Inside the mind of a necromancer

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm looking for a coherent philosophy as to why a brilliant spellcaster would devote himself to necromancy, as opposed to all other specializations. Bonus points if you can explain how this outlook would color other aspects of his life, personality and behavior.

(After years of playing an illusionist with what I think is a pretty robust philosophical basis for his magic, I want to do the same for necromancy in an upcoming Carrion Crown campaign I'll be playing in.)

Muchas gracias in advance.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Philosophy: Necromancy is based on mortality and as the spellcaster ages he is confronted with his own, perhaps the death of loved ones and then his obsessive personality turns towards the darker arts. He would dabble slowly at first and become more and more infatuated with the ability to extend life through the use of the dark arts. He may have also come into contact with undead such as liches and vampires. The obsession would become all-consuming as his experiments lead to other discoveries on how to raise the undead, control them, and make himself even more powerful.

How this would color other aspects of his life dealing with his personality and behavior would be as follows: Becoming reclusive to conduct his experiments on living and dead things, secretive and having his own place to conduct his experiments, obsessive about extending his own life and becoming immortal in the process, greedy for more wealth as his experiments cost a lot of coin to conduct and to buy the rare magical components, to pay off people to keep quiet about he seedier things he needs and perhaps uncaring for any life at all other than his own up to and including killing his errand runners to keep them quiet and to conduct other experiments on them as they would be fresh bodies.

Just a few thoughts that enter my head when I think about how I've played my own necromancers and how my players have.

 

[Rune]

I'm looking for a coherent philosophy as to why a brilliant spellcaster would devote himself to necromancy, as opposed to all other specializations. Bonus points if you can explain how this outlook would color other aspects of his life, personality and behavior.

(After years of playing an illusionist with what I think is a pretty robust philosophical basis for his magic, I want to do the same for necromancy in an upcoming Carrion Crown campaign I'll be playing in.)

Muchas gracias in advance.

It could be a reaction against the Enchantment philosophy--a rejection of emotion and the trappings thereof. This indicates some sort of early trauma in life and a (probably subconscious) desire to divorce his own personality from emotional tethers.

Inherent in this philosophy would be an understanding that life has emotion tied with it--and pain with that. The dead do not suffer in such a way. The goal of life, then, is to die, or, better yet, become undead.

Yet, intelligent undead often are bonded to emotion. Becoming undead, then, is not enough; one must also find a way to purge all emotion from self in so doing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Philosophy: Necromancy is based on mortality and as the spellcaster ages he is confronted with his own, perhaps the death of loved ones and then his obsessive personality turns towards the darker arts. He would dabble slowly at first and become more and more infatuated with the ability to extend life through the use of the dark arts.

I'm thinking of using the undead familiar feat from Libris Mortis and have it be his childhood pet.

"He's a great cat."

"You mean he 'was' a great cat."

"No, he still is."

 

[Pheonix0114]

It might not just be the fear of mortality, but a desire for power. Maybe he discovered some artifact that isn't much on its own but whispers about a tome or something of great power that a lich owned.

Or maybe it is a desire for knowledge, in one of my games we came in contact with a wizard trying to secretively obtain the stuff to become a lich because he didn't want to worry about food or sleep or death interfering with his study of an ancient library.

 

[Kaodi]

I'm looking for a coherent philosophy as to why a brilliant spellcaster would devote himself to necromancy, as opposed to all other specializations. Bonus points if you can explain how this outlook would color other aspects of his life, personality and behavior.

There is a possible way to look at it in which you have already answered your own question.

Most people who study magic do so because they want to get something out of it. The lonely wizard studies enchantment because he wants people to like him; the cowardly wizard studies conjuration because he would rather summoned minions take the beatings; the disgusted wizard studies evocaton because he wants to violently punish people; the creative wizard studies transmutation because he wants to be able to instantiate the purest versions of the works of art or artifice that he envisions in his mind. The brilliant wizard, on the other hand, the wizard most concerned with his reputation for brilliance, studies necromancy. Not because he particularly cares for corpses or dead things, but because necromancy is a frontier yet to be fully explored and tamed by civilized mages. Hardly anyone worthy of respect makes a full time job of studying necromancy, and thus when one is concerned with brilliance, it provides the raw material needed to make a name for oneself.

The brilliant necromancer is an academic and a researcher, and this can both blind him to some of the consequences of his research, and make him naive when dealing with his necromantic rivals, whom he sees himself racing against rather than opposed to. He does not share the same perspective as his fellow creatures, and thus tends to be irreverent of the dead, as they are his objects of study, rather than souls to be respected. He is not necessarily immoral, but places greater importance on the possession and discovery of new knowledge than on the consequences of that knowledge falling into the hands. He is confident in his abilities, but becomes irritable when people question his actions in relation to his field.

Or something like that.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The necromancers took all I had and all I ever wanted. They animated my bride and children and left me claiming I was unworthy to join them.

They were wrong.

I would show them that I was the greatest master of necromancy and free my wife and child from their undead state.

They would know torments like no other...

Or...

There are those who feel that the very essence of necromancy is somehow worse, tainted because of the things associated with necromancy. In my times, I've discovered that like a sword or a dagger, it is not the weapon used, but the weilder of that weapon. With the assortment of undead and other creatures fueled by these dark energies, you'd be a fool to not seek deeper understanding of how they function, of how they trive.

Both use a theme of knowing the necromancers to destroy the necromancers but the former is revenge fuel and the latter rational fueled.

 

[the Jester]

"...power, fear of mortality- bah! These are cliches, these are what the common man thinks motivates one such as I, never understanding the purity of our real state of mind.

"Necromancy- the so-called Dark Arts, though those of us learned enough to understand them disdain such a bigoted term- is all about free will.

"You see, most people allow themselves to be swept along by life, rushing towards its inevitable conclusion: death. And throughout their journey, fear rules their actions. From the moment they know that death comes, that the ultimate endpoint of the journey is the ultimate end of the journey, their choices are dictated by the frantic scrabble to avoid reaching that endpoint. Oh, certainly, some few are so drawn to death that their actions are the reverse- suicide, for instance- but either way, death rules the duration of... their lives.

"A necromancer sees much more clearly. One who understands death need not fear it. There are ways to continue, making it an irrelevancy. A necromancer understand this, and thus is free to make real choices, to actually act as a free agent instead of a creature driven by instinct to an inevitable set of decisions that inevitably fail, leading to the death it so fears. Necromancers are thus some of the only creatures that truly exercise free will in a world full of creatures that exhaust their lives in a dance of frantic determinism.

"What's that? Resurrection? Of course resurrection doesn't change anything I've told you. Knowing that the proper ritual or divine intervention can restore you from beyond the veil doesn't give you free will, it just gives you another way to try to stay alive. Only by understanding and actually exploring death can one overcome the power of fate that will otherwise direct his entire life.

"Please! I have already stated that the term 'Dark Arts' is distasteful. Ask yourself this: which is a 'darker' art- summoning a demon or closing a wound? Not the one that merely manipulates the energies of life and death. Indeed, there are many more 'necromancers' than admit to their craft. That bard who sings your hurts away? Her music is affecting the flow of your life force, concentrating it to heal you. That is necromancy. Every time a priest's god sends healing energies through you, bear in mind: that is the so-called 'Dark Arts' at work.

"Oh, I admit that there are death spells and worse in the necromancer's arsenal. How is that any worse than a blast of flame that roasts your flesh and boils your eyes? At least necromancy offers a quick death, rather than a lingering agony as you writhe like a roasted pig. And don't get me started about those wizards who control minds- if that isn't a 'Dark Art,' I don't know what is! Imagine being forced to kill your own brother or child by an enchantment. Now imagine a spell that makes you weak for a time. I ask you, which of those spells is a 'Dark Art'?

"I'm glad you asked. Yes, necromancy has a foul reputation, and it does indeed deserve it- but not the way most people see it. Yes, necromancers work with corpses. It is the art of life and death, after all! One cannot surpass death unless one has seen it. We necromancers deserve a reputation as hermits, for who would want to live next to someone who works with dead bodies all the time? We do deserve our reputation for unsavory odors and scents, for we work not only with putrefying flesh and tissue, but also with reagents, chemicals and preservatives. But do we deserve the reputation of always being vile menaces that must be stopped? Of course not! We are individuals, just like any wizard.

"Ah, my dinner! Now, I'm afraid I must ask you all to leave me while I eat. Thank you very much. Thank you. No, I'm afraid I must eat alone. Go on, now. Go on, before I become cross with you."

 

[WayneLigon]

Immortality is a strong motivator, esp. since being undead is the only reliable method of cheating death I know of in D&D. The desire for a long life could be taken as 'Now I finally have time to really study and perfect my art' rather than a rabid clinging to life because of the fear of death/the afterlife.

Another reason to study necromancy is pure knowledge, to use the magic literally to 'divine using the dead'. Speak with Dead, summoning ghosts, etc, would be great ways of learning all sorts of things, from ancient spells to who Aunt Emma intended get the family silver. There are all sorts of things only the dead might know.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Someone check Jester's arm for the Dark Mark, please.

(And give him some XP, if you can -- I've given it to him too recently.)