Tegan, the Drinking Necromancer
In a corner of the tavern, a group of wizards had established themselves and oblivious or more likely feeling smugly superior to the other patrons, they were holding court, expounding on the nature of existence, debating on the most useful school of magic, sharing the most recent arcane gossip and mostly arguing about who had the biggest staff...standard wizard stuff really. Tegan sat among them, having somehow acquired a looming leather chair, colored a deep shade of black, that was somehow made all the more ominous by the white staff of polished bone that she had leaned against it.
Tegan's ownership of the chair and in fact her place among the other wizards, had been a point of great contention, at least until the first drinks arrived, at which point everyone decided it would be easier if they just pretended the necromancer practiced a less taboo form of magic.
Unlike her arcane brethren she was not draped in a robe of questionable embroidery or worse the classic sign of an academic, a muted robe of grey, black, or brown. No, that would not do, not for Tegan, not when she was the last hope for finally bringing necromancy into the light and out from the dark, death-filled crypts were it traditionally resided. Instead, she wore a long flowing dress, resplendent in color, dancing hues of red and black, the work of a master dressmaker, it was a great indulgence, but for Tegan it was an important one, her last chance to enjoy both color and fashion before she ventured once more into the wilds on what promised to be yet another wonderfully heroic quest.
She had been lost in her thoughts, idly wondering and mostly hoping that the her current situation had little or preferably nothing to do with her recent temporary resurrection of the long dead Queen Joanna, she'd had an important bet to settle, surely the King would understand?
However, once more, important wizardly matters demanded her attention, and with a bemused raise of her eyebrow she turned her gaze towards her compatriots, poorly dressed and cowardly as they were.
"And that is why the Great Magus Matthias suggested that..."
"The Great Magus was a fool and it says a lot about your mastery of the arcane arts that you would even mention his name as some sort of reference for-"
"We could ask him," Tegan cheerfully interrupted, slamming her now empty goblet of wine loudly onto a nearby table.
"What?"
"I said, we could ask him, Matthias, the Magus, the Great dude, whatever, you know?" Tegan replied, nodding in the direction of the first wizard.
Tegan noted the involuntary shudders of the gathered wizard and the angry glares they shot in her direction, but felt little inclination to police her tongue, not when faced with such fearful ignorance at the very least. They were letting the knowledge of the past vanish, right before them, and they did nothing! It was a heinous crime, a terrible crime, and one that she could not let silently pass by. More importantly, she had gotten very bored and she'd heard from a reliable source that boredom could kill...and she wasn't quite ready to embark upon the next stage of her investigations, at least not yet, not for a couple of decades.
"Ignoring the offensive suggestion of our so-called
colleague-"
"The only thing offensive here is your lack of pragmatism...and taste," Tegan retorted, shaking her head at the clearly ridiculous robe the other wizard wore, the clashing colors and the awful, just awful trim which traveled across the edges of his robe hurt her, almost as much as the terrible stigma that afflicted the necromatic arts and its well-intentioned practitioners.
"Look, girl, why don't you go steal another corpse for your
research and leave the heroics to proper wizards, like us?"
"Oh, Thomas, what an ugly thing to say. You know that I abhor ugliness...if I wasn't in a such a generous mood, well, I might see that as a very rude comment, and I just don't think I could bear it if I thought you were being impolite," the necromancer said with a grin, mostly in jest, probably in jest, at least partly in jest, but with a devious enough smile that the aged pyromancer could not be certain.
The wizard known only as Thomas shrank back in his far less impressive chair, gripping an oaken staff in one hand and pointing the finger of his other at Tegan, very rudely in her opinion, as his voice rose to a shrill shout, "Barkeep! Remove this vile necromancer from the premises, before I do what the King should have done long ago and turn her into a pile of smoking ash!"
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