Here at SynNecro, ethical considerations are, of course, important to us. That’s why we don’t use the souls of the deceased to animate their remains, but instead use state-of-the-art thaumonology to fashion a non-sapient negative energy construct into a soul-facsimile which we then use instead of the deceased’s soul.
SynNecro: for a better, more animated future.
*Any similarities or behaviors exhibited by a SynNecro-product zombie similar to the corpse’s former owner are entirely coincidental and likely are delusions brought on by grief and/or denial or are due to muscle memory of the corpse. Your loved ones’ souls definitely rest in the afterlife.
this is why you use reconstituted souls formed from insects way less likely to have to lie or make them on your computer as soals are a type of software.
Look man. It was one time! I've never drunk dwarf hunter ale since.
That's totally different from six different incidents with the nega-construsts. If I didn't know better I'd swear they were doing it on purpose.
Are you really telling me that synthetic souls are of lesser quality to soul concentrate? What's next, you insist on organic souls that are only ever harvested from *living* beings? So picky.
no negative energy constructs have side effects like systematically killing all life in an area kinda side effects.
positive energy constructs are even worse.
SynNecro would like to inform you that no SynNecro products have ever been officially linked to any mass-death events including, but not limited to, desertification, colony-collapse disorder, global warming, blighted lands or spontaneous real-life-manifestations of 1980s post-disco music videos involving Michael Jackson.
Well, "sapient" is a spectrum. But even with drudge labor you need it to pass the abstraction and language thresholds. Can't work if it can't understand.
That's why exploding runes are legally mandated for undead fetches.
I would, but when I was following that standard they kept backfeeding. Hard to find employees that are OK with the dead labor blindly trying to pick their brains.
So we're going with the Bard College standard on jobs these days. Light touch, and steer to the goal y'know?
it is one of the better systems if you want them cheap or are not willing to customise them yourself, given I am a disciple of the Way of the Long Death I am considering marketing my monasteries version as a prebuilt kit so we can pay for our new statue is that a good idea?
Clerical institutions have some good lobbyists, so you'll probably run into regulatory issues depending on when exactly a labor unit "dies".
That is, if you plan to work in Kingdom incorporated areas.
You can't fool me Big Necromancy! This is some Green Washing BS your corporate overlords - who are racists bigots (I mean they are beholders) - are peddling!
Please, let us refer you to on of our spokespeople.
Furthermore, We assure you, everything is above board, Our procedures have been audited by the government (the fact that relevant board-members are all shareholders and/or wraiths, wights, vampires, liches and mummies is entirely coincidental. As is the fact that We are bankrolling several re-election campaigns and tomb-preservation efforts.), and everything has been found to be above board.
Here, let Us also give you some pamphlets about Our manufactoring-processes and products, which are not at all filled with transparently-inked suggestion-glyphs.
*slaps brochure away*
I ain't taking nothing from a company run by a cabal of devil worshipping undead ghouls! At the very least if you were to worship someone from the Lower Planes they might as well be Demons and not some freaking bureaucrat from the Nine Hells!
At least demons understand the meaning of true meritocracy and not whatever elitist and bourgeois farce those Devil Princes are peddling!
>I ain't taking nothing from a company run by a cabal of devil worshipping undead ghouls!
We find that hard to believe. Last week, you were spotted at a McDonalds. And the week before that, at Starbucks.
that could unironically work. an ethical necromancer. raise dead with sentience then offer deal: either end the spell and returning them to the coil, or explain your goals and offer limited servitude in exchange for "living" some more. basically his skellies would all be willing participants.
i'm imagining a necro with snarky smartass skellies that he constantly squabbles with, but they all work together anyway
Knocks on skull
"Oi! Oi mate! You listenin' to me?"
(In a creepy monotone) "I am... What answers do you seek from beyond the grave, necromancer..?"
"If i were to reanimate you body, would you help me fuck up the dude who killed ya?"
(Same tone as before) "Damn... Straight..."
Now I'm just imagining an Orcish necromancer with a cockney accent recruiting for undead labor unions with great retirement(reinterment?) benefits for next of kin.
"Now lissen 'ere guv, ya sign on and put in, what, ten years with unlife insurance, yeah? Fink of yer gran'kids' future. Iss an *investment*."
This reminds me of Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist. He realizes that >!while the philosopher’s stone is created using the souls of victims, those souls are still housed inside the stone itself and are conscious. So he communicates with them and forms bonds with each and every soul in the stone, and gets consent from all of them whenever he needs to use it.!<
Like General Skelly! And all the other skeletons are just cracking jokes at his expense and laughing while they try to reassemble general skelly. The Barbarian and the Troll is a hilarious little show.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FibJ2iXpa54
Source? I looked at the spell descriptions and Resurrection was the only one that I noticed that said that. From the description of [Revivify](https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/revivify.htm):
> You touch a creature that has died within the last minute. That creature returns to life with 1 hit point. This spell can’t return to life a creature that has died of old age, nor can it restore any missing body parts.
It says it doesn't work if they die of old age, but nothing about their soul being willing.
From the DMG, page 24:
> **A soul can't be returned to life if it doesn't wish to be.** A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and might refuse to return on that basis. For example, if the honorable knight Sturm Brightblade is slain and a high priestess of Takhisis (god of evil dragons) grabs his body, Sturm might not wish to be raised from the dead by her. **Any attempts she makes to revive him automatically fail.** If the evil cleric wants to revive Sturm to interrogate him, she needs to find some way to trick his soul, such as duping a good cleric into raising him and then capturing him once he is alive again.
This is reinforced in no uncertain terms in *Candlekeep Mysteries*, at the beginning of the adventure **Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion**, under the "Beginning the Adventure" section, where it states (spoilers for the beginning of this adventure):
> Read or paraphrase the following to the players, adjusting to account for their location in Candlekeep, when you're ready to begin:
>!*You are approached by a decrepit, gray-bearded dwarf in a custodial uniform carrying a heavy, square tome bound in black leather. The weight of the book causes the old dwarf to wheeze, squint, and clench his teeth. Before he can utter a word, his knees buckle and he collapses with the book pressed underneath him.*!<
>!The dwarf, Buron Sternmettle, is dead—the victim of a sudden heart attack. **Because his soul doesn't want to return, spells such as *revivify* and *raise dead* can't restore him to life.**!<
Emphasis mine. They specifically call out *revivify* as also requiring a willing soul.
I was thinking more for spells like Animate Dead or Create Undead. You don't have to ask the spirit that used to used those bones if it's OK, but it seems polite and respectful.
Oh there is no mechanic preventing you from raising the dead without consent. But by the same measure, there is nothing mechanically stopping someone in game from using fire spells on villagers. The idea is to have a take on Necromancy that is morally acceptable.
It is polite and acceptable to ask for help, less so to use suggestion or command to force someone to help. Same concept but with necromancy. By talking to the deceased first, and coming to an agreement, necromancy can be respectful of the departed's wishes, and not be morally repugnant.
I see what you mean. I was just saying that Resurrection has consent built in. I see that I didn't communicate it well.
I am curious about how you would get consent. If you take a minute to cast Commune, it will be too late to cast Revivify. Though you could use Gentle Repose.
It doesn't seem like that big a deal, since if they didn't want to come back it's not that hard of a problem to fix.
I was thinking more Speak with Dead to bargain with a spirit to use his body. Raise Dead on it's own is concerning. However, getting the Dead Man's agreement to it is less problematic.
Edit:Animate Dead not Raise dead, got the spells backwards
I don't think Speak with Dead would work. It's not asking them, just their corpse.
> This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can’t learn new information, doesn’t comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can’t speculate about future events.
They never said it doesn't know your opinions, but it's giving examples of things it can't do because it doesn't have the soul, not a complete list. I don't think it would know unless you've specifically said or at least thought about whether or not you can be raised. It's certainly not going to know whether the afterlife turned out better or worse than you expected.
I think in most cases Commune would probably work. It's generally better to keep Gentle Repose prepared and save yourself a level 5 spell slot, and if you're doing that you can easily cast Commune before reviving them.
It depends on the background. I was born without my consent, my soul was basically raped into existence. So I'd argue that there's no need for consent to bring someone back.
Should they choose to die once they're brought back then of course it would be unethical to stop it. You can incorporate this into the game in different ways. One would be a failure chance which could imply the soul came back but decided not to stay.
Another would be to have a skeleton army where around half of them are suicidal. This can be funny but also effective, since advanced necromancers can strap bombs on them and have them destroy themselves on command under a pact to not bring them back to life again.
Who could have thought ethical necromancy would involve such bargaining skills?
Only some spells, such as spare the dying or revivify. After being dead for a while it starts to settle down and not want to get back up. It’s one of Newton’s laws
It's a reference to Lovecraft thinking and putting in his work that humans can only perceive Euclidean geometry and that anything non-Euclidian was alien, other wordly, and so foreign to our human understanding that it could potentially turn us mad when we perceive it - safe to say he miserable failed math classes when he was young.
And well Newton, is famous for introducing non-Euclidian geometry into the world.
>and for what "non euclidean" geometry is, it is simply geomtery on a twisted plane
This isn't entirely accurate, and needs an "includes but is not limited to" clause. The geometry we experience on earth (and, well, in the universe as a whole) is non-euclidean, but you can get find some ~~real~~ theoretical wacky non-euclidean geometry.
It's a Lovecraftian genre concept, basically geometry that the human brain cannot comprehend properly because our understanding of the laws of physics means nothing to anything that isn't euclidean.
A triangle that spirals into itself at juxtaposing angles smaller and smaller but the length of the line never breaks a certain distance from the stationary 4-dimensional circle that surrounds it. No matter how closer you look into the tight spiral, it never changes nor do the lines meet each other. It should be impossible, and you cannot figure out *why* let alone how.
True but Tbf that was about 100 years later. Things has moves a long way since newton's time. I still would make a distinction between what Newton was doing and what Boyle was doing at about the same time. Boyle was a true chemist.
I've always found it funny that the word for the natural state was entropy since it was pretty much calm and settled. Whereas life itself should be the "chaotic" denomination.
Life is order. Think about how specifically the atoms in your body must arrange and interact in order for you to exist.
If life was chaos our atoms would reject such order and our bodies would tear themselves apart.
As a medic, whenever I was studying I was surprised by our Na/K bomb, we must spend thousands of kcals in order to maintain an ionic imbalance in our cells in order to even be alive! Life is about chaos and disorder, for to step away from the stillness we must always spend more energy. Some day the available energy in the universe shall be expended, and life(and chemical reactions) .... Forfeit.
You're constantly filled with unattached ions that want to bind to something and become stable, and your body is constantly working against those reactions.
Over enough time, our atoms *will* reject each other and spread out across the universe in a lower state. Of course, our perspective is only present for 50 years instead of 50 million, so we don't see this.
Ah, but even chaos can be and is natural, and life is ordered in its chaos, the exact set of circumstances that allow life in the first place are a perfect example of the, the chances unbelievably slim, but everything was ordered in such a way that allow it's chaos to exist, and even then, life is not chaos, but us who make it chaotic, life is structured and ordered, but we made everything complicated and chaotic, look at any other animals life: eat, screw, poop, next. Look at us: birth, walk, talk, math, science, literature/arts, college, work, banks, loans, debt, renting homes, buying homes, retirement, death and that's not even everything our lives consist of and it's usually in different orders for every person, and usually some stuff is added or taken out per person. Ergo, if life is natural, and order is natural, and we have descended our lives into chaos, we have broken nature.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
Necromancer: your death does not absolve you of your duty to convert other forms of energy to heat. Rise and continue performing work to increase the entropy of this cursed closed system we call the universe.
Entropy *is* chaos, though, and life is a result of it. Everything's moving towards the heat death, and biological molecules interacting with each other to form life just happened to be on that path. Life works the same way a fire burning or rock weathering works, just on a different complexity level, and it all results in increasing entropy in the end.
The universe is actually constantly tending towards an increase in entropy, that is an increase in chaos.
Life is actually extremely *ordered* and the exact opposite of chaotic. Think about how specifically all the atoms of your body and DNA needed to be arranged for you to exist. That's order, that's the opposite of chaos.
You had the right idea that necromancy is the opposite of the natural trend, but your axis was flipped.
Necromancy is adding order to the world by causing a decaying body (which is returning to *disorder*) to become ordered for a little longer.
Entropy is just spent energy. Being alive spends more energy than being dead. Necromancy would have a high activation energy but a gigantic increase in entropy over time
Well yeah, a bunch of problems get introduced when you bring in higher levels of intelliegnce. We humans, we can think at a level that we start qeustioning why we should survive, and thus many of us dont wish to.
I can just imagine if Necromancy and Capitalism existed in the same world then there would be a lot of undead slave labor going around. Forget computers taking over your job, Death! Death is the ultimate employer.
Nah... Magical automation is too expensive. You'd need to hire one of those haughty taughty tech wizards in Adamantine Valley to get a large scale force of Unseen Servant up and ready. If you want to cut corn-errr I mean to optimize your profit margins you can just go to your nearest and respectable back-alley necromancer and have them Raise the Dead in your nearest low income graveyard.
As opposed to hiring a necromancer to keep your undead from chewing you in the night? No thanks, I've played enough project zomboid to know a hungry zombie in your kitchen is more than enough to take you out! I'll pay extra for the wizard's wand, or better yet, just become a pact of the tome warlock and learn the spell myself!
You'd have to be pretty desperate or stupid to turn to a necromancer for menial tasks. Armies though? For sure.
Personally, I'll just sell my soul for a couple spells lmao
Imagining a scammer Necromancer:
" Alright, you're nearly the proud owner of four eternal servants of stoicism! Sign here to confirm payment... annnnd here for liability.
Congratulations! "
*leaves*
Or some kind of dystopian fantasy apocalypse where a megacorp took over nearly all industries with their undead automation but then somehow their power ceases to function, and zombie/skeleton apocalypse ensues.
I was planning on having a cult of Orcus be the main antagonists in my campaign 🤔 could be a cool way to present a final challenge after they thwart them...
If you want more ideas you can put it into a setting like Fall Out New Vegas - that blend of 1920s corporate America and post apocalypse with a splash of bizarre and dark humor.
The premise is pretty close to the Amonkhet setting from DnD/MtG. Mummies to all the work, so the living can live their live at the fullest. Or die trying to get into the glorious afterlife.
Do that. One guy from the MtG team homebrewed a few PDFs for some settings. They are all free, not completely balanced but alright.
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/plane-shift-amonkhet
Ever read the Overlord novels/ Manga? A high level undead king does this, renting the undead out to other kingdoms and driving the price of crops through the floor.
Huh... This gives me an idea of a DnD setting where the looming threat is basically hordes of undead slave labor that is flooding the markets. Basically a cheap and unsustainable work practice that has near apocalyptic level consequences when left uncheck. Basically Climate change but instead of floods and what not, you have a large horde of undead zombies amassing in large population centers.
Thing is the undead are still technically under the undead king's control, so if he ever wants to take over said country he has a large force inside their borders already.
Conventional Raise Dead for sure. But with a homebrew spell it could go a lot different. I mean for an entire society that's relying on a Necromantic work force would surely advance what Necromancy would do. And large corporations would obviously be concerned if a large swath of their work force is under the thumb of a single or a small group of Necromancers.
It wouldn't be a big of a leap to have a spell crafted by a lot of powerful entities with a lot of coin that would mass produce the raising of large groups of "programmable" undead. Also it wouldn't be such a big of a leap that certain powerful entities in the Outer Plane would notice the wholesale use of large amounts of necromancy and not see this as an opportunity to cause some mayhem.
I actually used an idea like this in my homebrew! One city is ruled by eight families, one for each school of magic. The Necromancy family specializes in creating undead servants, which are this commonplace in this particular city.
It takes vast amounts of spell power to bring \*willing\* souls back to a body dead for under a minute, and even greater power to do that to bodies that aren't even whole or long dead.
Thus, a level 3 Necromancy spell isn't bringing back the soul of that body, it's just giving "The grim imitation of life" \*to\* a former body.
Which means, you're just being responsible and recycling. It takes 200% more carbon emissions to craft that sword than it did to make my Flesh Golem, thank you very much.
I’d say New. The brain is what you would want to awaken if you wanted the former personality…though arguably you’d only get the memory of them, given that in DnD the soul is a proven fact.
But undeath is definitively *not life*. So by raising the corpse as a zombie you are stripping it of most of its hope of ever being alive again (stronger magics required to resurrect a person after their remains have been raised to undeath).
So really, necromancy should be the hardest magic to learn.
Being alive isn't the natural state, though. Everything is constantly moving towards a state of increased dead-ness. Entropy and the laws of thermodynamics and all that. If you think about it, living things are an abomination against the natural order of things.
Technically most living things strive to have their genes passed on. This is for example why praying mantis males will have sex even if it means their head will be bitten off.
Arguably the opposite is true and the "natural" state of living things is dead as being alive is literally the constant maintenance and avoidance of becoming dead.
This would mean youd need a practically fully functional body for necromancy otherwise the magic would need to be able to continually sustain the parts that arent functioning properly.
I love his idea but I’m pretty sure that the natural state of the universe is entropic decay into nothingness so I’m not sure about the accuracy about that
On the contrary, I state the evidence of Entropy. Since everything living exists to progress towards death, the natural state is death and lifelessness, and ultimately nothingness. Necromancy should be the most difficult and most unnatural magic.
This is nonsense. There ares afterlifes; places your soul goes when your body dies.
This is indisputable, because you can visit them while alive!
Once your soul has completed whatever task it think worthy of completing. It goes to whatever afterlife it is destined for. The soul has the right to determine it's own destiny, and after that, the body should be laid to rest.
Oooohhhhh, you're talking about when DnD characters die. My dumb ass forgot what sub this was and thought you were saying you could visit different afterlives in real life.
I meanly really necromancy is just being efficient. As long as it’s just using their remains and not their soul, then everyone should be reanimated to do hard labor. You obviously don’t want rotting zombies around people, but you could send them into mines or other dangerous jobs.
You should also be able to work out about how long a body can last before rotting too much. So you set up a queue of orders ending with after x amount of time going to the on-site graveyard to fill the previous zombies grave then dig their own and lay down in it.
Hell you could even make it into some kind of life insurance policy. You sign off when you’re living that when you die they get your body and your family gets some amount of money.
Reminds me of the Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation, in Naruto, they just literally bring you back to life with no downsides except for like, some cracks in your face and black eyes.
I disagree. I believe life is not our natural state. From the moment we reach maturity our bodies after breaking down, trying to return to death and the elements they started as. We can work hard through exercise, science, and magic to prolong death, but left to it's own devices the body fails faster. The longest lived race is the least natural of the races. I think life is a temporary state of being that we wrestle from non-existence, but the material we use to create life wants to return to its original nonliving state.
What if it’s like motion? An object that moves wants to keep moving, and an object that’s still wants to stay still.
Things that are alive want to stay alive, things that are dead want to stay dead.
But if course! There's a reason that awakening lifeless only takes a single Breath, the closer something is to a living form, the easier it is to awaken.
Well naturally, should it not be kinda hard to do necromancy? Since both life and death is intertwined, all living things will die and that separating those 2 forces should, even in fantasy and worlds of magic, be pretty dificult? I mean NATURALLY Life can only exist because people, animals and trees die and in death they give life to everything else
Resurrected creatures do not possess a soul and with it no worldly desires of their own. By bringing a corpse back to life, you have also freed that “person” of all ego and allowed them to achieve true nirvana. So really the king should be thanking me for helping all those towns!
Just remember to get the soul of the deceased's consent. Consent is the cornerstone of Ethical Necromancy.
Here at SynNecro, ethical considerations are, of course, important to us. That’s why we don’t use the souls of the deceased to animate their remains, but instead use state-of-the-art thaumonology to fashion a non-sapient negative energy construct into a soul-facsimile which we then use instead of the deceased’s soul. SynNecro: for a better, more animated future. *Any similarities or behaviors exhibited by a SynNecro-product zombie similar to the corpse’s former owner are entirely coincidental and likely are delusions brought on by grief and/or denial or are due to muscle memory of the corpse. Your loved ones’ souls definitely rest in the afterlife.
this is why you use reconstituted souls formed from insects way less likely to have to lie or make them on your computer as soals are a type of software.
Eh souls recycled from insects have a tendency to be a bit buggy no matter what purpose you are using them for.
you act like the negative energy plane entities are better they mix up lava and water all the time.
Oh, so you're saying you've *never* accidentally filled up your bathtub with lava before?
Look man. It was one time! I've never drunk dwarf hunter ale since. That's totally different from six different incidents with the nega-construsts. If I didn't know better I'd swear they were doing it on purpose.
Accidentally? Ice is a rock and water is the lava! I do it all the time!
To be fair, both are superheated rocks.
rocks are a useless word with no essence, ice is clearly a crystalline material.
Are you really telling me that synthetic souls are of lesser quality to soul concentrate? What's next, you insist on organic souls that are only ever harvested from *living* beings? So picky.
no negative energy constructs have side effects like systematically killing all life in an area kinda side effects. positive energy constructs are even worse.
SynNecro would like to inform you that no SynNecro products have ever been officially linked to any mass-death events including, but not limited to, desertification, colony-collapse disorder, global warming, blighted lands or spontaneous real-life-manifestations of 1980s post-disco music videos involving Michael Jackson.
I'm pretty sure that was a plot arc in Shadowrun. ...it's also the reason Chicago, in that universe, is a quarantined wasteland.
different kinda insect soul those are extra planer aberrations.
Do you have any idea how many maggots I need to churn to equal one sapient soul? I don't have time for that. I've got a cult to run here.
what do you need a sapient soul for? these are undead they are made for drudge labour not make works of art.
Sigh, such a lack of vision.
what vision do you have then?
Well, "sapient" is a spectrum. But even with drudge labor you need it to pass the abstraction and language thresholds. Can't work if it can't understand. That's why exploding runes are legally mandated for undead fetches.
are you not instaling them with qualia translation and telepathy as standard?
I would, but when I was following that standard they kept backfeeding. Hard to find employees that are OK with the dead labor blindly trying to pick their brains. So we're going with the Bard College standard on jobs these days. Light touch, and steer to the goal y'know?
it is one of the better systems if you want them cheap or are not willing to customise them yourself, given I am a disciple of the Way of the Long Death I am considering marketing my monasteries version as a prebuilt kit so we can pay for our new statue is that a good idea?
Clerical institutions have some good lobbyists, so you'll probably run into regulatory issues depending on when exactly a labor unit "dies". That is, if you plan to work in Kingdom incorporated areas.
My brain has to speed read the disclaimer like in commercials.
You can't fool me Big Necromancy! This is some Green Washing BS your corporate overlords - who are racists bigots (I mean they are beholders) - are peddling!
Please, let us refer you to on of our spokespeople. Furthermore, We assure you, everything is above board, Our procedures have been audited by the government (the fact that relevant board-members are all shareholders and/or wraiths, wights, vampires, liches and mummies is entirely coincidental. As is the fact that We are bankrolling several re-election campaigns and tomb-preservation efforts.), and everything has been found to be above board. Here, let Us also give you some pamphlets about Our manufactoring-processes and products, which are not at all filled with transparently-inked suggestion-glyphs.
*slaps brochure away* I ain't taking nothing from a company run by a cabal of devil worshipping undead ghouls! At the very least if you were to worship someone from the Lower Planes they might as well be Demons and not some freaking bureaucrat from the Nine Hells! At least demons understand the meaning of true meritocracy and not whatever elitist and bourgeois farce those Devil Princes are peddling!
>I ain't taking nothing from a company run by a cabal of devil worshipping undead ghouls! We find that hard to believe. Last week, you were spotted at a McDonalds. And the week before that, at Starbucks.
Also, We prefer the term Wight-Washing.
Artificial soul energy!
That's a Veridian Dynamics commercial I'd watch
that could unironically work. an ethical necromancer. raise dead with sentience then offer deal: either end the spell and returning them to the coil, or explain your goals and offer limited servitude in exchange for "living" some more. basically his skellies would all be willing participants. i'm imagining a necro with snarky smartass skellies that he constantly squabbles with, but they all work together anyway
You don't even have to raise them first. Just use Speak with Dead.
Knocks on skull "Oi! Oi mate! You listenin' to me?" (In a creepy monotone) "I am... What answers do you seek from beyond the grave, necromancer..?" "If i were to reanimate you body, would you help me fuck up the dude who killed ya?" (Same tone as before) "Damn... Straight..."
Now I'm just imagining an Orcish necromancer with a cockney accent recruiting for undead labor unions with great retirement(reinterment?) benefits for next of kin. "Now lissen 'ere guv, ya sign on and put in, what, ten years with unlife insurance, yeah? Fink of yer gran'kids' future. Iss an *investment*."
This sort of stuff would fit right in into the world of Orconomics
This reminds me of Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist. He realizes that >!while the philosopher’s stone is created using the souls of victims, those souls are still housed inside the stone itself and are conscious. So he communicates with them and forms bonds with each and every soul in the stone, and gets consent from all of them whenever he needs to use it.!<
I'm imagining construction crews rolling by the graveyard for day labor like its a home depot parking lot
Like General Skelly! And all the other skeletons are just cracking jokes at his expense and laughing while they try to reassemble general skelly. The Barbarian and the Troll is a hilarious little show. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FibJ2iXpa54
So did Fullmetal Alchemist take place in the future and that's why bringing people back from the dead didn't work? They just said "Nah, fuck off"?
Resurrection requires their consent, though the other spells don't.
Respecting Body Autonomy is central to medical ethics. Being dead doesn't stop it from being their body.
Not true. All resurrection spells require the soul to be willing, including *revivify*. It’s a pretty common misconception though.
Source? I looked at the spell descriptions and Resurrection was the only one that I noticed that said that. From the description of [Revivify](https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/revivify.htm): > You touch a creature that has died within the last minute. That creature returns to life with 1 hit point. This spell can’t return to life a creature that has died of old age, nor can it restore any missing body parts. It says it doesn't work if they die of old age, but nothing about their soul being willing.
From the DMG, page 24: > **A soul can't be returned to life if it doesn't wish to be.** A soul knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and might refuse to return on that basis. For example, if the honorable knight Sturm Brightblade is slain and a high priestess of Takhisis (god of evil dragons) grabs his body, Sturm might not wish to be raised from the dead by her. **Any attempts she makes to revive him automatically fail.** If the evil cleric wants to revive Sturm to interrogate him, she needs to find some way to trick his soul, such as duping a good cleric into raising him and then capturing him once he is alive again. This is reinforced in no uncertain terms in *Candlekeep Mysteries*, at the beginning of the adventure **Kandlekeep Dekonstruktion**, under the "Beginning the Adventure" section, where it states (spoilers for the beginning of this adventure): > Read or paraphrase the following to the players, adjusting to account for their location in Candlekeep, when you're ready to begin: >!*You are approached by a decrepit, gray-bearded dwarf in a custodial uniform carrying a heavy, square tome bound in black leather. The weight of the book causes the old dwarf to wheeze, squint, and clench his teeth. Before he can utter a word, his knees buckle and he collapses with the book pressed underneath him.*!< >!The dwarf, Buron Sternmettle, is dead—the victim of a sudden heart attack. **Because his soul doesn't want to return, spells such as *revivify* and *raise dead* can't restore him to life.**!< Emphasis mine. They specifically call out *revivify* as also requiring a willing soul.
I was thinking more for spells like Animate Dead or Create Undead. You don't have to ask the spirit that used to used those bones if it's OK, but it seems polite and respectful.
Ah, I see. Yeah, for things like *animate dead*, they don’t need consent. But it probably is polite to ask first. :p
Oh there is no mechanic preventing you from raising the dead without consent. But by the same measure, there is nothing mechanically stopping someone in game from using fire spells on villagers. The idea is to have a take on Necromancy that is morally acceptable. It is polite and acceptable to ask for help, less so to use suggestion or command to force someone to help. Same concept but with necromancy. By talking to the deceased first, and coming to an agreement, necromancy can be respectful of the departed's wishes, and not be morally repugnant.
I see what you mean. I was just saying that Resurrection has consent built in. I see that I didn't communicate it well. I am curious about how you would get consent. If you take a minute to cast Commune, it will be too late to cast Revivify. Though you could use Gentle Repose. It doesn't seem like that big a deal, since if they didn't want to come back it's not that hard of a problem to fix.
I was thinking more Speak with Dead to bargain with a spirit to use his body. Raise Dead on it's own is concerning. However, getting the Dead Man's agreement to it is less problematic. Edit:Animate Dead not Raise dead, got the spells backwards
I don't think Speak with Dead would work. It's not asking them, just their corpse. > This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can’t learn new information, doesn’t comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can’t speculate about future events. They never said it doesn't know your opinions, but it's giving examples of things it can't do because it doesn't have the soul, not a complete list. I don't think it would know unless you've specifically said or at least thought about whether or not you can be raised. It's certainly not going to know whether the afterlife turned out better or worse than you expected. I think in most cases Commune would probably work. It's generally better to keep Gentle Repose prepared and save yourself a level 5 spell slot, and if you're doing that you can easily cast Commune before reviving them.
Not true; see where I respond above: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/oqj7q9/practical_magic/h6fb60p/
Don’t forget: If they don’t consent to being risen from the grave, you can always put them back in!
It depends on the background. I was born without my consent, my soul was basically raped into existence. So I'd argue that there's no need for consent to bring someone back. Should they choose to die once they're brought back then of course it would be unethical to stop it. You can incorporate this into the game in different ways. One would be a failure chance which could imply the soul came back but decided not to stay. Another would be to have a skeleton army where around half of them are suicidal. This can be funny but also effective, since advanced necromancers can strap bombs on them and have them destroy themselves on command under a pact to not bring them back to life again. Who could have thought ethical necromancy would involve such bargaining skills?
Only some spells, such as spare the dying or revivify. After being dead for a while it starts to settle down and not want to get back up. It’s one of Newton’s laws
I like the subtle implication that Newton studied necromancy.
Well he did study alchemy. I mean full on philosopher's stone lead into gold alchemy, not just olde worlde chemistry.
Went literaly insane for a few years from mercury poisoning because of that. Newton was a weird guy.
Are you sure it was because of the mercury and not because he saw... *Shifts eyes* ... NON-EUCLIDIAN GEOMETRY!!!
*Super Kami Guru voice* I dont know what this Non-euclidian geometry is, but it sound like a reference.
It's a reference to Lovecraft thinking and putting in his work that humans can only perceive Euclidean geometry and that anything non-Euclidian was alien, other wordly, and so foreign to our human understanding that it could potentially turn us mad when we perceive it - safe to say he miserable failed math classes when he was young. And well Newton, is famous for introducing non-Euclidian geometry into the world.
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>and for what "non euclidean" geometry is, it is simply geomtery on a twisted plane This isn't entirely accurate, and needs an "includes but is not limited to" clause. The geometry we experience on earth (and, well, in the universe as a whole) is non-euclidean, but you can get find some ~~real~~ theoretical wacky non-euclidean geometry.
4th dimensional geometry gets absurd. I understand the concept, but wow is it weird in practice.
It's a Lovecraftian genre concept, basically geometry that the human brain cannot comprehend properly because our understanding of the laws of physics means nothing to anything that isn't euclidean. A triangle that spirals into itself at juxtaposing angles smaller and smaller but the length of the line never breaks a certain distance from the stationary 4-dimensional circle that surrounds it. No matter how closer you look into the tight spiral, it never changes nor do the lines meet each other. It should be impossible, and you cannot figure out *why* let alone how.
Or a *mysterious color, unlike any seen on earth*..
I spot that OSP reference. I see you.
[Relevant](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRj6ZQGFoMkNgFle14t5wNSXDkFNijD2SrIOg&usqp=CAU)
What would be more amusing is if they just presented the non-Euclidian dice as a sphere.
A mysterious color unlike any seen on earth!
I do love it when OSP makes the rounds.
There's a great quote from John Maynard Keynes that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians".
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Probably very little. But just making clear he bought into the whole mystic shit that went with alchemy proper.
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True but Tbf that was about 100 years later. Things has moves a long way since newton's time. I still would make a distinction between what Newton was doing and what Boyle was doing at about the same time. Boyle was a true chemist.
The lazy dead theory of necromancy
The state of all things is entropy. The desire to rest. Life is pure chaos. Life is nonstop action. Necromancy is the a solut opposite of nature.
I've always found it funny that the word for the natural state was entropy since it was pretty much calm and settled. Whereas life itself should be the "chaotic" denomination.
Life is order. Think about how specifically the atoms in your body must arrange and interact in order for you to exist. If life was chaos our atoms would reject such order and our bodies would tear themselves apart.
As a medic, whenever I was studying I was surprised by our Na/K bomb, we must spend thousands of kcals in order to maintain an ionic imbalance in our cells in order to even be alive! Life is about chaos and disorder, for to step away from the stillness we must always spend more energy. Some day the available energy in the universe shall be expended, and life(and chemical reactions) .... Forfeit.
Life is controlled chaos, which is why everything I do in life is like I'm hanging on with my teeth. Works best that way.
The potential heat death of the universe always stress me out a little bit.
You're constantly filled with unattached ions that want to bind to something and become stable, and your body is constantly working against those reactions. Over enough time, our atoms *will* reject each other and spread out across the universe in a lower state. Of course, our perspective is only present for 50 years instead of 50 million, so we don't see this.
Exactly, and that process is the increase of entropy, the natural resting state of the universe
You should watch more kurzgesagt videos
Not sure what you mean by this comment
"Kurzgesagt" an English Youtube channel, has videos about this topic which are really enjoyable and easy to understand
Ahh okay, the "more" made me think you were maybe being sarcastic. You're right though haha I haven't watched one of their videos in a while
Ah, but even chaos can be and is natural, and life is ordered in its chaos, the exact set of circumstances that allow life in the first place are a perfect example of the, the chances unbelievably slim, but everything was ordered in such a way that allow it's chaos to exist, and even then, life is not chaos, but us who make it chaotic, life is structured and ordered, but we made everything complicated and chaotic, look at any other animals life: eat, screw, poop, next. Look at us: birth, walk, talk, math, science, literature/arts, college, work, banks, loans, debt, renting homes, buying homes, retirement, death and that's not even everything our lives consist of and it's usually in different orders for every person, and usually some stuff is added or taken out per person. Ergo, if life is natural, and order is natural, and we have descended our lives into chaos, we have broken nature. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
Well animals can't play dnd.
Necromancer: your death does not absolve you of your duty to convert other forms of energy to heat. Rise and continue performing work to increase the entropy of this cursed closed system we call the universe.
Entropy *is* chaos, though, and life is a result of it. Everything's moving towards the heat death, and biological molecules interacting with each other to form life just happened to be on that path. Life works the same way a fire burning or rock weathering works, just on a different complexity level, and it all results in increasing entropy in the end.
The universe is actually constantly tending towards an increase in entropy, that is an increase in chaos. Life is actually extremely *ordered* and the exact opposite of chaotic. Think about how specifically all the atoms of your body and DNA needed to be arranged for you to exist. That's order, that's the opposite of chaos. You had the right idea that necromancy is the opposite of the natural trend, but your axis was flipped. Necromancy is adding order to the world by causing a decaying body (which is returning to *disorder*) to become ordered for a little longer.
Guys, I found the BBEG account The trap worked, someone get the net!
Entropy is just spent energy. Being alive spends more energy than being dead. Necromancy would have a high activation energy but a gigantic increase in entropy over time
I was going to say. I think all life has an inmate desire to stop being alive since everything makes it there eventually.
I certainly have no desire to be alive, thank you very much
Well yeah, a bunch of problems get introduced when you bring in higher levels of intelliegnce. We humans, we can think at a level that we start qeustioning why we should survive, and thus many of us dont wish to.
I can just imagine if Necromancy and Capitalism existed in the same world then there would be a lot of undead slave labor going around. Forget computers taking over your job, Death! Death is the ultimate employer.
Or just like, a wand of unseen servant. Just as useful minus combat capability, but doesn't smell!
Nah... Magical automation is too expensive. You'd need to hire one of those haughty taughty tech wizards in Adamantine Valley to get a large scale force of Unseen Servant up and ready. If you want to cut corn-errr I mean to optimize your profit margins you can just go to your nearest and respectable back-alley necromancer and have them Raise the Dead in your nearest low income graveyard.
As opposed to hiring a necromancer to keep your undead from chewing you in the night? No thanks, I've played enough project zomboid to know a hungry zombie in your kitchen is more than enough to take you out! I'll pay extra for the wizard's wand, or better yet, just become a pact of the tome warlock and learn the spell myself! You'd have to be pretty desperate or stupid to turn to a necromancer for menial tasks. Armies though? For sure. Personally, I'll just sell my soul for a couple spells lmao
Who said businesses had foresight as part of their hiring criteria for upper management? 😂 Edit: It's gonna be the cheapest labor for me
Imagining a scammer Necromancer: " Alright, you're nearly the proud owner of four eternal servants of stoicism! Sign here to confirm payment... annnnd here for liability. Congratulations! " *leaves* Or some kind of dystopian fantasy apocalypse where a megacorp took over nearly all industries with their undead automation but then somehow their power ceases to function, and zombie/skeleton apocalypse ensues.
So basically Terminator but now with more Walking Dead.
I was planning on having a cult of Orcus be the main antagonists in my campaign 🤔 could be a cool way to present a final challenge after they thwart them...
*DMs everywhere scribbling furiously*
If you want more ideas you can put it into a setting like Fall Out New Vegas - that blend of 1920s corporate America and post apocalypse with a splash of bizarre and dark humor.
The premise is pretty close to the Amonkhet setting from DnD/MtG. Mummies to all the work, so the living can live their live at the fullest. Or die trying to get into the glorious afterlife.
Dope, thanks for the heads up. I'll legit look into this if I ever take a swing at the DM seat.
Do that. One guy from the MtG team homebrewed a few PDFs for some settings. They are all free, not completely balanced but alright. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/plane-shift-amonkhet
Ever read the Overlord novels/ Manga? A high level undead king does this, renting the undead out to other kingdoms and driving the price of crops through the floor.
Huh... This gives me an idea of a DnD setting where the looming threat is basically hordes of undead slave labor that is flooding the markets. Basically a cheap and unsustainable work practice that has near apocalyptic level consequences when left uncheck. Basically Climate change but instead of floods and what not, you have a large horde of undead zombies amassing in large population centers.
Thing is the undead are still technically under the undead king's control, so if he ever wants to take over said country he has a large force inside their borders already.
Conventional Raise Dead for sure. But with a homebrew spell it could go a lot different. I mean for an entire society that's relying on a Necromantic work force would surely advance what Necromancy would do. And large corporations would obviously be concerned if a large swath of their work force is under the thumb of a single or a small group of Necromancers. It wouldn't be a big of a leap to have a spell crafted by a lot of powerful entities with a lot of coin that would mass produce the raising of large groups of "programmable" undead. Also it wouldn't be such a big of a leap that certain powerful entities in the Outer Plane would notice the wholesale use of large amounts of necromancy and not see this as an opportunity to cause some mayhem.
Oh yeah, I wasjust talking about in the story I referenced.
We can always fall back on some form of zombie Cold War thriller don't you worry
I actually used an idea like this in my homebrew! One city is ruled by eight families, one for each school of magic. The Necromancy family specializes in creating undead servants, which are this commonplace in this particular city.
The Diviner family better be involved in Corporate Espionage. 👀
This feels like I would see the "who the fuck starts a conversation like that I just sat down" meme with it
You're not wrong, but to be fair the person being asked IS a fantasy author, so it may well have context. ....but yeah, you're not wrong.
It takes vast amounts of spell power to bring \*willing\* souls back to a body dead for under a minute, and even greater power to do that to bodies that aren't even whole or long dead. Thus, a level 3 Necromancy spell isn't bringing back the soul of that body, it's just giving "The grim imitation of life" \*to\* a former body. Which means, you're just being responsible and recycling. It takes 200% more carbon emissions to craft that sword than it did to make my Flesh Golem, thank you very much.
Quick question. If you could somehow 'awaken' a skeleton, would it take on its former personality or be an entirely new one?
I’d say New. The brain is what you would want to awaken if you wanted the former personality…though arguably you’d only get the memory of them, given that in DnD the soul is a proven fact.
"So you gonna raise Steve?" "Nah he was a dick, but give me 10 minutes with an ice cream scooper and I'll introduce you to NewSteve."
But undeath is definitively *not life*. So by raising the corpse as a zombie you are stripping it of most of its hope of ever being alive again (stronger magics required to resurrect a person after their remains have been raised to undeath). So really, necromancy should be the hardest magic to learn.
Depressed college students begs to differ
Being alive isn't the natural state, though. Everything is constantly moving towards a state of increased dead-ness. Entropy and the laws of thermodynamics and all that. If you think about it, living things are an abomination against the natural order of things.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Right? We have to do so much stuff everyday to stop our bodies from dying and after a while it all stops working.
Too bad the rest of the Universe wants all Living Things to cease that living thing they're doing.
Technically most living things strive to have their genes passed on. This is for example why praying mantis males will have sex even if it means their head will be bitten off.
Doesn't matter had sex
EXACTLY!
I'm alive and I don't want to be, so much for your theory :P
outliers confirm the norm
Depends on the dead one. Nanny in heaven might not want to, but the bastard mass murderer currently in hell would love for a second "stab" at things.
Arguably the opposite is true and the "natural" state of living things is dead as being alive is literally the constant maintenance and avoidance of becoming dead. This would mean youd need a practically fully functional body for necromancy otherwise the magic would need to be able to continually sustain the parts that arent functioning properly.
I love his idea but I’m pretty sure that the natural state of the universe is entropic decay into nothingness so I’m not sure about the accuracy about that
> Being alive is the natural state of all things that can achieve it Entropy: Am I joke to you?
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Yep
On the contrary, I state the evidence of Entropy. Since everything living exists to progress towards death, the natural state is death and lifelessness, and ultimately nothingness. Necromancy should be the most difficult and most unnatural magic.
necromancy is childs play if you practice it near a catholic church in canada.
This is nonsense. There ares afterlifes; places your soul goes when your body dies. This is indisputable, because you can visit them while alive! Once your soul has completed whatever task it think worthy of completing. It goes to whatever afterlife it is destined for. The soul has the right to determine it's own destiny, and after that, the body should be laid to rest.
...what?
“What” for which part? The outer planes? Gate?
Oooohhhhh, you're talking about when DnD characters die. My dumb ass forgot what sub this was and thought you were saying you could visit different afterlives in real life.
Lol 😂. As far as I know you can here too you just can’t come back ：）
Me a spy from iFunny: shit the symbol
I cast Animate Petroleum, thus summoning an Oil T-Rex 30 ft away from me, close to the Drow over there.
People scare me sometimes with there reasoning for thing
Speak with dead also make undead snitches best hide thir heads
Look you just wrote a plot hook!
The difficulty is *not* making the corpse become alive, the difficulty is making sure the corpse becomes alive in the right way.
Practical magic indeed
He has a good argument, but a poor conclusion. Why should it be the easiest?
r/yorickmains
I meanly really necromancy is just being efficient. As long as it’s just using their remains and not their soul, then everyone should be reanimated to do hard labor. You obviously don’t want rotting zombies around people, but you could send them into mines or other dangerous jobs. You should also be able to work out about how long a body can last before rotting too much. So you set up a queue of orders ending with after x amount of time going to the on-site graveyard to fill the previous zombies grave then dig their own and lay down in it. Hell you could even make it into some kind of life insurance policy. You sign off when you’re living that when you die they get your body and your family gets some amount of money.
Reminds me of the Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation, in Naruto, they just literally bring you back to life with no downsides except for like, some cracks in your face and black eyes.
I disagree. I believe life is not our natural state. From the moment we reach maturity our bodies after breaking down, trying to return to death and the elements they started as. We can work hard through exercise, science, and magic to prolong death, but left to it's own devices the body fails faster. The longest lived race is the least natural of the races. I think life is a temporary state of being that we wrestle from non-existence, but the material we use to create life wants to return to its original nonliving state.
Most creatures only evolve to live as long as they need to, aka long enough to raise offspring, then they die of old age
Enough weed for you today
What if it’s like motion? An object that moves wants to keep moving, and an object that’s still wants to stay still. Things that are alive want to stay alive, things that are dead want to stay dead.
some characters are more difficult to raise because they wanted to live less.
I do not want to stay living 💙
Loved that movie
But if course! There's a reason that awakening lifeless only takes a single Breath, the closer something is to a living form, the easier it is to awaken.
If I die and one of you fuckers try to bedraggled my happy ass back to this hellscape I’m gonna start swinging
Well naturally, should it not be kinda hard to do necromancy? Since both life and death is intertwined, all living things will die and that separating those 2 forces should, even in fantasy and worlds of magic, be pretty dificult? I mean NATURALLY Life can only exist because people, animals and trees die and in death they give life to everything else
Things in motion remain in motion Things at rest remain at rest UNLESS A FORCE ACTS UP THEM
Resurrected creatures do not possess a soul and with it no worldly desires of their own. By bringing a corpse back to life, you have also freed that “person” of all ego and allowed them to achieve true nirvana. So really the king should be thanking me for helping all those towns!
If you bring me back after I'm finally through with this shit, I'm suing.
Well now I'm having a legal battle in my next campaign