight Soth wielded Aidan's Promise, the
souls who perish on a battlefield would have a choice between
going to the Abyss or being far easier to raise as ghosts, wraiths
or other forms of undead.

Vicious, no?

Fountain of Light:  Instead of a gate to the Fire Elemental plane, this
star is a permanent gate to the Positive Material plane.  Anything
undead that comes within 1000' of it burns up.  Any magic item which
draws upon the Negative Material Plane will be destroyed.  Any
Necromancer with a Dark Gift will also be adversely affected by it.
The Fountain is at the heart of a small water world, or transparent
crystal world.  This worldlet is an excellent place to store magic
items, artifacts, and books that the powers that be want to keep out
of the hands of the Black Fleet.

This place could be the object of a spiritual quest in order to fight
the Black Fleet.  The Fountain could have been hidden by great forces
who erased written record of its location.  It could be guarded by
a powerful dragon or a humble hermit.  The waters surrounding the
Fountain may act as holy water, provided the PCs do certain tasks,
like rebuilding the shrines, getting pilgrims to visit.  That would
be a great weapon to have versus the undead legions, provided that
the PCs follow the strictures which permit them access to the
Fountain.

Michael Sandy