Chapter 4: Them High Elves Again
Ambrose worked to assemble his new skeletal model in quiet concentration. The male refugee watched in frozen horror as human bones took shape beneath the lich's hands into forms that made his skin crawl. Dizzy and nauseated, he forced himself to stay put, too afraid of becoming the lich's next set of spare parts if he were to run.
Ambrose steadily aligned bone to joint as he lectured in that cool, calm voice of his.
"All skeletal control, including locomotion, is localized in the soul," he said. "Two hundred and six bones, hundreds of joints—it's a massive burden, yet one that has remained standard since the dawn of the art. No necromancer has bothered to measure the strength of a soul precisely. Our only notion of their performance is in terms of three broad and vague designations: low-grade, mid-grade, and high-grade.
"In alchemy, potion formulas are measured to the milligram. Yet necromancy can't even measure the single most important variable of the art: spiritual strength. To me, that's intolerably lazy.
"Admittedly, spiritual strength fluctuates, so measuring it is difficult. But that's no excuse. Since I have the ability to fabricate artificial souls with no emotional residue, I was able to establish my own standard after a series of experiments. I've termed the unit of spiritual measurement a 'thaum,' and will describe the detailed procedure I used for measuring spiritual strength in a manuscript.
"As long as the editor-in-chief of Legendary Spellcraft doesn't reject my submission, that is…
"Back on topic, for today's experiment, we'll use a low-grade soul as an example. A low-grade soul capable of supporting a full skeletal frame measures roughly 80–130 thaums, with a peak rarely exceeding 150. Spread across two hundred and six bones, you end up with a clumsy, slow, and brittle undead.
"And just as tools like pliers and differential gears optimize structure for power or speed, so too can structural optimization transform an undead's performance.
"Reduce the bone count to twenty and you achieve a smaller frame that is far stronger, faster, and tougher. By my calculations, the combat effectiveness of such undead will increase by at least fivefold."