At long last... THE NECROMICAN!

Fantasy Art Enterprises was an undertaking by Mathias Genser, Paul Reiche III, and (just about the quintessential old-school artist) Erol Otus. I've written about their rare tome on monsters and items called Booty and the Beasts, which is pretty expensive to buy but if you hunt around in the usual file-sharing services (*caugh* scribd *caugh*) you "might" find a PDF copy of it.

The gents in 1979 also produced a companion book of magic user spells called The Necromican. I have seen copies on eBay running for around $400, but this book is rare! So I've had this little project where I was culling spells and art from different reviews and putting together a copy that just gave me some flavor of what this book is like. Anyhow, I was using my little assembled version as inspiration for some traps down on the 10th level of Underport and I just thought "well someone has to have posted a PDF of this thing somewhere..."

Lo and behold, after braving the murkier side of the interweb, and for purely historical reasons, I found it!!! Ssshhhhh.... and I'll provide a little taste of Erol Otus art and an interesting spell.
(P.S. here is a link to my "fabled" Necromican, formatted to print booklet-style in Adobe Reader)

 BENIGN BOOTS, (8th Level)   Duration: Until caster's body is safely home or until dispelled. No. Affected: Caster only. When cast, this spell will create enchanted boots around the mage's feet. These boots will act completely normal until the wearer dies. When this happens, the boots transport the corpse and themselves into the astral plane and then run at 3 times man's speed per turn to a predesignated place of safety. During this journey the corpse should be treated as though a preservation spell had been cast on it.

(Don't know why, but I find this spell strangely refreshing!)