Raise the Fallen

For a Necromancer... there is no end game.

In the next major AdventureQuest 3D release, we will at long last enter the Tower of Necromancy. If you have been to the Isle of the Dead, you have likely already created your key. If so, you quest on the island to optionally take it all the way to level 25.

But... what is the ultimate goal of a Necromancer?

Many would think it involves the dead, but it is actually about life. Learning to manipulate the forces of life itself leads to a most unexpected outcome... transcending into something beyond our plane of existence. What you call these higher beings is up to you. But they ascend to something... beyond the realms of human comprehension. At least, that's what they would like to do. Most fail and become a horrible, lifeless, Lich.

A little real-life research

So... I am a huge fan of the Ravenloft series. The books "Necropolis" and "King of the Dead". A lot of D&D adventures are centered around Lich villains. It was mentioned in the King Arthur mythos, and fantasy RPGs like the Elder Scrolls. But it had dawned on me that most of my understanding of Necromancer lore came almost exclusively from fantasy games and books. So, I fixed that.

I ordered several books on the real-life roots of Necromancy from the greatest dark magicians library in the world... Amazon. This included a faximile reproduction of W. R. Halliday's "Greek Necromancy" section from the book Greek Divination: A study of its methods and principles. After ordering all of these books, our pixel artist, Claymore, said, "Uh... what you trying to raise Artix?" To which I repied, "My credit card bill and knowledge."

This of course leads into the deeper discussion of the historic roots of Paladins, Bards, Clerics, and the wide array of fantasy monsters that we either have, or derive our original monsters from. I think it is fascinating to understand where it all came from. While we are going to keep everything in the game as high fantasy as possible, I think this knowledge helps add a little something special to the game.

The Story of the Tower

As this will be the 3rd Tower of Necromancy we have created, we wanted the story to be something different... but still containing the experiences you were hoping for. In this week's new expansion, you learned that the lord of the tower is a Mistress. It is not the comical Sally the pretty pretty pink necromancers from our previous games. (You saw her as a little girl in the original intro.) The core story of this will be pretty serious. We really hope you enjoy it.

Be sure to see everything released in this week's Isle of the Dead release in the previous post.