Personal System Calendar: Year 00015, Day 1-28, Month VIII: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6859, 1st to 28th day of the 8th Month
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The Runic Necro-Circuitry System
The underlying technology behind all of this is called Runic Necro-Circuitry, a magical system responsible for transforming a corpse or skeletal remains into a functioning undead organism. It replaces the roles normally filled by a living nervous system, brain, and portions of the circulatory and muscular systems. At its center sits the Runic Neural Matrix, typically carved into the interior of the skull and connected outward through a network of microscopic runic pathways running through the spine, joints, tendons, and limbs. Together, the system functions as an integrated artificial nervous system, motor-control network, sensory processor, necromantic power distributor, memory bank, command interpreter, reflex system, damage-management system, communication network, and cognitive processor, all at once.
The higher an undead's tier, the more sophisticated its matrix becomes.
Rather than covering a skeleton's body in flesh-like muscle everywhere, the Runic Necro-Circuitry system relies instead on strategically preserved or generated musculature, placed only where movement genuinely demands it. Thin muscles connect skull to cervical vertebrae so the head can turn and stabilize. Deltoid-like structures and reinforced tendons hold the shoulder assembly together. Biceps-and-triceps equivalents wrap the elbow, mostly tendon. Thin muscle bundles run the forearm to control the wrist and fingers, since without them, a skeleton couldn't so much as grip a sword. Thin spinal stabilizers and small abdominal and intercostal structures hold the torso together, though the ribcage itself needs no muscle for breathing, since these creatures have no need to breathe at all. The hips carry some of the most important structures of all: gluteal muscles, hip flexors, adductors, and tendons wrapping the pelvis. The knees carry quadriceps and hamstring equivalents and a patellar tendon. The ankles carry an Achilles-like tendon, calf muscle, and small stabilizers.
None of this resembles true human flesh. The pattern instead runs bone, to undead tendon, to necromantic muscle, back to bone, dark, desiccated, almost leathery tissue, somewhere between mummified muscle, exposed tendon, and supernatural connective matter. The result is a creature where the skeleton remains clearly visible, but with just enough anatomical material holding it together that it can actually move like something alive.
This also explains why damage matters differently against these creatures than against a conventional undead. A normal skeleton could survive losing an arm outright, since it was never truly alive to begin with, but sever its necromantic tendons instead, and that same arm becomes useless without ever being removed. A warrior skeleton with its Achilles tendon severed loses real mobility. One with its shoulder tendon destroyed struggles to even raise its arm. Damaged hand tendons cost it its grip entirely. Destroyed knee musculature means it can no longer properly stand. Fighting them, in other words, isn't just a matter of hacking a skeleton apart, since the vulnerable points aren't always where the bone itself sits.
Another fact that makes them a horror to fight is that they carry no emotions, no fear. They don't fear dying, since they are already long dead. They hold no memory of the lives they once lived. They are hollow things, controlled (limitly) into a new existence that follows only orders, and those orders are to kill, destroy, and consume the living, as though they carried some deep, abiding hatred for life itself.
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The Six Tiers of the Dark Forces Military Structure
The army is commanded by a Lich General, tasked with leading this force of skeletons and lesser undead. It is humanoid in shape, though its resemblance to anything human ends there. Seven hundred fifty thousand soldiers might seem a modest number by some measures, but this is the most elite portion of its total forces, elite skeletons alone comprising its lowest represented tier here.
There are six tiers in total: Common Skeleton at Tier 1, War Skeleton at Tier 2, Elite Skeleton at Tier 3, Death Knight at Tier 4, Greater Undead at Tier 5, and the Lich itself at Tier 6. The fact that this particular force starts at Elite Skeleton as its floor says a great deal about how thin the elites actually are in proportion to the whole. For every Elite Skeleton, there are roughly a thousand Common Skeletons and around a hundred War Skeletons standing beneath it. Of the seven hundred fifty thousand elite-tier soldiers, roughly 75% are Elite Skeletons, 20% Greater Undead, and 5% Death Knights, not counting the additional seven hundred fifty million Common Skeletons and seventy five million War Skeletons that make up the true bulk of the horde beneath them.
These Dark Forces operate on a completely different organizing principle than the Empire's own scale for humans, humanoids, and demi-humans. A Common Skeleton, by imperial and world assessment standards, fights at roughly the level of a non-magical human between level 10 and 25. Mapped onto the Dark Forces' own six-category structure, ranked as soldiers, elite soldiers, sergeants, knights, captains, and generals, these forces are, unlike humans, they are bred and created for war from the very start, rather than starting as ordinary people who later choose to fight.
Skeletons remain the easiest of the Dark Forces to produce, and aren't limited to human bone alone. They're built from a mixture of many different beings, of differing shapes and sizes, though human-type skeletons remain by far the most common.
Standing now in formation across a vast, desolate patch of land, these bodies (skeletons) need no food, no sleep, and never tire from simply standing. They're fed instead by mana that has curdled into a dark miasma, the same corrupted energy that empowers their function in the first place. Where a living body would need a brain, a heart, and countless other organs simply to function and stay alive, these creatures are genuinely hollow, carrying instead dark mana stones similar to a mana heart, a mana core, or a beast core. Functionally, they're closer to golem constructs that have gained sentience, but not as sophisticated like Benethar or Sylvier Solvorn that are running on modified beast cores repurposed to grant them a kind of sentience through the same strong core-connection beasts naturally carry, rather than through any brain or living organ.
The skeletons run on a similar underlying concept, though rather than being limited by the raw power stored in their dark mana stones, they draw instead on the ambient dark mana miasma that saturates a place like this. They're considerably weaker in locations without that corruption already present, but wherever corruption has spread enough, they can draw on it freely instead.
I. Common Skeleton — Basic Configuration
The simplest genuinely functional form of artificial undead, and not merely a skeleton being magically puppeted from outside. Its matrix provides enough processing power to operate its own body autonomously: bone articulation, necrotic tendons, artificial musculature, joint stability, balance, walking, running, gripping, basic weapon handling, posture, and simple reflexes, all without needing its creator to consciously control every movement. Given an order like "guard this door," the matrix translates that into a full behavioral sequence on its own: remain in the assigned area, monitor surroundings, identify intruders, intercept, attack, return to position. Its senses are crude but functional, capable of detecting movement, sound, vibration, living creatures, and basic magical or necromantic signatures nearby, though nowhere near human-level perception. Its memory holds only assigned orders, recognized targets, locations, and simple movement or combat routines. If a limb is destroyed, the matrix simply stops trying to use it and reallocates whatever necromantic energy remains toward the rest of the body. Intelligence here is very low; it doesn't reason so much as execute predefined behavior, an autonomous magical machine in the most literal sense.
II. War Skeleton — Combat Configuration
The first real advancement past the common tier, with considerably more processing capacity and dedicated combat routines built in. Its motor control is far finer, capable of changing direction rapidly, maintaining balance mid-fight, coordinating attacks, parrying, blocking, dodging, switching grips, and manipulating weapons and multiple joints at once, backed by musculature substantially stronger than a Common Skeleton's. Its matrix can read immediate battlefield conditions in real time, an enemy approaching from the left triggers raising a shield, rotating the torso, protecting the exposed side, and countering, all without external instruction. It can also recognize weapons, shields, armor, multiple enemies, basic formations, and relative threat levels. War Skeletons often carry specialized combat programming: a Swordsman Matrix prioritizing blade work, a Spearman Matrix built around distance and formation, an Archer Matrix managing posture and aim, a Shield Matrix built for defense and formation integrity. Its perception improves enough to track multiple moving targets, and its memory can retain combat routines and limited battlefield information, meaning a veteran War Skeleton grows more dangerous simply by accumulating more combat experience over time. Intelligence remains low but functional: it doesn't understand warfare as a concept, but it understands combat as a series of solvable problems.
III. Elite Skeleton — Adaptive Configuration
The point where the technology begins to resemble genuine artificial intelligence. Rather than simply executing predetermined routines, an Elite Skeleton's matrix can actually modify them based on circumstance. If an enemy keeps attacking its left side, it can recognize the pattern and respond: shift stance, protect the left, bait the same attack again, then counter. Its body coordinates muscles, tendons, joints, spine, fingers, head, weapon, and shield as a single integrated system, letting it track multiple enemies, projectile trajectories, movement patterns, magical signatures, and environmental hazards all at once. Its memory becomes considerably more sophisticated, holding onto enemy behavior, battlefield layouts, past encounters, tactical patterns, orders, and hierarchical relationships. Elite Skeletons can also communicate directly through their shared Runic Necro-Circuitry, exchanging real-time information like target approaching, enemy strength detected, flank left, unit damaged, allowing them to function as an actual coordinated military force rather than a scattered mob. Intelligence here is moderate: genuine problem recognition and solution-finding, within the limits of what the matrix allows.
IV. Greater Undead — Advanced Cognitive Configuration
A major evolutionary threshold, and no longer simply an improved skeleton but an advanced artificial undead organism in its own right. Its matrix has grown sophisticated enough to support genuine independent cognition. Physically, it carries far more complete necromantic musculature: dense necromantic muscle, reinforced tendons and ligaments, regenerative necrotic tissue, reinforced joints, and advanced energy conduits, meaning depending on its origin, a Greater Undead might still look skeletal, or might carry enough artificial tissue to appear almost fully humanoid. Cognitively, it can analyze situations, solve problems, form and revise plans, remember long-term events, recognize individuals, understand deception, evaluate threats, and make independent tactical decisions on its own. It can be handed an objective as loose as "protect this city," rather than a rigid instruction like "kill anyone who enters Gate Three," and work out for itself how to accomplish it. This makes them genuinely dangerous as commanders, capable of understanding logistics, terrain, fortifications, enemy formations, supply routes, psychological warfare, ambush, retreat, and feint. A Greater Undead can act without constant supervision, leaving its assigned post to gather information, form a plan, and return entirely on its own initiative. A rudimentary personality can even emerge from its accumulated memory and growing cognitive complexity, though this doesn't necessarily mean it possesses an actual soul; it remains an artificial consciousness, produced entirely by the Runic Neural Matrix itself. Intelligence here is genuinely high, the first tier capable of holding something resembling an intelligent conversation with a living person.
V. Death Knight — Sovereign Configuration
The pinnacle of conventional artificial undead construction, with a matrix so complex it approaches complete artificial neurological function. Motor integration is total, every movement coordinated simultaneously, enabling exceptional swordsmanship, complex martial technique, precise footwork, superhuman reaction time, extremely efficient movement, independent control over multiple weapons at once, and fine manipulation most living warriors couldn't match. Its magical senses grow extraordinarily powerful, capable of perceiving life-force, mana, movement, sound, vibration, magical disturbance, hidden creatures, and shifts in environmental conditions. Rather than simply learning an opponent's fighting style, a Death Knight can actively develop counters to it, restructuring its entire combat approach around exploiting a discovered weakness. Its memory can span decades or even centuries, retaining vast stores of combat experience, historical knowledge, past orders, personal interactions, tactical understanding, languages, and skills. Most importantly, it possesses independent will, not just independent thought, the defining line separating it from a Greater Undead. A Greater Undead can think independently; a Death Knight can will independently, interpreting an order according to its own judgment, and, if its underlying magical constraints allow it, even disagreeing outright with whoever created it. Its intelligence is extremely high, effectively a supernatural artificial person in its own right.
VI. Lich — Soul-Integrated Consciousness
Something fundamentally different from everything below it. Necromancers eventually discovered a hard limitation in artificial cognition: a machine, however sophisticated, can only imitate consciousness. It cannot inherently possess a soul. A Lich solves that problem by integrating an actual soul directly into the Runic Neural Matrix, producing what's called a Runic Soul Matrix. Within it, the soul becomes fused with memory, consciousness, will, magic, and the underlying Necro-Circuitry itself, and the skull stops functioning as a mere processor, becoming instead the true anchor of the Lich's existence. A Lich possesses genuine self-awareness, personality, identity, emotion, memory, creativity, intuition, free will, and independent thought, true consciousness in the fullest sense, where the Runic Neural Matrix provides only the structure and the soul provides everything else. Its spellcasting integrates directly through that same soul-bound structure: rather than the ordinary path of brain to nervous system to body to magic, a Lich operates through soul to Runic Neural Matrix to necromantic circuitry to magic directly, making its spellcasting less a learned skill and more an integrated neurological function. This is also why destroying a Lich's physical body isn't necessarily enough to kill it. Its consciousness was never entirely dependent on its current form to begin with; a phylactery, or some equivalent soul-anchor, preserves the fundamental continuity of its existence regardless of what happens to the body housing it. A Lich is also capable of seeing through the perception of everyone beneath its chain of command, drawing on what each subordinate sees and senses, learning from it, and formulating plans well before it ever chooses to step onto the battlefield itself. Orders flow the same way in reverse, passed down from the Lich through the chain of command until they reach even the lowest-ranked soldier in its army.
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The Complete Progression
| Tier | Primary Function | Intelligence |
|---|---|---|
| Common Skeleton | Autonomous body control | Basic |
| War Skeleton | Combat processing | Low |
| Elite Skeleton | Adaptive combat intelligence | Moderate |
| Greater Undead | Independent cognition | High |
| Death Knight | Independent will and advanced intelligence | Extremely High |
| Lich | Soul-integrated consciousness | True Consciousness |
The underlying technology never changes across all six tiers; Runic Necro-Circuitry remains the same foundational system throughout. What changes is the sophistication of the Runic Neural Matrix that was built on top of it, growing progressively more advanced until, at the very top, the Lich finally integrates a soul into the structure directly. The overall progression, in short, runs: command, to coordination, to adaptation, to cognition, to will, to soul.
A Lich General, or Lich Lord, of this caliber is rarer still, one in a billion, the product of deliberate experimentation by whichever master architect, some mad magical genius, the Great Evil and its Dark Forces had employed to create it.
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As to why this particular force now stands in formation across that desolate stretch of land, it's likely one of two things: they're waiting on the portal to Arkanus to finally open, or they're simply preparing for another attempt at conquest regardless of the portal's timeline. A force this size didn't assemble and hold position without purpose, not when every soldier in it required a steady supply of corrupted mana simply to remain standing. Keeping a force this size fed and functional, even one that needed no food or rest in any living sense, still demanded a constant flow of dark miasma across the entire formation, which meant wherever they stood, they'd already begun the slow work of poisoning that ground long before a single sword was drawn.
Wherever these forces go, they corrupt the land's mana as they pass, feeding on that same corruption to sustain themselves. That dependency also makes them notably weak against an uncorrupted Arkanus specifically, which is exactly why an earlier group had been sent in ahead of them instead, and why that earlier group had ultimately been defeated. Now it was the skeletons' turn. Given the chance, they could raise no shortage of the recently dead, both from Arwen's own war and from the other kingdoms now standing on the brink of ruin, to swell their ranks further still, one of several reasons this force required so many sacrifices in the first place, beyond simply what the portal itself demanded to open.