Just a loose idea that you can monkey with, modify or completely ignore, as you please.

Your mentor calls himself 'Sokath of the Burning Eyes,' and affects a deep timbre to his voice, masking his features behind a silken veil, magical lenses that fit over his eyes and glow with a ruddy light, and affects a bewildering accent that he claims is that of a desert tribesman.

You know quite well that his name is Calin Stensen and he is a middle-aged man of otherwise unintimidating appearance, developing a slight paunch (which he keeps in check with a girdle when in his 'tribal robes'). You came with him from Calastia (living in a modest house outside of the city of Pahrae in the Turrows province of northern Calastia), where he worked as a Battle-Mage. You have served as an apprentice to him for over 5 years, although most of that time has been spent keeping his dusty laboratory and home in order while he was stationed first in the Heteronomy of Virduk, then Durrover, then Burok Torn. He returned home a year and a half ago, battered and scarred from his latest campaigns, hair graying and muscles aching from the hardships of the field. When he received orders a month later to return to the Heteronomy to help deal with some rebellious Halflings, his exact words were, "That's fucking IT! I've had it with this bullshit!" and then packed and prepared his most useful texts, even bringing you along with him, an unheard of development.

You could have sworn from the way he left his home that he wasn't coming back, and you were right. You arrived at the Heteronomy, and noticed that he did not bother to unpack the mules that brought his belongings (you were required to carry your own, and a few extra things of his, as he did not have enough mules for everything he wanted to bring. You sometimes wonder if he had had enough mules, he would have brought you at all...).

The barracks where you and he were to be stationed were crowded and smelled of men in armor. You found the whole thing a bit overwhelming, but could see that he commanded a level of respect among the common soldiers. He kept you busy with strange tasks that seemed nonsensical, and it became clear that he was wracking his brain trying to keep you from being underfoot while he dealt with other matters, so you finished your latest fool's errand and then padded quietly around, out of his way, but keeping an eye on him, in case he should need you. So you noticed him planting little flasks of his special Alchemical Fire, which you had helped him to prepare on many occasions, all about the barracks.

He spotted you soon enough, and he pulled you past the room you and he had been assigned, to see two bodies apparently 'asleep' within. You had seen the bodies of the dead before, and it was not difficult to see that these were already corpses. You remember nothing else, from that point, but now you recognize the words he was speaking as to those of a simple Sleep enchantment.

When you awoke, you were slung over his warhorse, being led out of town by an Elven woman, a Halfling and one of the Half-Orc soldiers from the barracks, who were leading his mules and steed away to the north, while behind you the barracks could be seen burning in the night. The Elf, clearly the leader, since she was not carrying bags, shimmered and grew into the form of your master, who helped you off of his horse and mounted it, with the warning never to speak of what you had seen this night unspoken, but very clear indeed.

He left the Halfling and Half-Orc sound asleep at the first campsite, quickly mounting up and riding off without them. You recognized the same sleeping spell he'd used on you.

A few days later, you arrived in Hollowfaust, and he produced from his belt a small fortune in golden coins, that he used to purchase a small house for his own use, in which he set up a new laboratory, as 'Sokath.' He began to indulgently train you in the arts of Wizardry, seemingly delighted to finally have the time to perform this simple task, and spending long hours reading, researching, mixing noxious things together and even capering around the house in a nightrobe chortling to himself over simple things like being able to eat or sleep as he pleased, often speaking lovingly of meals that were not trail rations or beds that were not hard earth, where Dwarven Rune-Wizards weren't making the earth shake, Halfling snipers weren't aiming at his head and Durrovian seige engines weren't tracking his movements.

You can't imagine why he gave it all up to live an outcast in this creepy city.

The local Wizards are frightening, and seem to have no concept of temperature, as they dress in ponderous black greatcoats, with broad-brimmed hats and scarves often covering their lower faces. And this on days hot enough to leave you unwilling to leave the house!

It is said that the Necromancers have no blood, and that their flesh is cold to the touch, although their apprentices do not wear black and dress more like the local citizenry, in light colored and loose linen garb, more appropriate to the climate. The ash here is everywhere, and anyone who wears anything other than black might as well be wearing grey, as that is the color that their clothing will be after a few hours in the streets.

Undead stand guard at the gates, and you thought it simply a macabre affectation, that these rumors couldn't *possibly* be true, that they were simply props of some sort, maybe intimidating decorations to throw fear into their foes hearts. It was that night that you looked out the shutters to see what the clacking was on the stones outside to spy a patrol of skeletal knights ride by on the skeletons of horses! You did not sleep at all that night, but in the morning life went on, and at the market no one seemed the worse for the thought that monsters walked the streets at night.

It has been a few weeks now, and you have grown accustomed to the skeletons that walk the night and guard the gates, you know the dead areas of the city are off-limits, and the Plaza of Owls is the one restful place in the city. You have noticed that many out-of-towners seem to linger in the Plaza, and have heard that the death-energies of the city are weakest here, which probably makes it a more pleasant feeling area for those not native to this area.

You're not terribly interested in this Necromancy stuff, but neither does it bother you any longer. Ultimately, it doesn't seem all that fantastic, from a military standpoint, so you aren't that keen on it. Your master on the other hand, has learned at least a dozen new Necromantic spells, and seems to have made a few regular contacts among the local lower level spellcasters, trading some of his abjurations, simple item formula and blasting magics for the local specialties. Their focus on death-magic has left him a tiny niche in dealing in other forms of magic, although he does not need to 'make a living,' but instead simply trades his services for laboratory equipment and texts for his idle researches, conducted at a leisurely pace, these days.

The lack of color is frustrating to your eyes, and your master seems to agree, as the inner rooms of your home are decorated with colorful carpets, wallhangings and pottery, which he claims rests his eyes from the tedious black, white and grey of the city itself, with its unrelenting motif of obsidian and bone.