The dead don’t rest easy in the Old World.

Necromancers summon evil spirits from the underworld and bind them into corpses, creating shambling servants called wights. And if a wight bites you? You might join their ranks.

They are a type of algomancer: feeding on pain and fear like other dark sorcerers. They bring their own particular horror to the world of the Hunter Healer King trilogy.

Summoning Spirits Into the Dead

Necromancers are exactly what their name suggests: sorcerers who command the dead. But they don’t simply animate corpses through magic. They summon evil spirits from the underworld and force those spirits into dead bodies.

The result is a wight: a corpse possessed by a malevolent entity, driven to spread death and create more vessels for its master. It can only carry out simple orders unless directly controlled by the necromancer. The hunters believe this is due to the deterioration of the brain and nervous system after death, which limits the evil spirit’s ability to “pilot” the wight.

A wight shambles forward with the awkward gait of a body that’s no longer truly alive, but don’t mistake slow movement for harmlessness. They’re stronger than they look and utterly relentless. Wights attack with hands and teeth, grappling victims and biting with savage determination. Someone who dies at the teeth or nails of a wight leaves behind a body which the necromancer can more easily claim as another wight.  

How to Fight the Walking Dead

Prevention is always the best defense. Necromancers cannot take control of bodies buried with due religious rites in hallowed ground. Thus the respectful treatment of the dead is the first step in keeping wights from rising. Even agnostics and unbelievers are protected in Noricum. There it is traditional to surround unhallowed graveyards with spiked fences, where the spikes have been blessed as banishing daggers.

Wights are repelled by certain traditional wards. Garlic seems to disturb them. The sword-cross symbol, a stylized representation of a banishing dagger, also repels them when displayed prominently.

But warding off a wight isn’t the same as destroying one. For that, you need silver or blessed weapons, and you need to strike the head or the heart. Anything less, and the wight will keep coming. Dismember one, and the pieces might still crawl toward you, animated by the spirit trapped inside.

Silver bullets to the skull. A blessed blade through the heart. Or burning them completely to ash, leaving nothing for the spirit to cling to. These are the only certain ways to put a wight down permanently.

This is also why most necromancers develop pyrokinetic abilities. They need fire magic to control their own servants. If a wight becomes uncooperative or damaged beyond usefulness, the necromancer must destroy it. But they’re not about to injure themselves with silver or blessed weapons to do it. Fire serves their purposes perfectly.

The Necromancer’s Vulnerability

Like lupomancers, necromancers are vulnerable to silver and blessed weapons. Unlike lupomancers, who are completely neutralized by silver, necromancers can still use their powers while wounded by silver. They’re just in pain, and might have trouble controlling their wights.

This makes them dangerous opponents. A necromancer can stand back and direct their wights to attack while they hang back, and prepare their next move. They’re tacticians, not frontline fighters, and they’re smart enough to use their undead servants as shields.

But if you can get past the wights and land a killing blow on a vital organ  with silver or blessed steel, a necromancer dies like any one else. The trick is reaching them through their wall of walking corpses.

And if you fail? If the necromancer escapes? Then every person who died in the fight becomes a potential new wight. Every failure creates more enemies. This is why hunters like Maxim approach necromancers with grim determination. The dead deserve to rest. And necromancers deserve to join them.

Ready to Face the Walking Dead?

One of the secondary villains in Wolf’s Trail is a teenaged necromancer in league with the lupomancer. In some ways, she is more horrifying than the lupomancer.

Read the Hunter Healer King Trilogy today!