Necromancer

Necromancer Guild
Image copyright of Simutronics Corporation
Primary Skillset:	Survival
Secondary Skillsets:	Lore, Magic
Tertiary Skillsets:	Armor, Weapon
Special Abilities:	Risen
Mana Type:	Arcane
Barbarian - Bard - Cleric - Commoner - Empath - Moon Mage Necromancer - Paladin - Ranger - Thief - Trader - Warrior Mage

Visions concerning the Guild

Click here, as there are quite a lot of them at this point.

Joining/Playability

Roiling, tenuous shadows pour from the very depths of the eternal abyss. Their aim is to consume all life, to reduce the very earth to ash and ruin. Few are those willing to stand in the face of such evil. Fewer still are bold enough, twisted enough, and ambitious enough to dare attempting to control it.

In this time when the Holy Church is screaming murder at the faintest hint of Necromancy, will you be able to keep your own dark secrets? Will you be able to bear the danger, the scorn, in return for the power? The table is being set, and the hour that the banquet will arrive is close at hand.

Will you be ready?

-GM Abasha (Necromancer Guild Advocate)

The Necromancer Guild is intended, by design, to be an advanced option. It is intended to be there for players who are already familiar with the game and want to try a profession that includes some novel and difficult permutations on the normal play experience.

This is not the same thing as an ultra-exclusive treehouse that only the most dedicated 1% of scripters can enter. The Necromancer Guild may be difficult to enter and advance in, but it will not be exceptionally so. If a player wishes to create a Necromancer PC after the guild is released, he will be able to do so with only a minor time investment. The sadism inherent in the design of this guild is meant to be playful, not an actual hindrance to your enjoyment of the game.

Lore

A Piece of History (Timeline)

286 AV - Expedition to stop Necromancer predation of western hamlets and villages of Zoluren launched. The party of adventurers return to Crossing successfully after three months, donating a number of profane artifacts to the Clerics' Guild.

Curiously, neither names of those involved in the expedition nor the Necromancers they hunted down are a matter of public record.

287 AV - Necromancer hysteria. Hundreds, including a significant fraction of Asemath Academy, killed in a purge orchestrated by a joint Cleric and Paladin organization calling themselves the Hounds of Rutilor. The death toll climaxes near the end of the year, with a small number of villages in Zoluren and Therengia put to the torch.

300 AV - The Necrolord Kigot is hunted down and killed in the foothills west of Crossing, after years of spreading sedition through Zoluren.

320 AV - First reliable report of the spirit guide / guru called the Old Man, though some stories place it as far back as 270 AV.

331 AV - First reliable report of a Necromancer calling himself a Philosopher of the Knife.

393 AV - Lyras crosses the Barrier.

394 AV - Lyras begins an assault on Forfehdhar, Ilithi, Zoluren and Therengia. She uses the reanimated corpses of Rakash and Prydaen are used alongside Kobalds and other undead for the attacks.

After a long battle in which Lyras is actually struck down, Prince Vorclaf, ruler of Zoluren, dies. Upon his death, Lyras tries to take Vorclaf's soul, but Meraud intervenes and takes the soul to the Starry Road.

395 AV - ????

Ideology Overview

Why?

By more than any other quality, Necromancers define themselves on that question. While there is no such thing as a necromantic federation or "guild," cults and lone Necromancers have been known to align themselves along ideological lines. When even the gods themselves are against you, it's nice to have someone who can offer something even deeper than lore, wealth, or power: a broad understanding of you and your discipline.

With the end of the era of cults coming upon them, a number of the subtle shades of meaning and nuance that defined necromantic ideologies have been washed away. In modern times, the surviving Necromancers broadly recognize three different camps:

• The Perverse
• The Redeemed
• The Philosophers of the Knife

Ideology Differences

There's meant to be a level of symmetry between the Reedemed and the Philosophers, but they aren't quite the same.

Both seem to believe their power will somehow change the world or aid races.

There's a big difference here.

The Philosophers want to change the world. They believe that their atrocities will lead themselves and nominally the rest of mankind into some greater state of living. They imagine themselves as misunderstood geniuses who are only doing what they must so that they (and nominally the multitude) may cast down the natural order that condemns them.

The Redeemed are none of those things. While they might focus on trying to do good works, they do it as a form of redemptive suffering. The Redeemed accept the notion that necromancy is wholly selfish and evil, that it cannot possibly lead to the positive outcome that the Philosophers want. The best the Redeemed can do is take their broken souls and try to do some good on the gods' Elanthia with the scant tools they have left. "Some good" might be saving others from death -- or might be hunting down and murdering other Necromancers.

Changing Ideologies

The Redeemed have a mechanical definition. Your character needs to actively seek out the state, and then be mindful that they do not let it slip (ever; a Necromancer can only enter the state of redemption once).

The Perverse is a bit more fuzzy. You never officially "join the club" or anything, but if your Outrage meters pass a certain point, various NPCs will consider you one of the Perverse for better or worse -- usually worse.

The Philosophers are a little different, and we'll discuss them in more detail as we get closer to the release of the guild.

The cults have chosen to hate each other to the point of mutual destruction. Whether or not this has been a successful policy is open to interpretation.

Systems

Outrage

The "necro-meters."

Risen

Long-term minions.

Skills

Skillset

• Survival Primary
  
• Magic and Lore secondary
  
• Armor and Weapons tertiary
  

The central skill for Necromancers will be Thanatology, which will primarily be learned through Necromantic Rituals.

Light Edged

Necromancers will have a skill requirement in light edged weapons. Not especially large, but it's there and persistent through the character's entire career. In fictional terms, it's a ceremonial requirement. As you may have guessed by now, some very important Necromancers invest a lot of symbolism into knives.

Magic

Official Spell List

This is a link to the play.net Necromancer spell list

Mana Type

• Necromancers will have a certain mana type that they perceive as (pre-outrage getting to the point of them showing up corrupted). This will be static per the necro in question, and is determined randomly by character flag, sort of like the bard voice thing. Holy will not be one of the types a necro can show up as having, but everything else is possible. This mana type will be reflected in the character's default spell prep, as well as messaging for AP spells.

• ICly, a budding Necromancer probably wouldn't even know they can get away with pretending to be another type of caster (Lyras and company certainly don't), and certainly wouldn't make any long-term plans until after they attained attunement and figured out what was going on.

• Your "mana flavor" is with you and easily discernible right at 1st circle: toss an Energy Bolt at something and look at what color it is.

• As your Divine Outrage and the necromantic corruption of your body increases, this becomes pretty dodgy and eventually your attunement to the Arcane overwhelms any affinity you have to the conventional mana frequencies. The Perverse would argue that's the point you become a real Necromancer.

• There's four reasons why they did it this way.
  • 1: The fiction around Arcane mana and how Necromancers are doing what they do strongly encourages it.
  • 2: There's far less technical overhead.
  • 3: Being able to choose "flavors" would just lead to people wanting backsies on any choice, which generally annoys me and is contrary to the fiction of how attunement works.
  • 4: Even if you had the ability to switch "flavors," it would do nothing but hurt your chances to pass yourself off as Not a Necromancer.

• This is not part of an elaborate Necromancer disguise system or a meaningful statement about your character's Ultimate Magical Destiny -- it's an incidental form of misdirection that's merely meant to allow you to walk around the street and get some TM ranks without screaming out you're a Necromancer (Outrage notwithstanding).

Arcane Mana

Attunement to Arcane mana involves some pretty substantial changes to how a Necromancer's nervous system works (in ye olde days, the Imperial Healers' Guild hypothesized that the social deviance of sorcerers was somehow linked to these changes to the brain -- fortunately, no one knows or cares about their pesudo-magical theories anymore). The goal of the procedure is to produce a magician that can see and operate with multiple types of mana at once.

It... doesn't quite work. Perhaps their method is still too crude and faulty, or perhaps the prohibition is wired even deeper into how the brain works than even they can manipulate, but the attempt always goes wrong. Even attuned to multiple mana types, in the Necromancer's perceptual sphere they superimpose upon each other into this freakish, aggregate, other kind of mana that does not really exist.

Necromantic spells are written to account for deranged movements of this "fifth frequency," but the lack of true multi-attunement perception means they can suffer like other people when casting outside their normal environment.

Self Buffs Only

I really don't want to hear people gwething for a Necro because their bone armor enchantment is out of charges.

Ding ding ding. This also goes into the design decisions behind Transcendental Necromancy: all Necro spell buffs are self-cast only.

If everything works out correctly, there will never be a legitimate reason to seek out the help of a Necromancer on the basis of guild. The only thing necromancy can do to anyone other than the user is harm.

Spiritual Attacks

Directly meddling with the soul is specifically something that PC Necromancers will not do.

If you ask the Clerics, the heretical pursuit of immortality through necromancy proves itself worthless by the fact it cannot wield something as fundamental to man's ascent as his soul.

If you ask the Philosophers, they'd suggest that they hold far more respect for that little, transcendent spark of life than a bunch of maniacal priests who rip apart souls to power their spells.

Sorcery

• Necromancy is a subset of Sorcery. Sorcery is dangerous and unstable magic that society abhors and that may or may not have some intrinsic evilness about it. Blackfire is an example of this. Necromancers are as free to dabble in Sorcery as any other guild, but they will not have any special access to the non-Necromatic parts of it.

• Necromancy is created by mixing Life mana with either Elemental or Lunar mana. Life mana is always used in the mix, by definition.

• While AP spells are legal according to society, a Necromancer's AP spells are still considered sorcery for purposes of spells that defend against it, such as Protection from Evil.

Casting Backlash from scrolls

Arcane spells = Considered native, even those that are not necromantic (but they still cannot cast guild-specific sorceries, such as Blackfire and Teleologic). Lunar, Elemental, Life = Low risk, equivalent to any other guild's best combination. Holy = DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

Spellbook Overview

Magical theorists recognize two forms of necromancy: Perversion Necromancy and Corruption Necromancy. In a mechanistic approach to the discipline, this works well. Necromancy is the result of two distinct mixtures of mana, Life plus either Elemental or Lunar, which this separation embodies.

Necromancers are not mechanistic and they usually are not magical theorists either.

The tri-spellbook separation -- the ABCs of Necromancy -- was the standard among most cults, though variations existed. The Dragon Priests are notoriously bookish, classifying no less than thirty different Necromancy spellbooks across obscure cultural and magical lines. In sharp contrast, the doctrine of the Bone Elves states that any sort of classification system is the product of childish (non-Elven) minds attempting to comprehend the one, true path of power that encompasses mastery over all facets of death sculpting.

In recent years, the rogue Necromancers known as the Philosophers of the Knife codified the fourth spellbook, Transcendental Necromancy. This was not the discovery of some new source of power, but simply an organizational change reflecting their own priorities and values.

The uninitiated have always tried to understand the deep secrets of the Necromancers, but have rarely ever brushed past the surface. Even the nature of the spellbooks the Necromancers use have been shrouded in mystery, with information frequently found lacking or entirely wrong. However, some facts have breached the veils of secrecy, and a general knowledge of each book has been acquired.

• Animation Necromancy Spellbook
• Blood Magic Necromancy Spellbook
• Corruption Necromancy Spellbook
• Transcendental Necromancy Spellbook

Combat

Necromancers will not have any particularly noteworthy combat abilities. They may get spells that are exceptionally potent versus corporeal undead, but nothing special against the non-corporeal. No reason they wouldn't be able to use a blessed weapon if a Cleric wants to give them one handle-first.

Consent / PvP

• Necromancers will not be able to select PvP Closed stance.
• Unless performing acts of obvious Necromantic flavor, standard Consent policy applies.
• Risen will always be fair game, though attacking a Risen will give consent to the owner.