For those of you who run settings in which being a Necromancer is a possibility. Is it considered evil to be one? Or can there be heroic Necromancers? Is creating undead taboo in the world? Or is it accepted in some places?

If I use them, I use them as bad guys.  At best, I'd make them unsympathetic yet not actively evil.

These are folk who hang around with corpses, interfering with the dead.  How sympathetic can that get?

Be honest, was this thread inspired by the recent thread necromancy debate?

RPGPundit

Cl23/Mnk1 Pope of the Holy and most Glorious reformed Church of Wee Jas. Hero of Greyhawk, Slayer of Dragotha, Favorite of the Goddess and Bane of Kyuss, hated Enemy of Vecna. Lawful Neutral. Necromancer.

From the frontpage of the Celtricia wiki...

"The 'necessity of magic' comes from a major component of the Celtrician experience, that of the Migration of the Spirit.   The ancient name for Celricia is the 'Waking Dream', and it is considered the space between life and death.  In broad terms, The Celestial Planars let loose spirit energy into the Well of Life, and this is what inhabits every new birth.  Continuing this journey after death, the souls migrate to the Well of Death, where their merits are judged before they are free to continue through the Well of Death and reabsorbed by a Planar.  However, the key here is that the journey from death is long and difficult, taking decades or centuries, asuming the spirit is free to leave the 'Waking Dream' at all.  Necromantic magics can greatly aid the spirit in freeing itself and travelling through the void, and can also protect it from other forces.  These are called Shriving Necromancies, and while strange and difficult, such practitioners are seeen as beneficial.  Necromacy is also, however, the vehicle for snaring and enslaving spirits, or for those who are not ready to leave Celtricia.  Those who face death in Celtricia may fear it, but more, they fear dying alone, unshriven, their spirit tied to the 'Waking Dream' and an eventual puppet of some unscrupulous Necromancer."

Quote from: GalerosFor those of you who run settings in which being a Necromancer is a possibility. Is it considered evil to be one? Or can there be heroic Necromancers? Is creating undead taboo in the world? Or is it accepted in some places?

I like them, like them so much I write an article for Knockspell about 'em. But only as non-player characters.

There are essentially two kinds of necromancers you could do. The first type, and the kind I covered in KS, is the classic swords-and-sorcery kind. They create armies of undead and Frankenstein monsters. They aren't pleasant to be around at all, because they live in underground crypts and chapels made of their victim's bones - no sane person would associate with them regardless of alignment because they are so obviously not to be trusted.

The second type is just as evil, but somewhat more subtle. Call them a hedge necromancer. Add a dash of Eastern European shamanism, Caribbean voodoo, and Asian spiritism. You've essentially got a really disgusting fortuneteller that takes 'reading the entrails' to an extreme. They create undead, but usually only a few. They might lead Manson-like cults of other nutjobs, or work alone like a serial murderer, but the smell always gives them away.

If you want to play a character somewhat necromancer-like without overt evil, try a medium or some kind of priest that speaks to the dead. Most people can handle talking to their Aunt Bea by proxy, but when you actually bring the old gal back for some face time, it really freaks the shit out of them, and that's about the time the lynch mob puts up a sign-up sheet in the tavern.

The Necroscope series by Brian Lumley deals with modernish era warfare between different groups.  The main hero is someone who can speak to the dead and sometimes even raise them from the dead for a time if he needs the assistance.

I guess technically it counts as my game, since I am the one who wrote this particular section...

Necromancy.  Though the word often brings to mind images of a evil figure in a black robe bent on destroying the living, not all practitioners of the art are evil.  Though almost all of them do wear black robes...

This particular school of necromancy, far from being a secluded cabal of conspirators hidden deep within the jungle, is an open university on the main street of Miyr, regional capital and home of the Adventurer's Guild.

Quote from: RPGPundit;356059Be honest, was this thread inspired by the recent thread necromancy debate?

RPGPundit

No, it was not.

In my Rolemaster game:

In the Empire, necromancy was illegal outside the Church of the god Death (Yes, I had really imaginative names for some Gods, sue me), but Death Worship was perfectly legal. There was a Persian style empire to the east where the Church of Death saw necromancy as an abomination. This led to much conflict.

Arcane necromancy was illegal in the Empire, however, in the breakaway City of Skullport (Yes, I had really imaginative names for some Cities, sue me) necromancy was legal as long as you had a Guild Licence from the Necromancer's Guild.

Finally, Dwarf Priests where necromancers, due to their religion revolving around ancestor worship (Yes, I had really imaginative ideas for some races, sue me), where raising the odd dead dwarf to ask him what to do was considered perfectly normal.

None of these were 'evil' per say, although there was a group of Necromancer Druids who were fanatical animal rights fundamentalists who arguable were. (Zombie bears for the win).

In my games whether PC or NPC, they are strange folk but not necessarily evil. The study/reverence of death is just another expression of magic or faith.

Regards,
David R

You can also go the Dr Frankenstien route, with necromancy as a science, not evil as such but ethically questionable and profoundly unnatural.

In my homebrew fantasy setting necromancy is a traditional art still practiced by some of the major families.
Some areas of the setting are suspicious or even hostile towards it, seeing it as dangerous and consorting with 'spirits', but in any larger city it's common to see the undead envoys and avatars of powerful merchants and politicians... usually masked and covered in a way that makes it obvious what they are.
Most of the time it's just considered old-fashioned.

How about the Pushing Daisies TV show and when the Scooby Gang reserrect Buffy? They are good guys raising the dead for all the right reasons.

You also have the option that animating the dead is simply animating an obect that is no dfferent from a bit of wood, of course here you must accept that there is no innate divinty in the body.

Lastly remeber that the official defintion of necromacy is 'devination by communicating with the dead' so like folks here have said that covers all your mystics doing Seances, that kid in 6th Sense voodoo men, shamen of all stripes and Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost.

So I can see a good few examples of good necromacy.

Evil individually? Not always so. But as a practice it straddles the line at best, as even those that start out with good intentions slide down that slippery slope of corruption.

-=Grim=-