Necromancy
The Magical Properties of Life
The following are some interesting excerpts and important information written in this guide to necromancy. They are presented in the order in which the can be found in the book, preceded by the titles of the chapters.
Preface
As everyone knows their is something magical about life. Seemingly out of nowhere life springs forward with all kinds of tissues with all kinds of functions. Whoever cracks a fresh egg will find nothing but fluid. But after mere weeks of brooding, a small chick exits the shell, fully blessed with eyes, feathers, wings, legs and beak. Somehow time and warmth have turned fluid into body. The same rule applies to life without eggs. The only difference is that the mother's body supplies the fluids and warmth, and acts as the shell. All the processes that make goo transform to life are clearly full of magical energy. As is the case with all magic, the energies inherent in the subject matter can be harvested to feed the energy of spells by returning the matter to the dust, ash and fluid that formed it. Life is no different.
Unbinding the Energy of Life
To harvest magic from lifeforms, the life form has to be drained of the fluids that made it. Even desiccating a body delivers magical energy.
More energy can be harvested by utterly destroying the subject matter. The less there is left, the more energy is won.
However, as always, different methods deliver different forms of energy and for some spells the harvesting of energy can be limited greatly to the point were merely killing the subject, or even using no more than some small part of an already dead organism to burn up. Such is the case in spell components taking bat's wings or newt eyes.
The View of Society on the Practices of Necromancy
As is explained in the previous chapter, even small parts of dead organisms can deliver the energies necessary for necromantic spells. However, society as a whole frowns upon even the smallest forms of necromancy. Whereas it may seem logical to some that there are reservations with killing, maiming and destroying humanoids, the disgust, loathing and judgement society shows toward necromancy, generally tends to make no distinction.
Even the use of the earlier mentioned wings and eyes of small insignificant animals gets considered as the foul work of witches, warlocks, liches and other hated magic-users.
The way to deal with society's hatred toward the school of necromancy is hard to determine. Mostly, us researchers interested in the special properties of necromantic magic have to keep our work and research carefully hidden, to the point of working in well protected and locked personal laboratories, in hidden and forgotten corners of our towers, or even in remote and desolate corners of the world.
Mostly, if we want to share our knowledge and research results with colleagues in the field, we are forced to turn to the black arts. The whites usually completely refrain from necromancy, whilst the reds seem loathe to admit whether or not they dabble in even the smallest and insignificant borders of necromantic spells.
The Endless Possibilities of Necromancy
As mentioned earlier necromancy comes in many shapes and forms and therefor uses many different shapes and sizes of subject matter. Not surprisingly, what spell we want to gain access to determines what kind of material component is warranted. The wide variety of necromantic spells and effects means there also is a wide variety of possible ingredients necromancers need.
Trying to keep a low profile therefor is helped greatly by limiting oneself to the smaller and less obvious ingredients. This means working with a limited number of possible spells, but still a good many possible effects. However, in general, as is always the case with magic, the more powerful spells need the more obvious and difficult to hide components.
Whoever wants to gain access to the greatest of necromantic possibilities, needs to deal with the necessity to procure a far away laboratory where enemies to necromancy are not alerted to the use of the necessary ingredients of these spells.
At the top end of necromantic power and capability we find the most clearly frowned upon component of all. The next chapter will deal with this extreme end of necromancy, the very soul that humankind has been gifted with.
The Existence, Properties and Powerful Possibilities of Soul Use
At the top end of necromanctic energies we find the human soul. As divine casters can tell you, humanoids have been blessed by what we call a soul. There are those who claim animals may have souls as well, but as far as necromancy is concerned, harvesting souls of lower creatures does not render the energy needed in the most potent necromantic spells.
What this soul is precisely built from or into, what 'makes' a soul if you will, is neither completely clear, nor of importance in this study. Let's just assume it is something granted by gods and made up from their supernatural powers. This is also the reason divine magic tries to safe souls and is especially repulsed by necromancy.
What is important is that the soul has tremendous magical properties. Harvesting this particular energy from subjects gives rise to spells that can easily tip the scales in even the greatest and most epic battles.
Souls can be used simply to give the necromancer new life force, from healing wounds to prolonging life. But at the extreme end souls can even give eternal life to those who have explored and attained the highest levels of necromancy. It is this extreme level of power that is possibly rendered by soul use, that we will delve into deeper in the next chapter.
Necromancy at it's Extreme End
As a preface to the last and most powerful and frowned upon chapter of necromantic studies, we will give a full range of the wresting from the subject of the very soul, and making sure to catch the connected energy. After all, as souls must come from deities, those deities usually reclaim the souls once the vessel that contained it has breathed it's last.
It is therefor paramount that the method is performed to perfection to prevent catastrophic failure. This is especially important when much depends on success. Such as is the case in life threatening battle situations, or indeed when performing the most extreme necromancy. The kind where upon one tries to gain eternal existence.
First of all, when trying to pull the soul from a being, one should be careful to use all the components of the relevant spell to perfection. Needless to say, the creature needs to be alive before this process commences, and will inescapably die before it ends.
Since pretty much all subjects are far from keen to loose their life, let alone their souls as well, they will try to resist any magical effect attempted by the caster. This level of necromantic magic therefor takes a fair amount of arcane prowess, and is never successfully performed by those who lack the necessary skill and experience.
The verbal commands tend to be foul tasting to the untrained mouth and often resemble, or indeed are, infernal or abyssal in nature. Nevertheless they need to be pronounced just right if any level of success is to be expected.
Material components, if going beyond the subject containing the sought after soul, usually involve their own level of extremes, often times rare and hard to come by, other times involving dangerous, unhealthy or just plain disgusting harvesting.
The somatic components are intricate and often painful, seemingly also part of the process of limiting access to this extreme field of magic.
As concerns the work done after the souls has successfully been pulled from the subject, making sure the soul is not reclaimed by its divine owner depends largely on the components as already mentioned. Most importantly however there has to be some material component powerful enough to catch, hold and lastingly keep the soul bound. Most of the time this involves some type of glass or crystal. Especially in the case of the ultimate level of soul binding, this vessel takes a lot of protection and strength. The container itself must be protected by spells and incantations, so as to keep its functions optimal.
The Zenith of Necromancy: Lichdom
At the most extreme end of Necromancy we find the rare case of powerful and extremely experienced casters who make the choice to prolong their lives indefinitely.
This is not a process for the fainthearted, mind you. The process from normal mortal to immortal being is a long and arduous one. It takes quite some level of steel nerves and lack of squeamishness, as the transition means needing to die in the process and returning to what is commonly known as an undead.
The time in between is out of one's hands and involves trust in a third party to complete the process and bring the subject back into the world. And, as if such a dangerous central part of the transition were not daunting enough in and of itself, one's own soul is bound to the eternal existence one has chosen and therefor can never return to any kind of afterlife.
To live forever therefor, means giving up life, limb and soul. In this particular case the soul of the caster itself is bound into a vessel known as a phylactery. It will from this position feed the body with life force as long as the phylactery is fed new souls regularly, making the whole illegal and destructive necromantic murderousness even more hard to maintain; in effort, in the attempt to keep it secret, and also in the measure in which it will be hunted down when the outside world gets wind of the process.
Failing to provide the phylactery with a soul every once in a while, will not destroy the lich, but will make an end to the possibility to maintain a physical body.
The lich whose phylactery has 'dried up' as such, will see his body turn to dust and his mind turned to chaos. This transformation into a mad and diminished form turns the erstwhile lich into something that is colloquially known as a demilich.
The fact that the phylactery has to be 'fed' regularly, compounds the problem of the safekeeping of the phylactery itself.
If ever someone defeats a lich in combat, and manages to destroy the body, the life energy that the Phylactery provides will in time rebuild the lich into a new body. The only way therefor to permanently destroy a lich is to destroy the phylactery that feeds it. This is not an easy accomplishment, involving divine rituals and spells, but not impossible either.
For this reason a lich will want to keep its phylactery stored away in a safe location, protected by spells and traps of deadly power. But to leave the phylactery hidden away far from the lich itself, to make finding it that much harder, will also make it hard to keep feeding it new souls, so as to prevent the aforementioned effect of losing the mind and body of the lich and reducing him to demilich status.
If a lich wants to maintain its full power and at the same time protect the phylactery that ensures his eternal nature from the destruction that might end his very existence, leaving his soul to wander aimlessly throughout the Prime Material plane, he therefor needs to find a practical solution.
Maybe the beings that initially assisted him in his transition, might help him out in this respect. No lich has ever been known to have something that could rightfully be called 'friends', but allies is a wholly other matter.
Type
Guide, How-to
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