Promien The Rotting
27 • Male • Human“Evil? Necromancy is no more evil than ordinary magic is. It is pure survival, and my use of it is no more or less despicable than the mage who causes the warrior’s veins to boil, or the king’s bones to fall to dust.”
— Promien The Rotting
Personality
Promien could be best described as… unpleasantly opportunistic. Being a proponent of survival of the fittest first and foremost, he is not above using ordinary magic and necromancy alike to further his own goals or save his own hide, though he will not betray allies should they prove themselves worth working with. Unfortunately, as the Rotting himself has said, true allies are damn near impossible to come by for a necromancer. Even among their own kind, their own cadre if you will, tensions run high. As if there weren't enough overly nihilistic bastards looking to enslave the world already, living and dead alike, they’ll always be the one who schemes for the sheer intellectual thrill of it. Pitting brothers and sisters-in-arms against each other in the name of an ultimately selfish and manipulative game. It is these same individuals that Promien-unsurprisingly-despises the most, even if he sometimes engages in the very same tactics they do on occasion. For they do nothing but sit back and watch as their plans gradually unfold, usually toward nothing but an utterly anarchic end.
Speaking of ends however, Promien does not lack any of his own, the most pressing and desirable of which is to eventually transcend his lowly flesh to be reborn in the cleansing desiccation of lichdom. The ultimate mockery of life, and one that only two other necromancers before him actually managed to achieve, though even they did not get far before heroes stormed through their lifeless hordes and cut them down. As such, he is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed where those who went before him failed, if only to prove that he-out of everyone-actually could.
What he intends on doing after this, however, is anyone’s guess.
Finally, Promien has quite the strong view on the dark arts in which he is immersed, scoffing at and ridiculing the idea that necromancy is an inherently evil or repugnant practice. To this end he has cited the many misuses of regular or white magic, most of which don't usually seem to come with a very high cost to the wielder, and asked why such abuses are not taken into account as well. Necromancy demands the permanent expenditure of one’s own mana, which is thought to be manipulated fragments or threads of one’s very own soul, after all. Which is far more dangerous than other magics comparatively speaking, for these used up fragments can never be regained and convey a lasting weakness to the practitioner, while most other wizards are seemingly able to ply their respective crafts with impunity. A caveat Promien claims can be quite easily abused. Therefore-or so he claims anyway-his opposition taking the stance they do is either the height of willful ignorance at best, or the bare bottom of hypocritical injustice at worst.
Appearance
As his epithet would imply, Promien casts quite the unusual figure for a man supposedly in the prime of his life. Despite being naught more than a scant twenty-seven years of age, his features appear yellowed, gaunt, and scarred; his eyes are nothing more than miniscule flecks of gleaming silver gathered at the bottom of two darkened pools that remain ever watchful... ever alert. The rest of Promein’s also body does little to dispel the idea that he’s slowly decomposing from the inside out, for he appears thin as a twig, and weak as one too, walking from place to place in an unbalanced hunch and using his gnarled wooden staff for support. Regardless of these traits, however, Promien is in possession of an almost inhuman level of physical and mental strength. He is more than capable of holding his own in a hand-to-hand fight if need be, not to mention capable of shrugging off most forms of physical and mental torment. Whether this is because of some-as of yet-unknown trauma in his past, his journey of discovery regarding the necromantic arts, or merely pure unadulterated will, is not known.
When it comes to dress, Promien keeps his wardrobe simple. Although he has plumbed the graves of rich and poor alike in pursuit of life defying power, and created quite the nice horde for himself as a result, Promien does not dress in overly showy or ancient attire. He does not, as a matter of fact, even bother to dress in the traditional dark, hooded, and tattered garb one would expect an individual like him to wear, feeling that such things would only make his life even harder due to the sheer amount of unwanted attention such articles tend to attract. Rather, he wears clothes similar in nature to those donned by pilgrims, vagabonds, or monks, since such attire generally lets him access the cemeteries and mausoleums of the hamlets, towns, and cities he visits with relative ease.
School of Magic
Necromancy. An art perceived to be evil by many and reviled by most.
Inventory
The garb of what appears to be a pilgrim, drifter, or vagabond, and a gnarled old staff that seems to bear no magical properties whatsoever, at least to the untrained eye. Other than these items, Promien also carries a small leather pouch containing a pittance of coins, all the money one would expect a traveling pilgrim or vagabond to have.
Quests
World domination, while tempting, was never really Promien's style. Though perhaps it may become such should he successfully complete his personal quest to attain lichdom and eternal unlife.
History
Promien’s story is one of misfortune and hardship. Being born to parents unknown, he was left to fend for himself at a very young age, the only companions he had were the rats that ran along the sludge-filled gutters and down deserted streets. It wasn’t until his teenage years that he began experimenting with magic in general, with necromancy being the one school in particular that he took the most interest in. How exactly he managed to learn most of what he now knows without the aid of a mentor or professional schooling remains a mystery, however. Suffice it to say, Promien became highly skilled in this most twisted usage of his own mana, eventually changing his own appearance so much that he was given the moniker “Promien The Rotting” by those practitioners who knew of him. This was not enough for the young dread lord however, and he soon began to study ways in which he could cheat his own death, a feat only achieved by two of the most ancient dark lords. Thus was the long path to lichdom revealed, and it is one he has followed ever since. In this pursuit he began looking for several objects that could become potential phylacteries, and thus did his adventures across the lands truly begin.
Other
Necromancy, as stated above, requires the expenditure of one's own mana or soul essence in order for rituals to be considered successful or even function properly. This is permanent unfortunately, and weakens the practitioner in the process. On the bright side, servants made and corpses raised via this process are notoriously hard to put down, with some of the safest ways either being to undo the spellwork holding the dead body together on the mortal plane or simply destroying it to the point where it cannot reconstitute itself. Grinding the undead servant into dust, burning it to ash, or hacking off its limbs and separating them from each other are just a few of the most frequently used methods in regards to the latter option, with the choice to do each making it increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, for the undead in question to reform depending on the circumstances. Holy magics and weapons, however, are the one hard counter to any undead form. While stronger undead typically require stronger blessings and artifacts to destroy or drive out, weaker undead such as the ones Promien might raise to aid him in combat are easily eradicated with naught more than a simple battle prayer.
