Introducing: Ancus Maurard - Necromancer

So... My final Character.

And a Breton.

So, what to do with a Breton. They have a natural resistance to Magic, suffering 15% less damage from spells. They can also absorb magicka from spells cast ON them once per day. I could create a warrior with magic resistances, or a more diverse mage? I favoured the latter, but really with two other quite specific Mages already in my Character Bank what would really make this one's style of play different? What would  actually justify them?

An afternoon of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls forum prompted my choice. Why not make a Necromancer?

In the past Necromancy has often figured in Elder Scrolls games. Usually as a very BAD thing. The Mages Guild in Oblivion, for example, were obsessed with telling you how it had been BANNED and how WRONG it was, at pretty much every opportunity. If you played through that questline you'd eventually have to eradicate every last Necromancer you could find. It was a big deal. It also led to odd conversations like this:

Really? You honestly cannot think what he might have against it!? Just stop and think about it for a second,
you dazy mage! Because if you can't work out what problem a person might plausibly HAVE with the
descration of graves and the using of people's decaying bodies as puppets to be commanded by a third party's will I don't think the problem is with Arch-Mage Traven. I thing the problem is probably with you.

For the uninitiated that's exactly what a Necromancer does - They raise the dead and command them to do stuff for them. In this case mostly to fight on their behalf. This seemed like pretty mental way of playing the game. I mean effectively your only ever attacking anything passively, through another person. Another DEAD person.

Was that even possible? I mean if you walked into a room full of enemies who are all ALIVE you've not got any dead guys to fight them on your behalf. But then again, all Bretons come with the ability 'Conjure Familiar' which summons a familiar to fight for you. Job DONE! In... theory.

Would it actually work? I had to find out...

So, off to Helgen and the Character Creator.

Introducing Ancus Maurard, your friendly Bretonian Necromancer. :)

Yeah. I know. A little over the top maybe, with his eyes are whited-out and his largely having been painted up like Baron Samedi... But he might as well LOOK the part. And it's not like I've used whited out eyes on any of my other characters to date. Something a bit different.

As a Breton I had him follow Hadvar, the Imperial who is concerned that your name is not on his Execution list, through Helgen. For this early part I had no Necromancy spell, so I had to resort to conjuring my familiar (A spectral Wolf as it turns out), to do my dirty work, whilst keeping my distance. To be honest the Imperials in this section are more than capable of killing of the Stormcloaks you face escaping Helgen. The
Frostbite Spiders and Bear are a little trickier. Though once you've looted Frostbite Venom off the spiders a single arrow coated in that poison, and fire into the Bears body will be enough to kill it. :)

As you can see I opted for the Novice Mage Robes that you'll find on the dead mage in the Torture Room. A boost delivered to regenerating Magicka. Very much needed.

I did however find one distinct disadvantage of using 'Conjure Familiar'.

Okay, so I caught Ancus mid-blink when I took this photo. But it could just as easily have been that his eyes were closed in frustration, from the suffering the near constant howl delivered by that ghost Wolf, over and over, every few seconds. Seriously, it's beyond MADDENING.

The familiar is not terribly hardy, either. He can only take a few hits and doesn't dish out much damage either. Clearly if I was going to make this work in the long run I was either going to require a more powerful Summon (Flame or Frost Atronach for example) or I'd need a sturdy Follower to do my bidding.

As a Necromancer of course there was one very key detail still missing from my arsenal. Ancus couldn't actually raise the dead...

Easily fixed. One trip to The Riverwood Trader later and Ancus had a Spell Tome of 'Raise Zombie'. I picked up 'Clairvoyance' and 'Okaflesh' while I was there, also. I don't want Ancus to really have access to a lot of offensive spells, because using destruction magic rather defeats the point of what I'm trying to do, but Illusion and Alteration magic is fine. I also went across the way to sell my loot from Helgen to Alvor the
Blacksmith, and bought some steel gauntlets and boots to give him some kind of armour value.

No weapons though. I did debate acquiring an enchanted dagger for him or something. But at this point that just felt like cheating...

As you can see I opted to take Sven up to Bleak Falls Barrow, with the intention of using him as a damage dealer. I didn't much care what he wore, but whatever weapons I could find he'd use those. I was sick of
spending money on equipping followers by this playthrough, so just left him in his ridiculous Bard attire. I let him and my 'familiar' take care of the first bandit to attack and then got to work with my Necromancer duties...

Not bad, eh.

Only one flaw to the plan. If you choose to loot your Zombie Thrall before raising them, then they're not quite so effective.

Because they have no weapons. And they're fighting in their pants...

An early teething problem though. Nothing more. :)

Raise Zombie is a particularly useful spell, with far less in the way of limitations than I expected. I mean you can use it on Bandits.

You can use it on Skeevers.

Once you've killed it you can even use it to raise that giant Frostbite Spider from the dead.

Although you can't actually get it through the doors to leave the room... :)

Excepting the Draugr Boss at the end of the Barrow (Who is too high a level to be raised with that spell) anybody else is fair game. Even Arvel the Swift, the annoying Dunmer thief who stole The Golden Claw you were sent to seek out.

And it seems that once conjured you actually gain Conjuration skill for your zombie thralls attacking things for you. I managed to level up very quickly through this picking perks from the Conjuration and Illusion trees. And as Bleak Falls Barrow has corpses and enemies in such numbers it's incredibly easy to get a chain going from, one Zombie thrall to the next, from the dead Bandit in the first chamber, the the Skeevers next to him, right through to the last but one area.

The only drawback is the mess which your blue-tinted warriors leave behind when the spell wears of...

Although, given that you wont have looted them first those little blue ash piles do make it easier to go back and find prospective ill-gotten gains once your thrall has collapsed...

I was actually incredibly impressed with how much fun this all was. Granted, I'm going to need to find a higher powered version of the spell to command some Boss level creatures it seems, and I have no idea how I'll be able to kill Dragon this way, but by and large this is a really interesting play style to use. And certainly a challenge.

Upon returning to Riverwood I traded in the loot for a Novice Robe of Conjuration, to lower the cost of my conjuring the dead. Not cheap, but it'll come in handy. Now I've just got to decide what to do next. The Mage College at Winterhold is one possibility. I also really aught to hunt down The Ritual Stone, which allows you to raise every corpse in the room, once per day. If I remember rightly from my first playthrough of Skyrim it was located on a mountain overlooking Whiterun. I'm pretty sure that it was guarded by a Necromancer too - I must go kill him, and steal his robes!

I love it when a plan comes together.  :)