User:RiddlePhantastique

Practice: Necromancy

Commonly consigned to the macabre practices of evil wizards in role-playing games, Necromancy is actually one of mankind's oldest magickal practices, with its roots in the Shamanism of antiquity. This broad practice centers on manipulating the representations of physical death and the mephitic energies of death itself to gain power and insight. While a sometimes wet and grisly practice replete with haruspicy, wailing spectres and shambling zombies, Necromancy can also involve talismans carved from bone, magic circles to conjure ghosts, Spiritualism and other esoteric practices. Modern mages tend to default to Necromancy as being the blackest of magic, but many classical necromancers also studied physical healing, protective magic, communing with ancestors for benevolent wisdom and curse-breaking. Among Tradition mages, this practice is most common among the Euthanatos but is also practiced by some Verbena and even Hermetics (though Hermetics frown on trafficking with the un-dead, which is understandable given the Order's history...) In the Alliance, Bata'a dance with Baron Samedi, Hollow Ones pursue this most Goth of practices, and some Wu Lung blend it into their work. Technocrats shun such superstition, though viral re-animation of dead tissue continues to tempt some Progenitors... not that that could ever go wrong.