Matthew Miller Stories

The previous year, Aelen Virnelis had stood before the Heir of Wylfir and argued passionately for his practice — that if Qilfir ever sought to break its dependency on the Arcanum, a great onus lay on the kingdom’s people — on its wizards, arcanists, and governors in particular; that there could be no barriers to knowledge, that all magics must be known. Including his own forbidden Art: Necromancy.

The Heir’s face was distant. His eyes followed Aelen’s movements, but he only vaguely seemed to listen to his prose. Aelen had worried then, not only that he might lose his practice, but that the Heir’s mind was made up. Aelen feared that he may be executed for knowing too much of the Art or the Powers that grant the curse of undeath.

But when Aelen finished speaking, the Heir seemed moved. He raised a brow and spoke plainly. “Very well. I believe we have a workspace and some specimens that would suit your needs. To lay ground rules, though, you’ll report directly to me on a quarterly basis. There will be no record of your activities.”

There were other rules, too, Aelen learned, but they were the sort he had expected. Ask no questions of the drow that enter through the Undergate, nor the high elves headed below. Keep test subjects out of the public’s eye, and ensure that anyone who does come across them doesn’t have the luxury of sharing that information. So on and so forth…

Aelen shook his head. Why worry about those memories now? For all intents and purposes he’d signed his life away. Universities would buy his work, but he could never dream of pursuing professorship. He wasn’t just tainted by his studies, he was owned by them. And he was owned by the Heir.

He tried to focus on the body stretched out in front of him. It was desiccated — nearly mummified. Its skin was like a thin leather stretched over bone and sucked inwards by the voids left by long-gone organs.

Aelen put down his tools and sighed. Three already raised specimens lined against the far wall watched him dispassionately.

“What are you looking at?” Aelen sneered.

They did not answer. They never did. He wondered whether they seemed confused at his question or whether it was a characteristic he ascribed to them.

“Blast. Why bother?”

The lab had few comforts. The only furniture within it was a set of corpse tables and a drawer with surgical tools and essentials. There was, however, the Well. Not a well, but a stairwell. Flooded. Coopted into the Waterways many centuries ago. It was a useful water source for some experiments, but Aelen favored it for the view.

He approached it now. The brick decorum of the entryway carried through the Well’s walls deep into the water as everything faded to midnight black. Aelen had stared death in the face on many occasions, but his creations seemed so hollow in some way when compared to the black waters before him. There was something beautiful about its utter emptiness. The dead he raised still had souls, but they were trapped, screaming silently at all times. This, though… It was lifeless. It had no soul. No dreams to call its own. No secrets. No feeling of love or hate or bitter resentment. In the absence of everything…

A thought occurred to Aelen. No, he thought. That would be ridiculous. He had no need to drink from the Well. He could conjure water. This wasn’t even filtered. It could be filthy. And there were rumors going around the city…

But it still looked clear. Clean. And beautifully empty. Full of emptiness.

Just one sip. Aelen cupped his hands and drank. The water was sweet. It filled him.

He blinked. As he thought of it, he had no idea what had compelled him to drink. It didn’t seem like himself to act on whimsy. Yet he had. And he felt as though he was rewarded with a tender moment.

Aelen felt a new desire. His thirst was quenched, but all good drinks should be paired with a meal, after all. His eyes wandered back to his work table. He felt… Hunger.

Ghouls

These models are from the Nozlur’s Marvellous Unpainted Miniatures: Ghouls pack. I like the fact that they have large sections of exposed skin because they let me work on my shading and layering for their rotting flesh. They were also pretty easy to prep, relative to a lot of other miniatures in the same line.

Where zombies are feeble manifestations of a necromancer’s will, ghouls are demonic, hungering creatures. They are born of the corruption of souls.

I’ve recently started writing handouts that I give to my players between sessions, usually detailing the activities of villains or character’s they’re negotiating with. This piece is actually a bit of foreshadowing; the players have entered the city of Wylfir in an attempt to hunt down a “demon fish” that is somehow infecting the city’s water supply and corrupting the populace. This is ultimately what’s responsible for the change that Aelen is experiencing.

By informing the players of Aelen’s pursuit of the Dark Arts beneath the city and the connection between the Catacombs and the Waterways, I hope to provide them with some options for how they might enter the Waterways to confront the “demon fish,” and inform them of the types of obstacles they might encounter while exploring below Wylfir.

There’s also a growing theme of Void in my campaign — nonexistence and the deletion of souls so that they cannot be “trapped” in the outer planes — and the ways in which it is similar to but distinct from death. This story marks one of many events that are building up to the reveal of the campaign’s existential antagonist.