Post:Necromancy and the Necessity of Evil - 09/25/2018 - 13:38
| Necromancy and the Necessity of Evil · on 09/25/2018 13:38 | 853 |
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| >>1. Is it the case that Philosopher necros at some point must murder innocent people in order to complete the Great Work?
One idea that I've held dear about how Necromancers work, that we've hinted about but never been explicit about, is called the Perfunctory Sin. Necromancers need to do Bad Things to empower their rituals, and their rituals empower their more iconic powers. So, as you point out, all Necromancers (and all necromancy) is under the purview of demons in one way or another. The question of what you do with that is embodied in the three states of being. 1) Denial of the demonic, the Redeemed. And that leaves... 3) Going in halfsies? Sort of. Without going into details that might still someday be relevant, Transcendence is not a denial or total abject acceptance of either divine or demonic forces. Transcendence is the ability to impose your will on both and do spiritual judo. This is a long way of saying that the Philosophers, in pursuit of the Great Work, will need to do greater feats of objective evil (insofar as I get to define such a thing) and greater ability to recognize what they're doing at the same time. It's possible we'll not explicitly make "murder the innocent" as the benchmark here, but the intention still remains that the Philosopher needs to go into the deeps and darks to come out the other end. >>2. Is the "immortals are cattle ranchers" ideology espoused in the necro lore objectively false? The situation with the Immortals is overdetermined; there are multiple things going on at the same time. The Immortals gain from the cycle of life and death and do, in fact, withhold the ability to fundamentally change it in ways that would be pleasing to the Philosophers. The Old Man has hinted that they do this for not altogether wrong-headed reasons. The Immortals are not absolute bad guys, but one thing we're doing with Necromancers is exploring theodicy in-setting. That never puts a deity with creational or absolute power over the universe in a good light. >>3. Does high sorcery irreparably damage the Plane of Abiding (i.e. not in a hormetic way, or in a way that can be reversed by the immortals)? High Sorcery, and especially Necromancy/Ontologic Sorcery due to the demon component, does damage to the Plane of Abiding. I hesitate to say it'd be irreparable, but one thing that is consistent in my depictions of guilds I write lore for is that Elanthia is slowly inching towards an apocalypse that may or may not be preventable. | |
| This message was originally posted in The Necromancers / Roleplaying the Necromancer, by DR-ARMIFER on the play.net forums. | |