If I remember correctly, didn't Gygax really dislike Lord of the Rings, and all the LotR references were added later by other people? D&D is mostly at its core a Sword and Sorcery game, and draws a lot of inspiration from S&S novels like Elric and Conan the Barbarian.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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The latter, and even then you'd probably only be able to find Bylorhof and Manhavok.
The vanquished but not totally defeated necromancer, enemy of men, Elves, and Dwarves, in hiding and regaining strength while his artefacts tempt people into wearing them? The Necromancer of Dol Guldur, better known as Sauron. You can't go far in this genre without running into Tolkien.
Codex
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Sauron was a Necromancer? Huh. I must be missing some information. I thought he was just a Dark Lord, corrupting people and stuff. I don't remember any undead that weren't a spirit army manifested by Aragorn. Unless the Nazgul are undead? I never really understood what they were aside from being the nine mortal men granted Rings by Sauron and controlled by the One Ring.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
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Necromancer was a weird nickname he was using to remain incognito while he was gathering his strenght right before War of the Ring. He did not actually do much in raising of dead and it was never mentioned in any way.
Hobbit the movie trilogy is going out of its way to stretch the Nazgul as vengeful dead ghostly spirit to fit the modern take on what Necromancer actually means, i think, as well as somewhat drawing on the Tom Bombadill sequence with the graves of the restless malicious spirits that nearly capture the hobits.
It is mentioned in hobbit, both the book and movie i think, as well as shortly in the LotR books themselves, that the council of Istari chased Necromancer out of Dol Guldur.
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In the Hobbit he is refereed to as the Necromancer and never by his proper name. That was not totally connected to the rest of the legendarium and Tolkien's ideas for a War of the Jewels of the Rings, the latter of which became LOTR and the former of which was only published posthumously as the Silmarilion. As for the Nazgul they are pretty much textbook undead, being as they are unnatural beings that are 'neither living nor dead' and endure on the world by Guldur, dark magic.
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He at least dabbled in it. The Lay of Leithian, Canto 7:
Not yet by Men enthralled adored,
now was he Morgoth's mightiest lord,
Master of Wolves, whose shivering howl
for ever echoed in the hills, and foul
enchantments and dark sigaldry
did weave and wield. In glamoury
that necromancer held his hosts
of phantoms and of wandering ghosts,
of misbegotten or spell-wronged
monsters that about him thronged,
working his bidding dark and vile:
the werewolves of the Wizard's Isle.
If I remember correctly, Necromancy didn't always refer to the act of raising the dead. "-mancy" was originally used as a suffix for fortune telling magics, so pyromancy is trying to see the future through fire, and necromancy is trying to see the future through death.
pucflek
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He might've wished so, but Tolkien impacted the genre of Fantasy the same way some wayward planet did Earth at dawn of time. In both cases, while you might try to run and hide and divorce yourself from that influence, it will still pull back the tides and hang in the night sky.
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pucflek
Verified simpleton
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Its much more a somewhat serious children's book. The movies, as much as i hate them, initially very much captured the overall feeling of that book.
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With regards to Sauron being known as the necromancer, while we are not told why he had that particular title, it was the name he used while he was in hiding. For most of the third age, Sauron was greatly weakened and thus hid, only revealing himself as Sauron around 80 years before the start of the War of the Ring.
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Sorry had a bunch of jobs over time, some probably pretty surprising for the most iconic Dark Lord in fantasy.
During the time of the Hobbit he was the Necromancer, which doesn't involve that much dabbling with undead - although keep in mind before our moden idea of a guy who raises spooky scary skeletons, "necromancy" was just a form of divination which involved the summoning of evil spirits, sometimes to pump them for information. The suffix "-mancy" just meant "divination", so as haruspicy means divination by looking at entrails, necromancy meant divination by spirits of the dead and pyromancy originally meant divination by looking into flames, which is a lot more boring.
During the Second Age he was disguised as Annatar, Lord of Gifts, who will probably show up in the new Amazon show as some sort of twink.
Before that when he served Melkor he was the Prince of Werewolves (werewolves here just being giant demonic wolves with poison fangs rather than your classic shapeshifters - although Sauron could turn into one, as well as a "vampire" which in the text seems to be a giant evil bat with acid blood).
Before he fell to darkness Sauron's original name was Mairon, and he was a servant of Aule, the Craftsman of the Valar and creator of the dwarves. Mairon and Curunir (later known as Saruman) were both servants of Aule, actually.
And if you want to get meta, in the earliest draft versions of the story the role of Sauron, Prince of Werewolves was served by a character named Tevildo, Prince of Cats. Yeah.
During the time of the Hobbit he was the Necromancer, which doesn't involve that much dabbling with undead - although keep in mind before our moden idea of a guy who raises spooky scary skeletons, "necromancy" was just a form of divination which involved the summoning of evil spirits, sometimes to pump them for information. The suffix "-mancy" just meant "divination", so as haruspicy means divination by looking at entrails, necromancy meant divination by spirits of the dead and pyromancy originally meant divination by looking into flames, which is a lot more boring.
During the Second Age he was disguised as Annatar, Lord of Gifts, who will probably show up in the new Amazon show as some sort of twink.
Before that when he served Melkor he was the Prince of Werewolves (werewolves here just being giant demonic wolves with poison fangs rather than your classic shapeshifters - although Sauron could turn into one, as well as a "vampire" which in the text seems to be a giant evil bat with acid blood).
Before he fell to darkness Sauron's original name was Mairon, and he was a servant of Aule, the Craftsman of the Valar and creator of the dwarves. Mairon and Curunir (later known as Saruman) were both servants of Aule, actually.
And if you want to get meta, in the earliest draft versions of the story the role of Sauron, Prince of Werewolves was served by a character named Tevildo, Prince of Cats. Yeah.
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I think that a lot of those would more correctly be thought of as Titles (Prince of werewolves, Lord of Gifts) or false identities (Annatar, Necromancer) than job descriptions - although they would reflect what Sauron was known for doing at the moment.
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People reading my quest might be interested in this bit
Can't wait for Tumblr to simp all over him.
Wait has it all ready simped over Sauron?
Probably.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
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It has. I refure Sauron as a twink however. Regal people can't be twinks.
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Huh. How about... twunks?
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Maybe they choose a look like the Shadow of Mordor/War Annatar.
That one looked decent, a lot like a generic LOTR-Elflord, but just a bit different.
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While this is true, the necromancy in question as far as sauron being "The Necromancer" is concerned likely involved commanding the souls of elves that completely refused to ever Go West, which it turns out is A Thing, so somewhat surprisingly, instead being based on the original etymology, Sauron being The Necromancer probably means exactly what it means to the ear of most people.
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Something of a side-project, but would be good fun to cooperate with Kasmir and publish a book on the minor (Sylvania) gods of the empire or similar.
Kindof a way to stick it to Sigmar too for Mathilde if she encourages worship of other gods!
(I just want moar worldbuilding)
Kindof a way to stick it to Sigmar too for Mathilde if she encourages worship of other gods!
(I just want moar worldbuilding)
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You remember wrong. Gygax's Appendix N at the back of the original Dungeon Master's Guide lists Tolkien as one of the inspirations, for both The Hobbit and the "Ring Trilogy".
Appendix N is a fascinating reading list, like a fossil or insect preserved in amber.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
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Just to be clear, when was this interview?
I'm just curious when he says he loves the movies if he's talking about Peter Jackson or the old Rankin & Bass/Bakshi 'trilogy'.
August 2004, it probably would have been the Peter Jackson movies he was talking about.