"So you wish to know of the arts of the dead, do you?" the old man cackles. "Well well, but it might be more than you've been expecting...
"There are two types of necromancy--though from the way the priests talk you might think there is only one, and that wholely evil. Hypocrites. They freely use the half of this art that they fail to acknowledge.
"All necromancy deals with death and spirits. The traditional necromancer--the so-called 'evil' one and generally hunted--is the black necromancer, the one who uses his knowledge to reanimate corpses, control undead and capture souls. It is true that these kinds of studies tend to warp the mind and produce an extreme fascination with death, but no more than a pyromancer is obsessed with fire or a priest is obsessed with his god. There are as many truly insane necromancers as there are maniacally fanatical priests.
"As I said, many of those priests are hypocrites. Everyone knows to go to a godmonger to have a ghost exorcised, yes? That is what we call white necromancy, and all necromancers practice it to some degree lest the spirits they call get out of hand and destroy them. White necromancy also deals with calling willing souls--not commanding--warding against spirits, and channeling. All the true mediums you see in the bazaars are white necromancers.
"Necromancy is a powerful art, but it carries a price. Much skill is required to control a rebellious spirit, or exorcise one; many apprentices and even masters have died for even slightly underestimating the power they attempt to harness. There is the threat from the rest of humanity, who consider necromancy a sickening art akin to demonism and who often persecute us. There is the threat from within, being the inherent fragility of the human mind; not everyone can stare into the maw of Death and remain sane. Last, there are the servants of Death Herself, who does not like mortals tampering with the souls under her care. For that latter reason, most black necromancers stick to reanimation rather than soul-catching. It is...mildly disturbing, to say the least, to wake up in the middle of the night and find a dark figure with a scythe looming over you in bed.
"A few side effects of prolonged study and use of necromancy are spirit-sight, death-aura, physical and dietary changes, strange aging, and in some cases severe psychological and spiritual alterations. Spirit-sight is the first manifestation and similar to the spell of the same name, except this only fades if the necromancer takes a prolonged vacation from study. The death-aura is a faint sense of chill that seems to follow the necromancer wherever he or she goes.
"Physical changes usually manifest as a paling of the skin and a thinning of the flesh, and can be overlooked as simply a side-effect of prolonged cloistering. Necromancers seem to eat either less and less or more and more as time goes on; some learn to feed off of spirits for power and therefore sustenance, while others must consume great deals in order to power their death-ridden bodies. Either way, they develop a fondness for strange and often grotesque things, from spirits in the first case to human flesh in the second. One of the thresholds that must be crossed to becoming a true necromancer, according to one of my friends in the profession, is looking up from your books one day and realizing you have a craving for eyeballs. This is equally true with white necromancers, so you never know what your priest does on his off-hours.
"Necromancers do not age like normal people. There are two ways this may swing, for bumbling necromancers and skilled. The bumblers wizen amazingly quickly, becoming shrivelled husks while still in their relative youth, though they live to their normal mortal age. Skilled necromancers, especially those that feed off of spirits, tend to freeze at the age where they mastered the art. They look more and more deathly, and their hair gains grey streaks, but their faces and bodies never lose the youth. It is not a vital youth, however; they either look sickly, dead or stone-like. Necromancers of this sort tend to live much longer than normal humans, as they have such a strong control over the link between soul and body.
"The psychology of the necromancer alters with his physical alterations, naturally. The last stage tends to be severe dementia, but not all of us fall so far. We all tend to be a little bit insane, but not necessarily visibly. Necromancy is quite apparent in the mage's aura, however; it usually appears as bands of darkness muting the colors, or an overall deepening of the colors toward black. In severe cases it is a solid core of black in the center of the aura.
"And there you have a brief synopsis of necromancy. Is there anything else you would ask?"
The History of Necromancy Blackhealing Undead Creatures The Boneyard The Deadlands Demons
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