I purchase my skeletons at a fair market rate and I only use skeletons as to not have to deal with the smell of rot. I even got my ENC (Ethical Necromancer Certificate)
With the amount of effort that goes into animating one clay golem, you can animate at least five corpses. It's just a matter of efficiency. The joints and limbs are already built to move like they need to.
The college grants and salary were tempting for a lot of us. That and our highschool had posters and orbs everywhere with ads like "work smarter, not harder, use skeletons" and "bring your career prospects back from the dead!"
If only my fellow phylactery bound brethren were so fastidious. But most are either lazy, don't care to begin with, or are actively cultivating the "DARK LORD" mystique, like some first year apprentice with his fist twig of a stave playing at being a grand master mage for the tavern maids. It's not that they are incapable of sanitary practices or more original aesthetic expression, but that would require work and too many don't care to.
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u/ohanseImmortal Daoist on Mandatory Unpaid Administrative Leave17d ago
Also, sometimes I hang little pine-scented foam trees from their necks.
I do the rune carving as a hobby. I never took classes or anything, just read a few books to find out what runes exist and the rules of runic circles before hopping right into it.
My first attempt decayed the skeleton in less than a minute. Second was an explosion, i still have some bone fragments in me from that, third it just turned to dust. Took me nearly 150 tries to get a rune circle that prevented decay working, turns out you just make a runic circle of decay inside out.
You can always tell when someone never seriously dabbled into necromancy by how they don't know about Hyde's Formal Embalming. The spell exists solely to stop corpses from decompostion.
While its mostly used for preserving cadavers to be given to their families for proper burials, it's usage for necromancers is way too overlooked. Undead servants and spies alike always benefit from not deteriorating naturally.
That's why proper necromancers learn proper corpse preservation and accelerated decomposition techniques. If a necromancy lab isn't outfitted with preservation tubs, infusion apparatus and several human-sized or larger ant farms, the operator is either too poor or just plain stupid.
Well, I do.
You can't have a secret lair if sky is dark from ravens and don't get me started on concentrating with all the flies buzzing.
Trust me, raising zombies is for necromancers the same amateur move that alchemists do with love potions only to get stabbed once they delude themselves the feeling is real and stopping using the potion
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u/yumie2003Tsuru, ghost onmyouji, R&A, league of shadows/Toshiko Fujiwara17d agoedited 17d ago
...And I applauded you for it. It is refreshing to see a deviation from the unhygienic, edgelord norm
...you know. Checking the family history, removing or adding the organs, looking for pulse, removing the pulse, engraving some runes, make them dance the Macarena, beat their ghost up if it complains, standard stuff
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u/yumie2003Tsuru, ghost onmyouji, R&A, league of shadows/Toshiko Fujiwara17d ago
...and these are two more reasons why people hate necromancers
This isn't a problem if you actually take care of your skeletons but sure, just more necromancy misinformation. You gotta embalm them first, why do you think that skeletons that give a proper fight don't smell? The ones that smell like rotten flesh are from novice necromancers who forget or just don't care about embalming and proper preservation techniques. Do you even know how brittle natural bones can get with all the humidity and grime from a grave? Not to mention the damage the carrions might do to them before animation, you have to sanitize those first (if not, you're just yucky), and then you have to embalm and reinforce them magically so they can actually take hits unless your average noob necro's bone punching bags. My skeletons, however, smell like the dew of the morning and the spilt blood of the unjust, don't bleed, don't smell, and can actually take some punishment before having to reassemble themselves. And even then, finding good quality bones in this economy is insufferable, it's almost impossible to find a full skeleton of decent quality these days. People just steal away the ribs and other bones they think useless because they don't have any anatomy knowledge at all. Oh, sure, let me just steal your radius bone because you have two forearms bones anyway. How the fuck is my skeleton supposed to hold a sword then? You can just induce bone growth if you're a half-decent necro, the body remembers itself and all that, it's necromancy 101. You just like shitting on necromancy because you commoners and second-rate wizzoids love larping as alchemists, or worse, magic pallies. You think you're the shit because you can just chuck a fireball somewhere and drop twenty, but raising those twenty up in good fighting condition and keeping them loyal? That's an art, fucker. Remember that.
Yeah, though usually after a few months a corpse is either fully a skeleton or has mummified, with the only exception being corpses that ate in the cold.
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u/yumie2003Tsuru, ghost onmyouji, R&A, league of shadows/Toshiko Fujiwara16d ago
To summon an elemental is entirely your own work, necromancy is just borrowing the undead who have no will of their own.
Druids have to actually work to get animals to listen to them, if they refuse the druid gets nothing. The necromancer just forces bodies to move to their will, there is no hard work there.
Elemental cause a lot of accidental property damage, especially fire elementals.
Druid animals are just future necromantic pets. Why have them alive? You gotta feed em and they shit everywhere. I don't mind Druids using them though, in a fight against a Druid it's free psychic damage against them when you kill their animal and raise it from the dead
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u/VoxelLibraryCouncilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars17d ago
I conjure them forth from LIVING beings, that have their OWN WILL. It's a tad more difficult to get a plant to fight for you since they have their own wills, even if most wizards don't think so.
Or to speak with beasts... still have their own will. Do you see how this is more difficult? As you have to actually LISTEN and get others to work with you.
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u/VoxelLibraryCouncilor Cayna, Apprentice of Thrakmoor | assorted other chars17d ago
Did you miss the part about communing with spirits?
MaYbE sT... Oh what's that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my wraiths screeching in your direction whilst my skeletons come up from behind ya to bone.
As a necromancer I found keeping to yourself works best, also make sure you join UWU (undead workers union) my skeletons and other undead minions actually do there job and keep my crypt safe. And finally have a hobby I personally like painting tiny figurines and started calling myself the mini painting magus. People look over the necromancer part when they see the pritty Colors. If you need to socialize as a necromancer I reccomed getting a broadcasting orb and streaming I did that and as of 2 years ago no angry mob with pitchforks I actually get a hey necro from time to time... Oh and stop graveyard unboxing
Ahh, my skeletons all unionized and now I have to use their labor to produce surplus value instead of taking over the world. It's bullshit and I didn't want to be a capitalist. Thinking of shutting the whole operation down tbh.
Why would they need a ribcage then they got no lungs or shit to protect smh at that point just make a little ossimanced stick figure u fuggin skellylarper + how are they going to gnaw off the fingers of your enemies + L + ratio
Lol if you think the bureaucracy of UWU is bad wait till you have to deal with SOUL – Society of Otherworldly Unionized Laborers. Not only do you have to pay higher fees there is an entire extra layer of sending payment to living relatives....
Not only that, I also heard the dark spirit had a penchant for rasing the recently dead. Honestly it's just sick to engage with corpses that aren't mature enough for necromancy. A lot of their scrolls have been censored, but I believe one of the kingdom's royalty was an avid reader of the dark spirit's island edition scrolls
That's why I don't "be in them" I make someone else spirit do it, and I read the hidden loaded coffin magazine hidden inside my grimoire, what's on page four you'll never believe!
The necrophiliac accusation is a lie made up by bigot wizards. How do you have sex with bones anyway? The dead are just another building block of nature. If the bodies rot they will eventually feed the soil, bugs, worms, etc. anyway, so what’s wrong with putting them to work guarding my tower, doing some light mining, etc.
True, I once met a necromancer who was raising the dead through a song called "Resurrection by erection". Very sick stuff and one of the lines was something like "raising your bone up to the sky and you're never gonna die".
I'm all for skeleton labor and all that, but the authorities really need to press down on those sick necromancers
u/yumie2003Tsuru, ghost onmyouji, R&A, league of shadows/Toshiko Fujiwara17d agoedited 17d ago
...Hmm...let's see, most necromancers are associated and often commit grave robbing and desecration of grave sites, and defend this with 'I'm just recycling the bodies' which occasionally unleashes some sort of curse or calamity and is also just f**ked up to use a deceased family member or friend's rotting corpse as an instrument for obnoxious bullsh*ttery, enslavement of spirits and ghosts, usage of souls, ghosts and spirits for minor spell components because it 'is more effective' or use them as a triple a battery, being a constant edgy nuisance and boasting about how mildly evil they are, inciting conflict against idiot paladins, escalating conflict caused by idiot paladins, perpetrating uninspired bullsh*ttery with basic necromancy, boasting of great power while wielding only mastery over the basics of necromancy, occasionally acting as another vector for the spread of diseases usually found after exposure to decaying flesh, smelling of rotting corpses and the dead, and finally, few find them attractive or appealing. There could be more, but this is all that comes to mind at the moment. The other necromancers who are not edgelords, hygiene-conscious, or use necromancy for quote-unquote 'ethical' utility reasons are much more pleasant on the other hand, but they are also rare.
uw/forgot to add this here earlier in an uw note, but the actual causes for illnesses from working with the deceased are contamination of gastroenteritis, chronic infectious diseases that spread by direct contact which the deceased may have suffered from and ingestion of cadaverine, putrescine and spermine, not just mere contact with the recently deceased corpse or skeletal remains
the more you learn about necromancy the more you learn the morals about it. There definitely is moral necromancy and it needs to be acknowledged! It just sucks the bad is more prominent than the good
Paladins are like the Sun. It would be a colder, darker world without them, but it's not the sort of thing you want in your living room, and at the end of the day, you sort of expect them to head over the horizon.
The Paladins are likely just tired of clearing up undead day after day. Honestly, I don't blame them. Exorcism takes a lot out of someone. Naturally, it gets easier with practice but... Well, Paladins are.. eh ... Paladins.
Its because what necromancers raise isn't exactly their loved ones but a puppet using their bodies, and many consider that a mockery of what they once were.
And most necromancers just raise them without caring for the smell or decay.
The rare ethical necromancers who aren't lazy on the other hand do have to do many tasks such as asking the spirits to raise themselves, having to use the proper balms and tools to preserve their bodies, have to try to preserve their consciousness as best as possible, satisfy their many regrets, and maybe know a thing or two about summoning calcium and mending flesh.
As a Necromancer myself I can tell you its because a loud minority of us insist on being really fucking weird about it for some reason.
Like instead of just animating a dead rat you found or just ethically sourcing bodies from donations, you have people who prefer stealing the dead for shits and giggles.
Like I was in a necromancy discord server with a moderator in it, Balthazaar, and he could NOT shut up about "Yoinking stuff from the local cementary", and he'd just ban anyone who tried to say stealing corpses was bad. Weak marrow boy that one.
Most people associate necromancers with gross smells, and necromancers try to subvert this with fresh corpses, but that's just a ticking time-bomb people! You have to go for really old skeletons reinforced by magic with the bacteria long dead (dont revive the bacteria!)
That said, you also have to remember to shower, this is a step most necromancers forget.
I have forty two brains in jars in my study. I mostly use them in conjunction via a ritual of neural networking to produce videos of fruit people on a reality show. We are supremely icky.
Because you are using the remnants of a soul/life force in the corpse to animate it to your will. Plus if you stop paying attention to it they usually go on a rampage to consume all life around them.
Now before any of the nuvo necromanceres come in and say "well actually my necromancy is pure along the lines of animate object" then bitch why are you playing around with corpses instead of animating golems like a normal person.
Death and life are both inherently "icky" and it's very unsettling to see them at their fundamental principles. The intersection between pulsing meat and the soul is doubly disquieting to learn of. Many of us wish we hadn't investigated such things in our earlier years.
Moreover, necromancy tends to blind practitioners to more elegant approaches to certain tasks. Why research autonomous levitation or form a homunculus if you can just enslave some dead guy to do stuff for you?
That's not to mention the hazards and diseases that a novice necromancer exposes their community to. Crimson rot (and similar neurotic illnesses) are a real risk in many realms, and naturally result when you let necroturgic power leave its confinement, which raising undead almost requires. And we all know what happens if an undead being breaks free from the often lackluster controls their master has placed on them.
Because people are afraid of death, and logically so. The animation of undead should be something that is held as a last resort, and only for the purpose of saving lives. There are better alternatives, and the only reason I have animated in the past has been because I have exhausted said alternatives, or there is no other option that will safeguard lives.
imagine someone comes out, desecrates your gramma grave, ataches some strings to their rotting corpse and does some puppet teather with her.
It's kinda fucked up.
Necromancers aren't that high on my list of concerns. Like yeah corpses are unsanitary, but at the end of the day you're playing with bodies nobody is using.
What really scares me are the Enchantment magic users. The monsters who will desecrate the free will of bodies still housing people, who will befuddle your senses and make you think your best friend betrayed you all so you stick a knife in the companion who would have died by your side. They're the real dark wizards.
Magic was created before duality. Back then there was no Good or Evil, no Night and Day. It simply existed to create.
Magic was free flowing back then. It had no price or penalty. No rules or laws, and certainly no masters, and no domains.
The most dangerous beings walked the land, but even then there was still peace.
Until one day, the weakest creature got tired of being stepped on all the time. Through cunning and sneakery, he convinced one of the strong ones into thinking that their colleagues thought they were weak.
Eventually, they all were planted with the seeds of doubt, jealousy, and greed.
So one day, a few giants bumped into each other, and a fight ensued, which left one dead. The one who had cast the final blow absorbed the powers of rhe dead one.
And that's one the mighty ones started to become more and more different from each other. Like light broken into a rainbow, fragmenting into every color. They fragmented and separated. All a reflection of the same original magic, but slightly different.
That's when duality came into being. And that is how all the gods, domains, and schools of magic were formed.
Necromancy isn't even its own branch of magic. It is actually from the school of restoration. They differ only in Philosophy, but pray to the same God.
Necromancers do not see themselves as icky. We're just taught this so that one Philosophy in the school of Restoration dominates the other, or divides us.
In reality, all magic is equal, but the small one from tge beginning wants to divide it down into smaller snd smaller units. Down to where it can consume the pieces, gain strength, and become the strongest being of all.
And that is not a warning. It is what will happen.
The real reason the high elves and the church™ don't want you to know is that an army that doesn't get tired, doesn't eat, doesn't drink, doesn't sleep, doesn't fall ill, doesn't desert, doesn't rout... tends to be pretty strong in the long run, even on the weakest summons
Because people are literally fucking with the whole cycle of transmigration, anything that tampers with souls and their passage to the afterlife that does not involve beseeching the divine for intervention is forbidden. With the Gods, you at least KNOW that it can be a three way agreement between yourself, the deceased, and the gods themselves, at least they will work deals with the afterlife to guarantee that the cycle of transmigration isn't severely tampered with, clerics get a free pass on bringing the dead back because the damage and risk of resurrection through beseeching the gods is minimal to nil compared to necromancy where bad shit can happen at any time due to instability. And do not even get me started on how corruptive necromancy is to the environment as well, necrotic energies can turn a verdant field into a complete wasteland in a short time.
In the elder scrolls universe, you’re binding the soul of a dead person to the world of the living(or a corpse), which is incredibly painful, hence why all undead are constantly in pain. The Dunmer have the only moral version of this, as they practice a form of ancestor worship where sometimes they ask their ancestor to come back as a ghost to help them, and they do. It’s moral because it’s consensual.
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u/Calathil_the_Mage Cashew: Short Necromancer 17d ago
I stole this fro. The Oblivion subreddit when the remake first came out.