I finally managed to meet with Manvale and take possession of the spell scroll he had. There were two spells inscribed on it, an apprentice level incantation and another, more powerful one. I have now mastered both. The first spell was meager and useless spell for summoning a single soulless in combat. The second...
Soul Vortex is a more powerful version of Life Drain and quite, quite useful in battle, far more so than many other spells in the Necromantic school, even though those others are nothing to roll one's eyes at either. I pronounce myself quite delighted with this turn of events!
Also, it seems like with winter once more in the offing, the middle of autumn sees everyone and their dog scrambling to find shelter. I got two more offers of service, but once more, my treasury hold not nearly enough.
Not sure how much use a Hedge Wizard would be. Their magic has great variety and little focus, though they can provide one with a nasty surprise on occasion.
The assassin, on the other hand, him I would very much like to hire, but the cost is prohibitive. A pity, because I would have found very, very many things for him to do.
(Assassins work as part of a regular army, but their assassination weapons are used at the start of combat before any other attacks take place. The only things that work before assassination are prebattle effects, which only things like demon lords and such possess. The strikes rear attribute means that the attack is made on a random target in the rearmost row of the enemy army, so it is quite possible to kill an enemy mage. Especially if there are no other things in the rearmost row.)
However, there has been a most annoying setback. Apparently Cernetu didn't manage to eradicate every brigand from the south, since someone has retaken the brigand lair and I expect that sooner or later we will see more of them making a nuisance of themselves.
