mithriltabby | Escaped gaming meme (Reply)

Since

sandpanther is talking about getting more of an unlife, I thought I’d share some options.

I got to thinking about necromancy and what makes it evil. Sure, if you have hangups about what people do with your body when you’re dead, you don’t want someone animating your corpse, and there’s the general “ick” factor, but what’s to keep a civilization from letting go of those concerns and having an industrial revolution powered by skeletal limbs turning cranks?

So I did the usual physicist thing: follow the energy. Where does the power to animate a corpse come from, anyway? Vampires get it by sucking life force out of people, liches are competent enough to plug in to the power mains with occasional infusions of life force to keep their systems running, mummies have their canopic jars enchanted to do the same thing liches do, but what about all those zombies and skeletons?

So in Seas of Chaos, I introduced the premise that you need to keep zombies and skeletons running with life force— explaining why zombies run around devouring brains, and one character bought an elephant skeleton that has a particularly efficient enchantment that runs on one chicken a week, and is great for carrying heavy loads— or by torturing souls for energy in the afterlife.

That provides a sound metaphysical reason why people would, in general, dislike necromancy. (Just to add to it, I specified that civilizations running on necropower also have an increased incidence of spontaneous demon summonings occurring, due to the thinning of the veil between the worlds due to all those undead in one place.)

I then followed it up: are there ethical reasons to become undead or create undead? I created the necropolis of Azec Sisura (stolen from the anime The Weathering Continent) as a showcase. The population consists of:

Several liches doing necromantic research;
A few dozen mummies who have become undead because they decided they would rather atone for their crimes in life at the achingly slow rate of an undead doing penance rather than suffer for what they’d done in life, or because they wanted to stick around and watch over their families or business enterprises in the long term; and
A number of extremely dangerous criminals who were turned into lesser undead servitors precisely for the chew-on-your-soul reason. If they’re getting their souls chewed on, they aren’t working their way up an Infernal hierarchy to come back and plague the world that defeated them the first time.

The liches and mummies are in the habit of wandering around in voluminous robes, wearing death masks, which is differently eerie from naked skulls and mummified faces.

Azec Sisura mostly subsists on contributions from other cities who want the place to continue functioning as a metaphysical prison, and from donations brought by people who wish to consult the wisdom of the residents. The mummies who are trying to atone for their sins are generally happy to help, as helping a mortal selflessly is a much more efficient way to purify their souls than to chant sutras twenty four hours a day. But they are still very appreciative that you brought them a goat or two to consume.

While you’re there, don’t forget to visit the library, consisting of a room full of niches containing the skulls of dead sages engaged in vigorous academic debate.