How do you call forth your thralls?

[Ravingdork]

When I summon and immediately use one of my zombie thralls, they always appear suddenly from offscreen, like in the movies.

This works especially well with Conceal Spell. XD

Brightly lit room with alert, frightened people everywhere and all the entrances and exits are covered by heavily armed guards? Doesn't matter. The zombie emerges from offscreen, biting into the neck an unsuspecting victim, having emerged from a space in which no character can look. In this way, everyone is always surprised, even in the most unlikely of places against the most veteran characters. XD

[Martialmasters]

I spend an action and boop here they are.

[kwodo]

I have them dig their way out of the ground, but i love the offscreen idea

[QuidEst]

Spirits fade in, naturally. Alternatively, shine a ghostly lantern over a spot, revealing them.

For skeletons, bones come rattling out of a bag and assemble themselves on the way to the summoning spot.

Zombies stumbling out of shadows that they couldn't have fit in, or, since summoning adjacent to someone is so common, climbing out of someone's shadow.

I already had to come up with a necromancer character with some similar constraints, and she carried her skeletons in extradimensional maws.

[Perpdepog]

I'm imagining flicking various macabre tokens and fetishes out of a pouch or other container, and having the undead appear to "grow" from where those tokens land, like the world's most grizzly pokeballs.

Edit: or like the sewing of dragon's teeth, if you're feeling more literary.

[AestheticDialectic]

In dungeons there are plenty of death things laying about, so the spell would pool up all those discarded bits of the dead and form some amalgam of previous adventurers, rats and similar such things

[NorrKnekten]

Mechanically you just grow it from pieces you already carry with you as written in the osteomancer,

One of my players wanted to use cured meat for this to create delicious zombie pigs. Yes he tosses magic bacon!

[BotBrain]

I'm imagining conjuring forth horrid black goop that grows into a thrall.

[NorrKnekten]

Pocket sand!

Its actually grandpa's ashes

[The Ronyon]

Vomit forth ectoplasm?

Cough up an owl pellet?

Open a vein, or your entrails?

They step from behind, from that corner of the eye that sees things creeping up from behind,late at night,when you should be safe at home in bed, instead of out roaming the darkness...

[Justnobodyfqwl]

I take the Dandy or Celebrity archetype, and they chase me around screaming like A Hard Day's Night.

[Ravingdork]

NorrKnekten wrote:

Pocket sand!

Its actually grandpa's ashes

*snickersnort*

[graystone]

Gingerbread 'man' cookies. Don't ask what they are made of. [hint, it's more man than ginger or bread]

[Powers128]

Cut a bloody wound into thin air to retrieve my soldiers from a place beyond mortal reckoning.

Gotta ham it up with the spooky class.

"You cannot conceive of the power I wield!"
-skyrim necromancer speaking to a horse

[Justnobodyfqwl]

graystone wrote:

Gingerbread 'man' cookies. Don't ask what they are made of. [hint, it's more man than ginger or bread]

"Yum, fresh made Gingerman Bread!"

"Oh, I love Gingerbread Men!"
"That's not what I said"

I LOVE gingerbread men as a festive holiday Necromancer. You make me want to play a Necromancer who animates skeletons within snow structures using Frosty's hat.

[The Raven Black]

A cold swirling stinking cloud with bits of hair, bones, flesh quickly coalesces into the thrall.