The people around here call me a necromancer but I'm really not. You see, technically a necromancer both summons or raises the dead AND controls them with magic. As it happened, when I appropriated my copy of the "Compendia Necromantica, Vol. 1", I didn't realize there was a "Vol. 2". "Vol. 2" covers magical control of the undead apparently. My mistake.

BTW, "around here" is an area fifty leagues, give or take, from the town I own - Fauligmere. I don't actually own it but no one else seemed to want it after I accidentally unleashed a zombie apocalypse on the townspeople a few decades back. Also my mistake. Fauligmere used to be an off-the-beaten-path little hamlet on the River Bach near Marienburg and I guess it still is. I live in an old stone watchtower that I found abandoned a few weeks after the zombocalypse horde wandered off into the Cursed Marshes in search of brains or whatever. Lucky me. The rest of the town has pretty much been reclaimed by the swamp in the last twenty-odd years but I take good care of Incihaus - that's what I call my tower when I'm joking around with Scratch and the boys.

Scratch is my flesh golem and best friend. He is also the first undead I was able to gain any kind of control over despite my lack of "Vol. 2". Interesting story - when I originally reanimated the people that make up Scratch they scratched and scratched their head like a lice-ridden four-year-old with chicken-pox. At first I thought they were trying to eat their own brain. Not so. Turned out the scalp I had chosen for Scratch had the worst case of chronic dandruff I had ever witnessed. Not that I'd witnessed that much dandruff before I met Scratch but I did have some experience with the malady and was not far removed from my apprenticeship with the Chirurgeons' Union in Marienburg so I knew of a cure. Blue Selsun - an herb that grew prolifically in the area.

Believe it or not, that is how Scratch and I became buddies. Their undead brain had just enough juice left in it to understand that I was the key to alleviating the discomfort caused by chronic dandruff and they've pretty much taken their cue from me ever since. Same with the rest of the Nightmares, though none of the others respond to dandruff shampoo like Scratch. I know this because I tried dandruff shampoo on Jakob, much to the dismay of the travelling salesman that just happened into town during the experiment. My mistake. I'll tell you about Jakob and Hans next time.