View source for Post:The Transcendi - 03/19/2021 - 01:53

{{Post
|a=DR-ARMIFER
|t=The Transcendi
|d=03/19/2021 01:53
|n=1189
|f=l
|c=The Necromancers / Necromancer Ideologies
|p=<br>
: Sickened by departure
: From their wicked way of life
: Gods among us fight
: To keep their thrones out of the strife
: So they threw us out
: Sowed the seeds of doubt
: Ascended
: They made the noose the artist's savior
: And the thinker's cold demise
: Restless into cults
: To tell the people pleasant lies
: Our dystopian
: Home we're rotting in
: Offended

: Here we stand on holy ground
: I have heard the thunderous sound
: Of millions saying wake up, set us free

: -Aviators, "Holy Ground"

---

Over a century ago, an unknown necromancer-martyr wrote "Investigations Toward an Alchemy of Flesh" and set into motion a dervish of holy violence, only amplified when [[Kigot]], betrayed by his temple, turned to necromancy and wrote at considerable length "The Philosophy of the Knife." While there are no surviving copies of the Alchemy of Flesh, the references to it in the Philosophy are clear enough: a generation of purged necromancers believed that it demonstrated that necromancy of sufficient power and refinement could be used to create life from nothingness. Eternal, perpetually flowing life force and with it the living immortality which in the [[Immortals]]' creation is a divine right.

Kigot called it transcendence, and the process of attaining it the Great Work. In the time since, knowledge has been gained and lost.

As the Philosophers inch closer to unlocking the secrets of the the Transcendi, the shape of things appears to be more wildly optimistic than even the original [[Philosopher of the Knife|Philosophers]] dreamed of. While older texts and discourse regarded the Great Work as a purely alchemical or sorcerous procedure, modern sources of some authority on the topic ([[Zamidren|Book]], [[Xerasyth]], and the [[Old Man]]) indicate it is a fundamental change in the nature of the necromancer. Specifically, that the necromancer assumes not just a divine right but divinity itself. Through the bleakest possible theosis the necromancer emerges at the end of their Great Work a miniature god.

This has added fuel to the fire under the Philosophers' feet, yet even as they scrabble to be among the first to give the throne of the gods a good shake, something within the structure of the Philosophers rots.

Kigot was not gifted with the incredible insight of necromancy that the martyr had, he was an intermediary and, critically, a moral philosopher. The Philosophy of the Knife is not just a shopping list of divine characteristics but a _philosophic text_ about necromancy. Kigot emphatically argued that the pursuit of transcendence was a moral imperative, not out of personal gain but because humanity (presumably he meant all sapient species) deserves to be free to create the world they wish for themselves. Kigot's incredible optimism included the notion that humans could create a better world than the Immortals who, by never being mortal, could fundamentally never understand the hell they had created in the cycle of creation and utter destruction that keeps the [[Plane of Abiding]] going.

Kigot did not imagine a single necromancer would transcend in blood and glory. He did not imagine an entire organization would. Kigot imagined everyone would, that every soul could be saved.

As the world of the necromancers spirals outward, living [[Redeemed]] walk the lands and the [[Perverse]] cults plot and scheme, it seems only slightly premature to consider what the would-be Transcendi will do to differentiate themselves from the Perverse they so look down upon. It is hardly anyone else's place to say.

-[[Armifer]]<br>
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino
|sub=Necromancer, Philosophers of the Knife, Kigot,
}}