by Joel Levy

In the cemetery outside of Brocalinde Port a body lay upon its back as though staring at the almost full moon. The dead woman was an acolyte priestess of the Goddess Hel, ruler of the land of death and enemy of all undead. A man and a woman, both hidden in cloaks of green and black that blended with the trees and shadows, collected her blood in a grail of iron. Out of sight of the watchmen upon the walls, a small charcoal fire glowed. The man was Arkruel Strond, younger brother of the lord of the city, Marquis Brian Strond.

Arkruel chanted the first stanzas of a spell he had learned from the arch devil Satanas upon the night he sold his soul. As he chanted, he dripped blood slowly upon the charcoal. The spell was called "Dark Resurrection," and gave the caster power to wake and possibly control several undead. Control was a function of mental power, not of spells. The more powerful the necromancer, the more he could hope to control. Arkruel would call 5 dead women from their graves this night, and send them home to be reunited with their families.

The spell finished. Arkruel and his daughter Olindara waited to see if it had been successful. They imagined unnaturally strong arms pushing through rotten wood and earth. From the Mausoleum where the Strond family dead lay there came a creaking of hinges and the door broke outward. A bullfrog croaked loudly. "Isn't it traditional for a wolf to howl?" Olindara joked. Both of them laughed. Then mummified arms pushed out from the grave earth and both became too busy for any more humor.

"Your families love and miss you more than you can imagine," Arkruel told the five women. "Return to them this night. Make love to your husbands to show that you love them still. Go now, protected by the mist I form about you. Tonight is a night for love."

The undead staggered away to enter the town through a postern gate that Arkruel had bribed the guards to leave unlocked. Olindara led her father back into the town and into their modest home. They possessed less than a dozen servants, but had never bothered to count how many exactly. Arkruel concentrated upon controlling and manipulating the undead wives. Olindara was in a hurry to get back to her own husband, a knight in the service of the Marquis, who had no idea what she was really up to. As they slipped quietly into their home, some other citizens of the town began to scream.

Arkruel's plot to replace his brother as marquis had been in motion for almost a year. Privateers flying the flag of Seaeagle, an aggressive city further west along the coast had begun attacking shipping bound for Brocalinde Port. Marquis Brian Strond had increased patrols in the waters around the port but had made no strikes against either the privateers or the city of Seaeagle. The few ships serving Brocalinde Port and its ruler were not capable of engaging and defeating the navy of Seaeagle. Brian Strond made the strategically correct but highly unpopular decision to avoid war.

The citizens of Brocalinde Port were enraged by their ruler's failure to protect the shipping so necessary to the prosperity of the port. They also began to suspect that their ruler was a coward.

Lord Arkruel then outfitted a war galley at his own expense and sent it out to catch privateers. When the galley returned to port displaying captured flags and the pickled heads of privateers, Arkruel's popularity soared. No one guessed that Arkruel himself had encouraged the town of Seaeagle to attack by offering its ruler an alliance when he became the new ruler of Brocalinde Port.

Arkruel had discovered that Justin Vardurek, son of the captain of the city guard, was conducting a discreet affair with the wife of Johannes Gortone, a local merchant. Johannes and Arkruel filed a complaint with the priestesses of Sif. After an investigation into the allegations, the Temple of Sif arrested Justin Vardurek on a charge of heresy. Once a couple had said their engagement vows before the altar of Sif, another person engaging in a sexual relationship with one of them was an affront to the goddess.

Justin was placed under house arrest pending a hearing before the Marquis and a priestess of Sif. The young man was facing only a whipping or a short term of exile and a fine. There was no reason to expect that he would flee.

The night before the hearing, Johannes Gortone was murdered by masked assassins carrying short swords and bows of the type carried by the city guard. The case against Justin Gortone was dismissed for lack of evidence. Many citizens believed that city guards had carried out the murder to protect their commander's son. Mobs of citizens rioted in the streets and smashed the windows of the commander's home with rocks. Justin Vardurek fled the city. His father was met with howls of hatred and was unable to go about without an escort. The assassins had been in the pay of Lord Arkruel.

The Marquis did not believe that his guard commander was behind the murder and refused to dismiss him. This raised speculation that the Marquis condoned the murder of the cuckolded merchant. Marquis Brian Strond was now considered a coward and tyrant by the people. The city guard was considered oppressors by the people.

Lord Arkruel, conversely, was held to be the common people's champion. Arkruel had stood up for the people and demanded justice. Arkruel had fought against the privateers who attacked the port's shipping. All the groundwork had now been laid for a successful revolt. It was time to strike. Now, Arkruel played his trump card and called up the undead to drive his brother and his brother's most powerful supporters mad.

Guild master Hamish Mac Neill owned controlling interests in many of the town's industries. He was the Marquis' strongest supporter on the council of nobles and merchants that served as advisor to the town's ruler. His wife of many years had died only eighteen months before. Within a few months of her death, he had remarried. His second wife was the widow of a well-to-do ship captain. She brought more wealth to Hamish, and cared for his two young children. The couple were in bed when the back door was ripped from its hinges and they heard steps cross the living room and start up the stairs. A charnel reek preceded whatever mounted the stairs and climbed into bed with them. Lips that worms had chewed began to kiss them both all over their bodies. Mummified hands reached out to explore and caress.

"Who could have dared this blasphemy?" the priestess exclaimed. A routine patrol from the temple of the twin Goddesses Sif and Hel had checked the graveyard and found the murdered acolyte priestess of Hel and the opened graves. Arkruel's plan began to fall apart. A paladin of Sif, sent to the castle to awaken the Marquis struck down and burned the undead sent to drive him insane. Marquis Brian Strond led his guardsmen into the streets to destroy all rebels and undead with steel and fire.

Open warfare raged through the streets of Brocalinde Port as partisans of Lord Arkruel fought with guardsmen. Charnel madness raged there also as undead fought the paladins of Hel and Sif. Undead broke through the cemetery earth to tear at human flesh with mindless hunger. These risen corpses were not under Arkruel's control, and wanted only to feast upon flesh and brains. They broke into houses seeking the living. They broke up the street fighting by attacking both sides, forcing them into temporary alliance.

By high sun, the rebellion had been crushed. Lord Arkruel, his daughter Olindara, and her husband had fled into the Forest of Brocalinde. There, they were to be joined by ruthless men and women from all over Volante.

Years later, Olindara speculated that her unborn child had called corpses from their graves. Her son Kitric had inherited from his Morthelm blood the power and arrogance to become a dire and feared necromancer. In her womb, he merely lacked knowledge of the spells that control the undead. When and if his powers should ally with his grandsire's, he might well be the strongest necromancer to afflict Volante in a thousand years.