There were days when Maris wondered if he'd done something to offend some god or other who was even now exacting some tortuous and needlessly overcomplicated revenge. To be fair, in his line of work it was kind of hard not to offend the odd Deity, and there were an awful lot of them to choose from. For a start he was unnatural undead construction of bone and malice, which did tend to upset most of the various life and nature types, as well as a handful of the more boring gods of death. There were just so many of the damn things. More or less every culture had their own version of god for more or less everything, all with their own particular sets of rules and edicts. It was all so terribly complicated. Most of the time you just had to hope that whatever you did that found favour with one lot was enough to protect you from the ire of all the others you'd upset in the process. Or maybe that the gods had slightly better things to do than watch your every movement. Particularly the naked ones.
Of course there were those that might claim that there were no such thing as gods, but they were mostly just followers of Aethistocles, the god of doubt. There were other, saner scholars who questioned the existence of the church of Aethistocles. But that, the high priest would say as they sat back looking smug, was entirely the point.
Maris thought back, trying to work out what he'd done recently and who it might have offended this time. There'd been that Knight of Arkanon. Maybe he was in some sect that didn't agree with cremation. He was fairly sure fish gods didn't get involved when you dumped plague ridden corpses down wells, but he'd have to look it up to make sure. Which religion was it that frowned on slaying orphans.....?
Most of them. Right, yes. Maybe it was that then. He was pretty sure there weren't many that explicitly states "Thou shalt not explode a cart full of children with sorcerous fire and then laugh as all the chunky bits fall upon the horrified bystanders", but he probably wasn't going to get off on a technicality. No, there was nothing else for it but to just get on with it and wait until the vengeful gods got bored and went to find someone else to pick on.
Going by past experience, this could take a while.
The huge armour clad figure of the Paladin stood in the middle of the cave, swing his hammer dangerously as Maris warily circled around him. What is with paladins and hammers? They always seemed to come with some ridiculously heavy looking blunt instrument or other. Maces, cudgels, clubs, morning stars and bloody hammers. Still, he supposed they probably weren't allowed to play with anything sharp in case they cut themselves.
The floor of cave was littered with corpses. Broken Orcish bodies lay scattered around, their limbs bent at odd, unnatural angles, their skulls pulverised. Looked like Maris hadn't been the only one who'd been busy recently. Of course, being undead himself he had a slightly warped view of friendly casualties. Death was to him, after all, more of an inconvenience than anything to worry about. However he always found the holier than thou attitude of the various adventures who regularly slaughtered their way through the dungeons inhabitants rather irritating.
"Prepare yourself for righteous vengeance abomination!" declaimed the Paladin in a tone of voice a man that clearly equated true godly righteousness with the size of ones hammer.
"Hows that then?" Maris retorted "I mean, I get the whole eye for an eye thing, really. But shouldn't you have stopped a few eyes ago?"
"I shall slay a thousand of these beasts for each innocent life lost" The paladin screamed back "I shall not stop until all the unclean murdering filth has been cleansed from these lands!" He was starting to froth at the mouth a little.
"Is this about the orphans? Look, you know how vague these chosen one type prophecies can be. Anyway, if I'd left one alive it would have gotten lonely."
This was all to much for the Paladin. He charged. Maris raised his hands into a suitably arcane looking gesture and uttered one of the six hundred unclean words of Yith. The bodies which littered the cold stone floor the Paladin was thundering across towards Maris exploded wetly in a sickening shower of gore and offal.
"In the name of Gheylor I bind thee foul fiend!" Shouted the Paladin as he hurled himself through the bloody cloud. He did seem to like shouting Maris reflected calmly as the holy binding began to paralyse him.
Paladins and other holy warriors often come equipped with magics designed specifically for fighting undead. Turnings, bindings, banishings and the like. Maris wasn't quite sure why the religious were so insecure about the undead, but he had a feeling it was something to do with being told that your picture of the afterlife was horribly, horribly wrong by the few people who actually qualified to know. The spell the somewhat rabid Paladin was one of these, a holding that would paralyze any and all necromantically animated creatures in the vicinity for anything up to half an hour depending on the strength of the caster.
Of course, the problem that the overzealous Paladin had now was that included the thick loops of Orcish intestine that had wrapped themselves ever so tightly around his arms, legs and neck.
"Funny thing about Necromancy is there's all these bits that a lot of people overlook" Maris said in a conversational tone as the paladin began to turn a rather interesting shade of purple. Maris wasn't actually sure if it was from asphyxiation or sheer apoplectic fury. "Of course, it can be hard to give them the same sort of strength as actual muscle tissue. What you really want is some kind of way of locking them tight once they're in position. Not sure how you'd manage that though. Any suggestions?"
If it were possible for an unmoving to skull to grin, that's exactly what Maris would have been doing. Fact of the matter is that's about the only thing an unmoving skull CAN do. So he did it anyway.
"No? Never mind. Here's a fun game, why don't we see if any reinforcements turn up before you finish choking to death?"
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