Flowerpot Games

Continued from previously seen Anonymous Diary:

When last I wrote, I promised to continue my story the following day. I underestimated the strain dying has on a person. It was several weeks before I could even continue my research, and now I attempt to gather my notes – to explain the available choices one has following his death. It is complicated, but I must attempt a comprehensive body of knowledge on this subject. I shall begin with my own mistaken choice and failure.

Being a naturally cautious person, I tend toward a “wait and see” attitude. I chose to wait, hoping some Good Samaritan might use his skill to resurrect my body so that I would be allowed to continue from where I died rather than to return weakened to a place where I had bound myself miles away.

What happened next horrified me….

Indeed, a Samaritan cast a spell, but rather than resurrecting me, he raised my body from the dead. Instead of my soul returning into my body, it hovered near by, watching the body rise and perform the bidding of my “Good Samaritan”. Although, he used my mindless body in a manner not far removed from my normal behavior, it remains a horror to see another controlling that one possession which we instinctively regard as exclusively our own. I felt raped, abused, violated, and corrupted. I shudder yet as I consider how much more appalling it might have been had an enemy raised my body forcing it to do things I would have found to be ghastly. I still feel uncomfortable in my own body, as if traces of the other remain in here with me, as if I might do things I did not order my own body to do.

After what seemed an eternity, I witnessed my body collapse; the spell had broken or worn off. I have found, in the archives, magical spells to resist others from raising my body, but must test them before I will commit them to a record.

Following my ‘raising’ episode, I was given another choice, to return to my last bind point or enter Namdhe, the Shadow Realm. I felt nothing could surpass the hideous event I had just survived, so out of curiosity, I chose Namdhe.

Namdhe is a peculiar existence. To call it a place is not entirely accurate and completely inadequate, though it exists as a location so to speak. Most of the creatures I saw there were dead as I; however, there were a few identified as living. To us who were dead, they appeared as ghosts such as we would appear in the living world. I spoke to some who told me that such a trek through Namdhe, although sometimes absolutely necessary, is a very dangerous and exhausting passage. For the living, Namdhe provides no healing or regeneration, and it’s effects persist for as long as the living creature spent sojourning there.

There are several portals from Namdhe back to the living world. In my conversation with those who were still living and traveling Namdhe, I discovered that they could not see them as well as I. Though I pointed the living to them, these exits remained invisible to them. I asked why a living person would ever choose to come to such a horrible place with so many impairments, and was told that there are places, relics and adventures that cannot be attained in any way other than to risk Namdhe. I thought these folks to be a bit foolhardy.

While in Namdhe, I was also told that undead creatures might well exist, creatures such as vampires, zombies and their ilk. I scoff at such fairy tales. How could undead exist when dead exist. BAH! All the rules would be backward. Resurrection would result in destruction. Healing spells would harm, and killing an undead would result in what? Death? Again, I say bah! At the very least, an undead would require killing more than once to end its existence.

After visiting Namdhe as long as I dared, I took one of those portals and found myself far away from any place I had ever been. I was weak, and had forgotten things that I never thought possible that I could forget. Things I seemed to have always known. In that condition, I eventually found my way home and vowed to discover hard and fast rules connected with death.

I advise anyone to learn these rules. Study resistance spells. Grasp the concepts of death, and be prepared. Know your enemy, for death is your enemy.