We at the DMR Blog like to mark the occasion of significant anniversaries with a post. Usually we’re paying tribute to a famous author on his birth or death day, but today I’m going to talk about the twenty-fifth anniversary of a book which turned out to have a significant impact on my life. It wasn’t a work of fiction, or a self-help book, but a supplement for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The Complete Book of Necromancers by Steve Kurtz was released in the spring of 1995, and came and went fairly quickly. Luckily a friend of mine snagged one shortly after it came out. Ostensibly the book was intended for the eyes of Dungeon Masters only, but of course we were hungry to add the new spells and powers to our player characters’ repertoires.

It wasn’t until three years later that I found a copy for myself and was able to read it from cover to cover. One thing stood out to me: Unlike all other 2nd Edition AD&D sourcebooks, The Complete Book of Necromancers explicitly admitted its inspiration from literary sources and encouraged players and DMs to do likewise. The 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide had its Appendix N, which today is well-known and even revered, but other than Necromancers, there was nothing comparable in 2nd Edition.

Kurtz mentioned many authors throughout the book, but one name appeared far more frequently than any other.

“The Archetypal necromancer was perhaps best captured in the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith. The decadent Mmatmuor and Sodosma from “The Empire of the Necromancers,” powerful Vacharn, and his treacherous sons Vokal and Uldulla from “Necromancy in Naat,” the vengeful Nathaire from “The Colossus of Ylourgne,” and finally the perverted Abnon-Tha with his timid assistants, Narghai and Vemba-Tsith, from “The Charnel God.” All these vile and repugnant personalities serve to clearly illustrate the Archetype at its lowest form.”

Clark Ashton Smith is mentioned by name in the majority of the chapters of Necromancers. While Smith’s absence from Appendix N is conspicuous, Kurtz more than made up for the oversight. Whether describing death-worshiping priesthoods, wizards’ fiendish familiars, or ancient tomes of forbidden occult lore, a Smith story is usually referenced as a source of inspiration.

Illustration by Brom from The Complete Book of Necromancers — Illustration by Brom from *The Complete Book of Necromancers*

The cumulative effect of seeing Smith mentioned so many times impressed a message on my teenage brain: This guy’s stories must be cool as hell! I made a trip to Borders in search of his books and came up empty-handed. Sadly, I made the mistake of not pursuing further for quite some time. I didn’t think about Smith much (if at all) for the next ten years.

In 2008, Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away. I hadn’t been actively playing any RPGs for a while, but I became curious about how the game developed in its early years. Around this time James Maliszewski started his excellent blog on old school gaming, Grognardia. One of the blog’s most prominent themes was the critical importance of pulp fantasy literature to D&D. Even though I wasn’t playing any more, the weekly installments of the Pulp Fantasy Library series kept me coming back.

I decided it was time to check out Clark Ashton Smith, who Maliszewski highly recommended. I headed over to a used book store and walked out with the Timescape collection The City of the Singing Flame. After reading it, my mind was blown. I now had a new favorite author and a new conception of what fantasy fiction was all about.

Back in high school, I never would have imagined that The Complete Book of Necromancers would set me on a path that would not only lead to discovering one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, but to becoming a publisher of fantastic fiction (and a writer as well). Not only that, but I had the honor of including the unabridged version of Smith’s story “Necromancy in Naat” in one of my anthologies, Renegade Swords. Reading of those “vile and repugnant personalities” Vacharn, Vokal and Uldulla in one of my own publications is beyond thrilling! If you have not yet become acquainted with Smith’s work, don’t wait as long as I did to check it out. You won’t regret it.

D.M. Ritzlin is the author of the collection Necromancy in Nilztiria. Nilztiria is a world of adventure and strangeness, peopled by lusty heroes and callous villains. The thirteen sword-and-sorcery stories presented in Necromancy in Nilztiria place the emphasis on sorcery and mix in a touch of gallows humor. Click the cover for more information.