Lich's Journal Excerpts
 
RESEARCHER'S NOTE -
While most of the writings discovered from the "research hallway," as we are tentatively calling it were found to be esoteric manuscripts on long-lost necromantic magic, there is a single soft paper volume which has been found to be something more along the lines of a journal.  The biographical information found within is sparse, but a few pages have been found which provide some knowledge on this person.  We believe that you may be able to supply us with additional information, and would be profoundly grateful for any insight you could provide.
 
FIRST ENTRY -
I'm a mage.  It's funny, how strange that sentence feels to say.  I'm one of the one-in-a-hundred-thousand individuals to be capable of third circle magic.  
 
And it's useless to me.  I've gained something so precious and I'm annoyed by how it's going to get in my way.  "An inherent talent," he says, but all it's good for is making those damn monsters take more interest in me.  I don't want to be a wizard, so instead I'm going to have them hound me for the rest of my fucking life.
 
I want to be an engineer.  Why the hells is my family giving me shit for that?  It's a perfectly respectable profession.  I won't just be retreading the same ground that every wizard who has ever existed goes back over.  I'll be discovering new things.  I'll be improving humanity.  I'll be making a good living for my family.
 
I don't even know enough about magic to know where I'd even begin to use it.  My uncle's just telling me to join the college to find this out, and  he knows I'm not going to do that.  
 
SECOND ENTRY -
She's dead.
 
She didn't say anything.  She didn't talk to me.  Everyone says that she was acting the same as usual, but how could she have been?  How could she have done this without acting any differently?
 
I don't know what to do now.  Everything was for after we left.  After this hellhole that tore us apart because those filthy whor
 
I know exactly what to do.  I asked my uncle if he could preserve her body.  I promised that I'd go to the college if he did.  I will, too.  I'll go there and I'll learn everything they have to teach me.
 
I know exactly what to do.
 
FIFTH ENTRY -
I still think of her all the time.  She had this smile that she'd only show for me.  It was beautiful, no matter what those monsters said.  It was more beautiful than any of them would ever be.
 
I found one of the tomes in the library on the college of necromancy.  It's practically incomprehensible.  There are fifty words per page that I've never seen before.  This thing must be three hundred years old.  There are spells, though, and I've been trying to master them as quickly as possible.  Two of them require a body.
 
One of our teachers is a monster.  She studies the college of mind control.  She swears up and down that no mage is to ever subjugate the minds of others, and that her research is in detection and prevention.  I know better.  I know how she looks at the men who enter her classroom.  It's only a matter of time until one of them walks out as a slave.
 
She's never studied combat magic.  
 
SIXTEENTH ENTRY -
I have a place in which to work now.  I covered my tracks well enough that they couldn't find me, but I was still working so damn slowly in the tower.  Here, though, I can work as quickly as I can find ferals to work on.  The cleansing rites I found work just as well on the dead as they do on the living.  
 
It's fascinating how different they are if you take the demonic energy out of them before you raise them.  It's so obvious how corrupting it is.  Without, they are pure of nature.  They act only as is required for self-preservation.  Without orders, they won't even blink as someone walks by.  Even the bodies of monsters are made pure in its absence.
 
I could raise her so easily now, but that's not what I'm after.  It's not the body I need to restore, but the soul.
 
TWENTIETH ENTRY -
I discovered the strangest guest in my home today.  Normally I would have destroyed her, but this one was different.  I recognized this one.
 
I found her this morning when I woke up.  She had found the small sphere of necromantic energy that I had set up three weeks ago in order to test its mana dispersion rate.  She had wrapped herself around it, like a child curled around a flame for warmth.  
 
She doesn't talk to me, and for the most part seems only barely aware of her surroundings.  That's fine.  I like them better this way.  Whatever her reasons she is a monster, and she deserves to exist beneath us.
 
Besides, I've always wanted a pet.
 
TWENTY-EIGHTH ENTRY -
None of it worked.  No matter what I do to restore the mind or soul, none of it worked.  I've even researched into the tales of resurrection spells that the college had collected, but there was nothing in there that spoke of how they theoretically worked.  Thousands of years of thaumatological research and we are not even close to matching the works of our ancient ancestors.
 
It doesn't matter, though.  If I cannot restore her to life then I will restore her in undeath.  Not as the monsters do it, transforming the person into something they weren't, mutating the soul until the monsterized would be strangers to the women they were before.  No, I will restore her perfectly as she was, but within the eternal shell of an undead form.  
 
There is a way, mentioned only briefly within the stories of old.  Masters of undeath, wielding absolute control over even long-passed souls.  It matters not the cost; I will undo what the monsters did.  
 
Wait for me, Valerie.
 
THIRTY-FIFTH ENTRY -
I went out searching for a power source to maintain my soul during the transition.  I found something so much greater.  A fragment of the demon lord's, sent flying during the final battle.  My spells guided me to the heart of the Bronze Mountains, where I found a crater.  Deep beneath the center of it lay this vile substance - the source of the corruption.
 
I sealed it as best as I could.  Though my mental defenses are powerful, this molten corruption would twist me, break me, and leave me no different from the monsters out there.  
 
But it is not without its uses.
 
It corrupts by twisting and amplifying the desires of its bearer.  The angry become truly cruel.  The lustful transformed the world into the orgiastic pit that it is today.  
 
But the pure undead do not feel desire as we do.  I shall take this substance when I am made pure and complete, and I will take it into myself then.  With it I will exceed my every goal.  I will not simply restore her to life, I will transform the world.  Death will no longer separate anyone from another.  There will simply be the living and the undead.  
 
And the monsters that took her from me will be wiped from the face of the world.
 
FORTY-SECOND ENTRY -
I almost managed to experience surprise when I cast my now-limitless gaze out from my tower and saw him.  Cursed from birth - but not cursed at all, I can now see.  It was not mere malediction that has followed him, but that is all that I can tell.  It is most difficult to gaze directly upon him.  He is a strange blind spot within my vision.
 
All the same, the energy is slowly suffusing my phylactery, and when they come I shall turn the monsters among them into my weapons.  He, though, I shall spare.  I remember much more from my youth, now that my memory is not based upon a mere lump of flesh within my skull.  I remember him as clearly as I remember my own birth.
 
He helped me.  He also was forced to flee from his home and his life because of monsters.  Yes, he I shall spare.  I shall show him my power, and the good that I shall bring.  He will understand my reasons.
 
And her, of course.  I could not kill my favorite pet.
 
And then I will have my Valerie again, and I will have all that I could ever want.  I am immortal now.  This world will never take anything from me again.
 
They will fear me for a time, but soon they will understand the kindness of my works.  They will stand upon my utopia, and they will smile when they hear the name of Lucas Reimann.