@Device(PostScript)
@Make(Report)
@Style(Spacing 1.5, Leftmargin 0.75 inch, Rightmargin 0.75 inch,
       SingleSided, Font = TimesRoman, Size 10)

@comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile)

@string(name="Necromancer ")
@string(realname="Conger the Green")
@string(playername="Player Name")
@string(id="092383")

@include (/mit/abstract/Characters/Sheets/cover.mss)



@MajorHeading(@value(realname))

@i(Go, my child, you who were once my favored one.  Go where I shall
direct you, go with my other servants, the beasts of the field and the
children of the ether and the men of the World.  Go and join those
whom you once led, and restore the Balance upon the World, and
yourself.  This is your quest.  Go.)

It still echoes in your mind, that compulsion.  A command from the
only entity in all the Universe that can command you: the Goddess
Gaea.  She whom you served all your life, she whom you now continue to
serve in death.  You cannot refuse the Goddess, but she asks much of
you.

To return to the company of those whom you were once one of, who once
learned from you and taught you and laughed with you, who now shrink
from you in fear and, perhaps, loathing.  The ones who call you
Necromancer, and think of you as a dark mage, a dealer in death --
you, who were once and still remain the champion of life, though your
ancient name is lost to the annals of time.  You have avoided the
company of man, with few exceptions, since the Holy Wars, where you
and your fellow High Priests of the Church of the Elder Gods were
defeated ... where you were killed.

You remember those days dimly, but some memories will never fail you.
You remember the High Priest of Tualoha, removing his robes and his
Amulet, donning the armor and the sword which were his implements of
war to join the Paladins on the battlefield.  He entrusted his Amulet
to you, feeling no longer worthy to take on the mantle of white
priest, after resorting to bloodshed and killing.  You remember the
battle no sage had predicted, a battle between not Light and Dark, as
your priests had often stated, nor between the Opposites and your own
Order of Balance, as you had thought -- but between the priesthood and
the commoners, the mundanes, the unenlightened.  And you lost.

Most clearly of all, you recall the Godstalker.  He remains as much of
an enigma as he was on that day, though you have often sought to
discover his origins.  In the tradition of you and your fellow High
Priests, he never used his calling name--merely Godstalker.  His name
was his task, for it was he who attacked your followers and priests
and who, finally, laid you low with a treacherous attack, an arrow
from behind.  Your last sight in life was that warrior, helmet in hand
and bow resting against his thigh, shovelling dirt in over your
pauper's grave, laughing.  And then the darkness closed in.

You know not how much time passed after that.  But the darkness
cleared to reveal a mist of green, and a voice you knew to belong your
Goddess.

@i(Awaken, my child, and move again.  This much I may grant you, as my
gift to you who fought so in my name, in the war of my making.  This
much you have earned.  This much you shall receive.)

You felt the cool, moist touch of soil on your flesh, your face, your
throat.  You choked, until you realized that you needed breath no
longer.  Nor food.  Nor drink.  You were beyond the needs of life, as
you were beyond its pleasures.  What remained for you above?

As if in answer to your unspoken question, a voice could be heard in
the whispering of a wind you should never again have felt.  

@i(Three things I shall tell you, my child, of your life that is not
life.  

A time shall come, when the Maker and the Ender shall intrude upon my
World, and the War of Opposites shall begin again.  It is for this
reason I sent a spirit upon the men, and the beasts, that your Church
should fall, lest its power turned upon itself destroy me.  In that
time, you shall be my weapon.

There shall be one who knows you, and who seeks to follow the path of
the Maker.  You shall be her guide, her teacher.

There shall be the hunger, even for you who need not feed.  The power
which flows into you, the mana, is your food and drink, your sleep,
your light.  You must forever replenish it, lest ye die the true
death.  )

The last, you sensed first.  You could feel the hunger, and still feel
it.  That, at least, was quickly sated when you discovered the
Clearstone Mountain in the lands beyond the Realm, a mountain filled
with the glowing mythril that sustained you throughout your unlife.
But now you are here, and the energies are more sparse, and you are
troubled.  Starved, truly dead, how shall you serve your Goddess?  You
must find mana.

The first, it seems, came last.  Surely, Gaea's summons was a sign
that the time of prophecy has come, that the Opposites and their
armies are waging war again.  Now you shall be the sword of the
balance, to protect your Goddess and her World.  But you must be
cautious in your actions, for it will not serve to destroy those who
seek the Light and the Dark.  In so doing, you shall strengthen the
Darkness, and the Balance shall come to naught.  Yours is a difficult
task, the job of preservation.  But that has ever been the province of
Gaea.  

The third prophecy was the hardest to reconcile.  You, becoming a
teacher for Tualoha, the Creator?  Such a thing was unheard of.  But
when the girl named Heather Goldenfield stumbled across you in your crystal
caverns, you knew.  You knew she was the one destined to learn, to
follow.  And so you taught, to the best of your knowledge, the way of
the gods.  In that time she taught you as well, of the history of the
land.  And when you could teach no more of a goddess not your own,
you gave her the White Amulet, and bid her go and learn, and study.
You know not what became of her.

You remained.  In the last century you have performed many tasks, but
most of your time you have remained alone, quiet, peaceful--
particularly when the important tasks have failed.  You have sought
the M'kraan Crystal, the artifact of the Three Gods, since the
Church's destruction but have never found it.  You have sought its
partner, the M'kraan Amulet, which was yours by right -- it, too, is
missing--had been, long before the end of the Holy Wars.  In the hands
of those without faith, it is a useless trinket, but in your hands, or
those of a fellow priest, it might have turned the tide of the Holy
War; it was the power of that ring to increase the strength of Divine
magics.  And your third quest, to seek your murderer and punish
him ... well, it, too has come to naught.  It has been a century, no
doubt nothing remains of him but dust and memories.

Of you there remains no dust, and fewer memories.  You left no
descendants to remember you.  Those who know you now know only the
Necromancer, the dark mage, and it is perhaps better this way.  Those
who seek to stain the glory of Gaea will not know of your presence, of
your purpose.  Yes, you may yet prove to be the Goddess's strongest
weapon.  You arrived here but recently, through the grace of your
Goddess, and you know that her voice is muffled here.  Of the forces
at work on this Castle, the history behind them, you know only what
you have heard others discuss.  

Soon, your prophecy shall be fulfilled, your destiny shall be
complete.  No more will your hunger claw at you, no longer will the
tendrils of a life not fully lived tie you down.  When you have
completed your purpose your body may return to the dust that craves
it, and your soul fly to Gaea's bosom.  'Tis a consumation devoutly to
be wished...the next best thing to a full life, but that is beyond
you.  

@newpage

@section(Items and Abilities)

You begin the game with the following abilities:

@begin(itemize)

Psychic Hunger

Immunity to Toxins

Mindblock

Dead

Priest of Gaea

@end(itemize)

You begin the game with the following items:

@begin(itemize)

A sword of light, a magical blade with undead-destroying properties.

Two large chunks of mythril, each worth 3 points each.

A plain green medallion

@end(itemize)