The Great Work (book)/Contents
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SPOILER ALERT! |
| This article potentially reveals in-game secrets, spoilers, walkthroughs, or other information about necromancers not intended as general knowledge in-game. |
The Great Work
We, as Philosophers, strive to complete the Great Work. But it is easy to lose sight of why, and of what, the Great Work really is. We balance on the edge of a knife, delving into the profane and what most common would refer to as the necromantic, in order to complete this Great Work.
There are three fundamental rules to the way that life currently functions:
- All living creatures must eventually die, whether killed or from old age.
- All living creatures must feed upon death, whether directly or indirectly.
- All living creatures become stronger by preying upon others in one way or another.
For a living creature to feed and sustain itself, it must cause death, whether by destroying and consuming a living plant, or devouring and consuming another living creature. The world is a charnel house, built upon the bones of the once living. In addition, creatures gain strength through conflict and fighting each other, and slowly become weaker when complacent, eventually dying themselves. A pet whose master brings it food and water every day eventually loses the ability to feed and care for itself. Likewise, a person who has all their needs provided for them will eventually lose the ability to fend for themselves. This is not the fault of the pet nor the person, but a fault of the world.
The Great Work seeks to undo all three rules -- a complete end to death for all creatures great and small, an end to the cycle of consumption required to feed and sustain life, and an equalization of power. The completion of the Great Works is the end to the cycle of needing to struggle to survive. With the end of death, there is an end of suffering, and a beginning to true peace. With true immortality for all living things, there is an end to the dependence -- an end to the need for Immortals, the ultimate consumers, the creatures that the cycle of life and death ultimately goes to feed.
A lot of talk goes toward the Immortals, but the Immortals aren't the immediate problem. They are the mad architects of man's misery, but they are not the instrument by which humanity suffers. Humanity is locked in a struggle against its environment which begins with the pain of birth and inevitably ends with the bleak oblivion to which all souls are consigned when they die a final time.
This word bears repeating: inevitably. No matter how good you are, no matter how perfect you lived your life, no matter what the balance of your sins and virtues are, you die. You might die very quickly, or you might go on for a thousand years on a wing, a prayer, and a little necromantic magic, but your final reward for enduring the sick game the Immortals have laid out before you is death. Every natural mechanism, no matter how benevolent seeming, exists for the express purpose of leading man down a set path to his oblivion. It doesn't matter if you are good or evil, the end game is exactly the same.
The only answer is to tear it all down -- to kill death and reinvent what it means to be alive. If nature is predestined to murder its children, then nature needs to be fixed.
On the Philosophy
As Philosophers, we seek a way out. This is the true purpose of the Great Work. We seek to end participation in the soul-crushing grinder that is the world. We seek an end to pain, disease, hunger, and death. We pick at the most terrible corners of the mortal experience and desperately hope that somewhere, hidden in the dark, we will find the endless dawn that is the birthright of every man who stares at his world and sees how truly wrong it is.
In this pursuit, it is greatly important to avoid interaction with the demonic as much as possible. You may have heard that the enemy of your enemy is a friend, and by seeking to undo the food source of the Immortals, we have certainly made enemies of them. But there is no difference between the Immortals and demons. Indeed, they are one and the same. To overthrow one just to replace it with another brings us no closer to the end of the cycle. It merely changes which being is in charge, which being is benefiting from the cycle of life and death, which beings are being fed and sustained by it.
To complete the Great Work, we seek knowledge. It begins with the study of death: how things die, the nature of death, and the nature of undeath. We do not seek for all creatures to become undead, as that is the way of those like Lyras, but undeath is the only current example we have of something breaking the cycle of life and death. We study its nature to learn more about it, not to join it. This is a purely scientific endeavor -- experimentation, repetition, theory. By our studies we gain a larger picture of death and how to break it. Ultimately the answer is found in what most would consider necromantic.
The path of the Philosopher is not for the faint of heart. Once the journey is begun, there is never any going back. A Philosopher can fall into perversion, as unfortunately often happens when an individual discovers that we do not pursue raw power, but instead understanding. Or, they can come to regret their decision entirely, and plead to the Immortals to "redeem" them.
On the Perverse
It is ultimately not a necromantic end we pursue. Necromancy in and of itself is easy. The Perverse are what we consider "Necromancers", but we are no more Necromancers than a Bard is a Warrior Mage, even though both use the same type of mana. The Perverse are those not of the Philosophy, who use necromantic magic to their own ends.
When you ask a random Elanthian to picture what a necromancer is, he envisions a member of the vast ideological camp known as the Perverse. The Perverse ideology encompasses all necromancers who do not follow the Philosophy, whether they are the marauding necromancer who raises a vast army of undead to defile all that is good and pure, or the ancient and jaded necromancer who is content to remain in his lair surrounded by a few minions.
Of course, things are rarely so simple. The Perverse encompasses incredibly diverse groups and individuals, including most of the major names in necromancy. A Dragon Priest and a Bone Elf are both Perverse, yet they practice the discipline for wholly different reasons. The ideological tie that binds is rejection of any overarching moral dimension to necromancy. The necromancers of the Perverse are universally so broken and so distant from social norms that they cannot internalize any value difference between bringing the dead to unholy life as a mindless killer and learning to wield a sword.
The Perverse are largely after one thing, and one thing only: power for themselves, and themselves only. There is no overreaching noble goal for them. Some are after vengeance, some lust for the power that necromancy brings, still others became necromancers solely as an act of desperation. But, they all have two things in common: the Perverse do not further the Great Work in any way, and, universally, the Perverse are shunned by normal society and persecuted by the temple.
The Perverse have no other binding characteristics, and while some of them have banded into cults such as the Dragon Priests or the Bone Elves, largely they are at odds with each other. Typically, these groups have one overarching leader surrounded by fanatical followers that do his bidding, all the while creating their menagerie of undead creatures. All Liches also fall into the realm of the Perverse.
On the Redeemed
It is simply a reality that in the course of practicing the discipline, we go against all societal norms and even the express wishes of the Immortals. The very nature of what we do is anathema to both the Immortals and to society. It is impossible for anyone except the most misanthropic to do these things without some lingering regret, even if they are needed and necessary.
The Philosophy is difficult, and a lonely path. Some crave what they used to have. Some, a rare few, face the darkness they find in their soul, and find within themselves a shred of what they believe is light. This sometimes results in the self-delusion that the Immortals are willing to give a second chance to this double turncoat, and the individual considers themselves "redeemed" after a personal epiphany that is mainly created from their own delusions.
The necromancer who manages to create this so-called redemption might, after the initial euphoria drains away, notice that something is a little... wrong. They may believe that the Immortals no longer gauge them as a threat, but they are still a necromancer and there is nothing they can do to change this.
True "redemption" in this manner is far beyond any of us. We have left the selfish embrace of the Immortals to pursue something greater, and this is not something that they will forgive no matter how remorseful and contrite any individual may be who has turned from them in this manner. The Redeemed intentionally cripples themselves, shunning most of the magic that makes up the majority of their knowledge. The Immortals thus judge the Redeemed silently, ready to strike them down once more if they slip even once. The Redeemed fear this fate more than death itself. By becoming Redeemed, an individual burns all his bridges. The twice-damned has twice as far to fall, and no friends in the pit he would land in.
Redemption is the opposite of its namesake. It is a second falling, a waffling between wishing to escape death and wishing to return to it. Those who commit to the Philosophy must be wary of falling again to the Immortals, to the demons that call themselves gods.
Conclusion
The Great Work is not an easy path to walk. It is full of strife, pain, and what many would call evil, yet we must unknit the world in order to remake it. This is not the path of the lich, which is little more than a corpse possessed by its own spirit. This is not the path of the "redeemed", who cow to the Immortals they once shunned. It is not the path of the common man, who accept the cycle of life and death.
We struggle with the Great Work because we desperately need to believe man deserves to be saved from the strange forces that pass judgment over it. We long for them to stand and quit the night. They are men, they are women, and no power in the universe has the right to say what is theirs.