dmdave

[366 Days of Monsters] Day 196/366 - Dread Guard

Added 2020-11-03 17:01:36 +0000 UTC

Zombies are great. Necromancers love them. Adventurers hate them. But the problem with zombies is that they're usually so damn slow. The reason for this is simple: most zombies come from commoner stock. Hating this pain point, a clever necromancer came up with dread guards. A dread guard is a zombie created from a recently deceased warrior shortly after passing. Okay, sure, usually the warrior passed because the necromancer killed them (details, details). Either way, because the reanimating process is done so quickly, the zombie retains much of its fighting prowess.

Naturally, this is an expensive process. Fortunately, the return-on-investment for the dread guard is fantastic relative to that of a commoner.

In Omeria, the Xenem Dynasty has taken their love for dread guards to the next level. They train their humanoid slaves with basic fighting skills with the intent to convert them to dread guard once they die. Groups of Xenemese necromancers move about the battlefields looking for dying (or close enough to dying) warriors to reanimate.