First Chapters

A letter from Libban to Maxima

I wrote this after playing Adventure Quest Worlds and read the world doom for the hundredth time is a row.

It make sense in context btw. Might write an actual AQW fan fic someday.

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Hello my dearest, I hope this letter finds you in good health. My informants tell me of the turmoil shaking your castle and I will therefore not bother you with questions, pleasantries, or knowledge of my days. Though if you must know, I am as healthy as the day I was born and just as bored as you are. Let this parchment entertain you instead with a tale from my castles own library and distract you from the seriousness of duties.

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This story is an excerpt from the book First Magics and is regarded as the definitive version.

The First DoomWright and Necromancer

Once upon a time a woodsman and his daughter lived alone in a nameless forest. Every day the woodsman would go out to the forest with his axe to work, hike to a village to sell his wood, and come home to his cabin just before dark. There his daughter would be seen preparing the nights dinner.

One day the woodsman returned home later than usual and saw that the cabin was dark. Fearing the worst he ran towards it axe in hand, ready to fight, but when he stepped inside the house was ransacked and his daughter lay dead on the floor. With great tears and loud cries he picked up his daughter in his arms and grieved for what seemed like hours. At midnight he buried his daughter in the woods.

An anger of injustice overtook him and with his axe he smashed the trunks of the great trees around him and screamed at the world until eventually he tired himself and fell asleep on dirt.

The following day, when he woke up, the sun was shining brightly on the little clearing he had made in his fit of anger and on a log sat his daughter smiling pleasantly at him. The woodsman jumped to his feet and hugged her. In that clearing they stayed for hours saying everything that needed to be said and more. When night came they hugged again and the daughter back to rest, ready to move on.

The end.
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At first glance it seems that this story has no connection to the art of DoomWrighting and only the most vague to Necromancy. This story is actually more myth than fact and can't possibly be more than just a bad tale some bard made.

There is however a basis of truth to this. A little refresher may be needed, though I assume you know the finer points of Mana, Doom, and Necromancy from our past letters. Doom is at it's simplest a compounding destructive force whose manipulation is called DoomWrighting and that Necromancy is raising the dead by means of combining Doom, Mana, the human body, and the human spirit. Which means a every Necromancer is be a DoomWright, but not every DoomWright is a Necromancer.

Now in the story the woodsman goes into a fit of rage and attacks the trees around him, and if we ignore the fact that there could not have been enough force in his blow, he must have generated enough Doom to start a Necromancy. Where are the materials you may ask? The Doom was provided as written, the body and soul were the daughters, and the Mana must have also come from the daughter as in other adaptations the daughter is actually has some sort of magic ascribed to her.

Thus we have both the first DoomWright and the first Necromancer performing a very crude Necromancy.

Interestingly, our oldest historians have no knowledge of the origin of the myth and it is wildly accepted that this tale might be older than even the empire itself. Another interesting fact is that the lower the class of person, i.e. guards, cooks, and other common folk, the more pronounced the daughter is to be magical. One version actually states of her to be a deity of some kind.

I hope this letter has done it's purpose and has given you a few minutes of calm reading. I'm afraid must end here for now. My dearest you might not hear from me for some time for reasons cannot explain. Trust and believe I have not disappeared.

-Libban