Transcription:

A series of 4chan posts

Anonymous, 07/20/2011, 00:48

Let me tell you about necromancy, /tg/. I played a necromancer once, in what I thought was a solo game over IRC.

I went around to places where the economy was horrible, the rulers were tyrants, and the people were downtrodden.

There, hidden in cairns and crypts, I taught. I taught the people how to use the dead in their defense–and when defense was not needed, in their fields. I taught spellcraft and surgery. I taught them to think for themselves.

I overthrew tyrants, I saved civilizations. I left in my wake prosperous, well-fed democracies, populated by the living and the working dead.

Eventually, I became old. Tired. I knew that lichdom was not for me–benefits aside, I was ready to move on. I had mastered this side of death–yet there was so much more to learn, that required intimate knowledge of the other side.

Anonymous, 07/20/11, 00:48

As I prepared my final resting place, with a missive spell to go out to all my proteges, I used a simple scrying spell to view the places I had visited, once more.

What I saw surprised and disgusted me. The living once again worked the fields, instead of the schools and libraries. So-called ‘good kings’ once more had tyranny over the people. Ignorance and fear ruled these lands again. And bodies were cremated, even the bones, and scattered so that no necromancer could use them, for good or for ill.

I traced back the lines of fate to find what had caused such disasters, what had destroyed the lands which I had saved.

Adventurers, So-called saviors, hunting down the most powerful necromancer in the world. The Arch-Lich, they called me. I wasn’t even dead! The stories they circulated claimed I had lived a thousand-thousand years, spreading misery and the walking dead in my wake. Misery, most certainly not, and I was scarcely sixty years old, though my mentor had certainly lived a long time, and his mentor before him. I was not even a lich! Not long after I discovered this, my body failing, one organ at the time, this group of adventurers found me.

Anonymous, 07/20/11, 00:49

I lay on my deathbed. They were expecting a fight, some cackling, evil mastermind to kill so that they could have been called heroes. They did not expect an old, bitter man who had seen his life’s work destroyed because of paranoia and bigotry.

I told them what I had done, and why I had done it. I told them of my hopes and dreams, for a world where no living man would have to work, where all could spend time doing what they truely desired–study, advancement, even the simple pleasures of a small farm and family, if they so wished. A world free of petty tyrants, where each man could vote for the ruler of their town or their nation.

In the end, I cried. For my proteges, good men dead at the hands of these heroes. For my plans, dashed against the rocks of hatred. For myself, an old, broken dying man with a wasted life.

As it turns out, my DM was using me as the BBEG for another campaign he was running… and according to him, I succeeded beautifully.