Necromancy is a school of magic that consists of the revival of individuals, whether mundane human or animal or demi-human, who have died and whose souls have passed to the afterlife. The process may involve the retrieval of the soul from the afterlife and the reconstruction of the body of the deceased, and the result is an undead demi-human body that lends at least in part from the original deceased. Necromancy is highly stigmatized in certain cultures, both mundane in reference to the practice as it appears in common mythology and fiction, and in communities of mages who typically associate themselves with holiness and righteousness, who often believe that necromancy is paramount to playing god.
Despite this stigma, necromancers believe the art can still be practiced ethically, often seeking informed consent for the revival of the deceased from their survivors, or from the soul itself as it exists in the afterlife. Some practices of necromancy outright refuse to work if the soul of the deceased is not willing to cooperate, which means they can only ever be used consensually.
Necromancy is widely considered an extremely difficult school of magic, though simpler forms of it can be learned with relative ease compared to other practices of magic. Generally, the closer an undead subject resembles their original form, the more difficult necromancy is to perform. However, all forms of necromancy demand that the practitioner has an extremely deep understanding of the nature of the soul and the afterlife, whether the specific revival they are performing involves returning a deceased soul to its own body, reanimating a body with a new soul, or giving a deceased soul a body to inhabit.
Forms
Necromancy exists broadly in two forms, indiscriminate and focused, although some scholars of magic and necromancers argue that these forms lie along a single continuum or spectrum, especially considering how some forms of necromancy do not fit cleanly in either of the two categories.
Indiscriminate
Indiscriminate necromancy aims to revive the dead with the intention of the body being subservient to the necromancer as a master, and is almost always a simple necromancy. The soul that inhabits the revived body is typically either not the original soul, or heavily corrupted through the magic of the demi-human form granted to the body. Bodies revived through practices of indiscriminate necromancy are frequently unrecognizable to their original selves and often do not retain any memory or personality from their original life. They frequently identify as entirely different people, and practitioners of indiscriminate necromancy tend to see these undeads as far more disposable.
Focused
Focused necromancy aims to revive the dead with the specific intention of bringing someone back to life. While no form of necromancy allows a human to be revived as a human, focused necromancies typically allow the undead something resembling their original life. Focused necromancies are often very involved, and are usually composite necromancies, although there are some examples of focused necromancies being simple.
The term "focused necromancy" is generally used to refer to the act of performing a necromancy that attempts to revive someone from the dead, but is also sometimes applied to the task of reviving a body with a non-native soul in order to give that soul a body. This latter case is sometimes practiced by some cults who hail a demon as their leader and who wish to give them a body to inhabit. However, since the necromancies are not typically performed at a high level or with powerful practices, if the person was killed to make way for the foreign soul, the original soul often clings onto the body that they died in, and can sometimes oust the foreign soul and regain control over their body as a demi-human.
Generally, a good focused necromancy, which revives the original body with a high level of fidelity, low mental distortion and little signs of physical disability, is considered a vaunted art. While it is impossible to revive a human as precisely human, actively practitioning necromancers frequently tout it as the gold standard that can always be approached but never reached. The act of legitimate revival, such that the undead feels comfortable in their own body and does not demonstrate significant physiological or cognitive behavioral changes, is considered a test of the mettle of a seasoned necromancer.
Practices
Practices of necromancy can generally be divided into two categories, simple and composite. Despite their names, practices of necromancy both simple and composite are rich and full of nuance. The term refers to the number of spells and rituals involved, since simple necromancies are atomic or require at most single adjunct spells such as post-revival care, while composite necromancies are intricate and often tedious processes which can take weeks or, in extreme cases, even years.
Simple
Simple necromancies use single spells or rituals to perform all components pertaining to the revival of a deceased, and while these forms of necromancy are usually easier to perform, they are less powerful and do not closely resemble the idealized notion of bringing back the dead as-is. Simple necromancies are usually performed to raise armies for battle, or other cases where the individual identity of each party being raised is not as important as the number of undeads that can be produced. These practices are usually learned by human alchemists, or demi-humans such as vampires and liches who have endeavors of conquest in mind. Simple necromancies were especially common before the Masquerade, although in recent centuries it has faded.
Simple necromancies include:
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Composite
Other practices of necromancy, called composite necromancies, involve the study of separate rituals to individually mend the deceased's body and mind, to retrieve their soul from the afterlife or to summon a new soul to inhabit the body, and medical practices of both mundane and magical nature to nurse the undead back to health after their revival. While these forms of necromancy are generally far more complex to study, they may yield better results.
Composite necromancies often consist of separate procedures to amend the body in unnatural manners through the use of magic, to regenerate lost tissue including brain matter and to give the target soul a comfortable place to reside in the body, and targeted rituals to draw the desired soul from the afterlife, especially accounting for the tension that often exists when trying to bring a long-dead soul back from the afterlife, and the tendency for other souls, especially souls from the underworld that do not yet have a body and want to inhabit one, to leap at the chance. Composite necromancies are more likely to fail, and performing a composite necromancy frequently takes multiple people.
In some cases, composite necromancies have been used with the intention of using a body as a vessel for a particular soul, often one from the underworld. Typically, this ritual is considered a form of possession and is frequently used to give demons their form, but at a technical level, it is a necromancy. Frequently, the host body is killed at the moment it is needed to accept its host, which often prevents the original soul from fully leaving their body. This has led to cases of bodies being simultaneously controlled by two souls or, in especially rare cases, the original soul regaining control over their body after it was sacrificed to be inhabited by another. This simultaneous control situation makes a spectator more likely to believe that the body is possessed, similar to how some spirits function, rather than undead.
Composite necromancies include:
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