Content warning: Gore, body horror, death
Flesh puppetry is a form of necromancy that specifically incorporates the use of dismembered, rearranged or otherwise non-intact corpses to create new and unique undead forms.
Definition
Flesh Puppetry is a novel school of necromancy. It involves flesh, tissue, bone, hair or blood that is removed from the body or disfigured before reainimation with the intent of utilising the cells to make a new undead form.
Process
Undead forms created by flesh puppetry are normally known as
puppets,
golems or
vessels. They are assembled pre-animation, and can involve the flesh and tissue of multiple creatures. Examples could include a chimeric collections of animal bones, a stitched-together mass of body parts, a mound of muscle or adipose tissue, a taxidermied animal or even a pile of dead pond scum.
Traditional necromancy and reanimation works smoothly because the practitioner replaces the now absent soul with a powerful mote of
Arcannus, and uses their own magic to help animate their bodies. Flesh puppetry relies less on this technique and does replace a soul. It relies on manual animation of swaths of flesh or tissue, consequently requiring more power and skill comparatively. A 900kg intact cow will require much less skill and energy and a 900kg pile of assorted flesh and tissue, because of the manual animation required to make that flesh function effectively.
Legality and Common Practice
Flesh puppetry in the small scale is quite common worldwide, though usually this involves animal bones. Sedia is a specific exception, regarding flesh puppetry specifically as an "abbhorrent magical act" under their Necromancy Act. In many parts of Osmen, flesh puppetry is used commonly to animate small chimeric animal skeletons often made of chickens and rats to make a "winged rat" for religious ceremonies and entertainment. Often, this involves bat or chicken wings in combination with rabbits, rats or squirrels to give the appearance of winged animals. In Skypirros, collections of horse, ox and elk bones are often assembled into impressive skeletal creatures to pull funerary wagons in a tradition to honour the dead.
Comments