A World of Corpses

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I ask you, who suffers more than I? Who among you must withstand the infantile laments of would-be necromancers both night and day? How many souls must I wrench from impotent failures before my followers commit my truth to memory?

Questions! Timid apologies! Simpering denials! Are these miserable wretches truly the inheritors of the Dark Practice? Are these the necromancers that shall carry our glorious discipline into the eras to come? Perish the thought!

While I find all the aspiring necromancers' queries maddening, there is one that routinely drives me to homicide. "Honored Worm-King, where shall we find our corpses?" My response? "Other necromancers will find your corpse here!" Then, I harvest their soul in the most painful fashion imaginable.

Now, this routine did provide some small measure of personal catharsis; and I do all of Tamriel a service by winnowing the herd of deficient mages. But now, hundreds of years on, I find the entire ritual tiresome and predictable. So, I have resolved to commit this simple lesson to paper. Ignore it at your peril, worms.

Where shall you find your corpses? Everywhere! All the world is a tomb. Every city, every field, and every forest in Tamriel has borne witness to countless slaughters and atrocities—some known and some forgotten. Wherever your foot finds purchase, rest assured, a corpse rests somewhere beneath. You need only summon up the will to call them to service. Old bones may offer some modest resistance. Time and decay make them sluggish and recalcitrant. But if you cannot bend an ancient corpse to your will, you have no business calling yourself a necromancer.

So long as the living remain, so too shall the dead. Finding them is a child's pursuit. Using them, though? That is the true measure of a necromancer's power.