necromancy problem

I think people keep forgetting the issues that stop felarya from having necromancy problems. Wherever that thread is i think it needs to be made a sticky, because i've had conversations with people who seem to believe that you can reanimate skeletons and flesh.

as far as i know the only undead at all that exist in felarya are ghosts and vampires, and the latter only works if brought in from somewhere else.

well the obvious answer is obvious, you can't really bring back to life a body if there's not body to revive, considering the vorish nature of Felarya, the odds of finding a corpse at all is slim, considering most bodies have been digested after all. Possibly the reason that the bodies that can be found cannot be brought into unholy life may be a conflict of interest between the pain death promoting magics of necromancy and the healing and life promoting magical properties of Felarya's soil. Usually when two powers clash like this they nutralize each other. In the case of Necromancy since the body is already dead, it's not like the cancelling of the life giving properties of Felaryan soil is gonna do much.
For ghosts... Well it's not like they are brought back from the dead, they are just spirits without bodies, magic didn't bring them back to life, they just lost their bodies... No problem.
Vampires however... This is a big one, some people depict vampirism as a disease in early stages... So once more Felarya's soil comes into factor here and would purge the disease from the bodies induced by a vampire bite would be purged quickly, of course since the soil is far from perfect, it's not going to be able to cure advanced cases. Which would explain why fully turned vampires can exist, while people can't be turned in Felarya.

just my 2 cents

You can always just link them to this

Not even a fresh-reanimated and non-infective zombie?

Thank you thats all I was looking for.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

because i've had conversations with people who seem to believe that you can reanimate skeletons and flesh.

You can, just not through magic. Similarly, you still can, but not with a virus. A parasite-organism that makes the behavior of its host zombie-like (A "dumb" Plagas, for instance) would still work, as would SCIENCE!-sparked nanomachines and the like.

The catch? Each of those things is excessively rare, and usually is specifically tailored for a certain organism / species.

And to nitpick: Not everyone who dies on Felarya is vored. Furthermore, if it still hasn't been resolved, dead bodies don't decay on Felarya because the bacteria necessary don't exist / are magically killed. Thus, what you wind up with is dried / waterlogged bodies that are still more-or-less intact until something starts eating them.

Malahite wrote:

Archmage_Bael wrote:

because i've had conversations with people who seem to believe that you can reanimate skeletons and flesh.

You can, just not through magic. Similarly, you still can, but not with a virus. A parasite-organism that makes the behavior of its host zombie-like (A "dumb" Plagas, for instance) would still work, as would SCIENCE!-sparked nanomachines and the like.

The catch? Each of those things is excessively rare, and usually is specifically tailored for a certain organism / species.

And to nitpick: Not everyone who dies on Felarya is vored. Furthermore, if it still hasn't been resolved, dead bodies don't decay on Felarya because the bacteria necessary don't exist / are magically killed. Thus, what you wind up with is dried / waterlogged bodies that are still more-or-less intact until something starts eating them.

Actually, I think Bacteria would still be around. You need natural decomposers in a world. People just don't get sick with them because their immune systems are enhanced by the healing energy. I dont think Felarya kills disease causing things...it just makes people's immune systems much quicker and stronger...to the point where they just don't get sick except from parasites and such.

Indeed, bacteria and other microorganisms still make the world go round.

If you really need a zombie, you can go about it a few ways from necromancy and viruses (How do I raised dead?).

-Powerful curses can produce an effect similar to necromancy, as seen with Xarmaroch the undead cerberus.

-You can go hunting for loitering souls that haven't crossed over into the afterlife and bind them to a body. Just have to beat psychopomps from getting their hands on them or other spirits eating them. This is probably the best bet for a crippled necromancer if that's all they have to rely on.

-By using the right poisons in careful dosages, you can put living beings in a near-death and highly suggestible state to do your bidding. REAL ZOMBIES MAN.

-As mentioned previously, parasites are still viable.

There's plenty of ways you can reanimate a corpse without magic. Viruses are too simple to realistically get the job done anyway. But a sufficiently advanced pathogen is fair game, as are parasites, bionics, psionics, possession, and good old fashioned space-radiation.

rcs619 wrote:

Actually, I think Bacteria would still be around. You need natural decomposers in a world. People just don't get sick with them because their immune systems are enhanced by the healing energy. I dont think Felarya kills disease causing things...it just makes people's immune systems much quicker and stronger...to the point where they just don't get sick except from parasites and such.

That's pretty much what I thought. Viruses would be rarer, because they aren't alive so they don't benifit from the background healing effect. Bacteria however, do benefit but because they're so small it's not enough for them to cause any real infection.

To be honest, I'd say it's because necromancy relies on some form of magical energy that is nulled by the charged soil of Felarya. Of course, that's pretty basic, and I'm sure everyone's figured that out. As to the bacteria thing, I'm gonna go with the super immune system idea, since we're all pretty much agreed that life energy is boosted in Felarya. Then again, one could argue that the pathogens would also be boosted, as they are forms of life. Perhaps the effect is multiplied in multi-celled organisms? It would explain why large creatures can usually wield magic so much more potently than small ones (with a few exceptions). Plus, there's always fungi to take care of waste.

The corpse, if it needs to be reanimated with some form of locomotion, can't be too degenerated, lest there be insufficient muscle mass. I'd say necromancy can sometimes raise zombies without that problem, because the magickry is complex and can be manipulated by the primitive reanimated mind of the corpse to form a shell of magic-to-kinetic energy reactions that would allow simple movement. Hence, skeletons and far-gone bodies being very slow and jerky. Of course, if the brain or nervous system is also gone, which is usually the case, a form of overshadowing intelligence is needed, usually the necromancer itself in small amounts of zombies. In large ones, a less autonomous (and thus less distracted) form of intelligence would handle it, perhaps a psi-being created by the dark magics of necromancy.

As to viruses... true, the lack of a cell structure would leave it out of the life-boost from the soil, but... viruses have shown to be tricky things. I would never rule them out. Felarya has done some strange things to the evolutionary process in creatures. That could include viruses. I'd bet there are a few species that can still infect smaller beings (meaning smaller than humans), which may lead to greater evolution in time. And God forbid anyone ever create a virus that learns from and mutates the genetic pattern of host cells!

ZionAtriedes wrote:

To be honest, I'd say it's because necromancy relies on some form of magical energy that is nulled by the charged soil of Felarya.

It's only because the afterlife has dibs on souls, not because the magic itself is nullified. You can't steal them from where they go, but you can still work with what's floating around in the world as a wandering spirit, interact with it and do whatever necromancy things you want to it.

But, that doesn't work either... I think the whole point of the "no necromancy" thing is so Felarya never has to be subject to one of those overdone zombie apocalypses... And, you see, most of those are all about the body, not the soul. So, since a soul is what makes a person who he is, and being zombified destroys that in a person, that's, well... you know, that means Dawn of the Dead could still happen here, which doesn't quite seem right...

wouldn't soul vore technically be necromancy?

asaenvolk wrote:

wouldn't soul vore technically be necromancy?

Uh, no.

Necromancy, the way I see it, doesn't deal with the soul too much. That may be a part of the general art of necromancy, but not be the reason it's nulled. The reason souls can't be recovered could be for a whole 'nother reason, like Felarya's extreme instability in terms of connecting to other worlds. If one assumes that a necromancer needs to establish contact with whatever plane the soul's on to recall it, then it's probable that Felarya's shifting connections would play havoc with such a process. (Extra tidbit: that's also the reason why I'd imagine so many people are antsy about teleporting around Felarya without the use of stable ancient gateways.)

Nah, the real problem is that Felarya's ambient energy must somehow interfere. That's probably why vampires can't spread their curse, as well. Undeath is a twisted parody of life, and it must make use of a twisted parody of life-energy. Plus, if we were to view vampirism as a disease, or a dark-energy that acts similar to a disease, we can assume Felarya's life-boosting makes a body able to fight it off.

Soul vore wouldn't be necromancy, really. It's more like energy consumption. The soul is a form of sentient energy.

most people would consider using magic to consume the soul of another a form of necromancy. Necromancy had more to do than with just animating dead bodies.

I don't know anyone who would, actually...

asaenvolk wrote:

most people would consider using magic to consume the soul of another a form of necromancy.

asaenvolk wrote:

I would consider using magic to consume the soul of another a form of necromancy.

Fix'd

All right, all right, be careful. We don't need this becoming a tension-filled discussion. There's a fine line between disagreeing and mocking.

Necromancy roughly translates to "dead magic", really. Of course, that requires a concrete definition of life and death. Soul-wandering may not be the same thing as total death, where the soul moves to an "afterlife".

FalconJudge wrote:

I don't know anyone who would, actually...

I would, depending on how it's eaten.

Typically, souls are considered synonymous with ghosts and the like, which are ethereal. Often times, they can be hurt by magical weapons - no necromancy there. Similarly, magical flames, bolts of energy, etcetera will harm an Ethereal being without being Necromancy. However, eating a soul in such a way that you draw sustenance from it / "absorb" it and its "nutrients" would sound a lot like necromancy to me.

I dunno. I've always viewed necromancy as parodying life-energies (like undeath itself), which would be very physical, not ethereal. Necromancy has always seemed to be a very physical form of magic to me.

Is this thread dead yet? I want to necro it.

well necromancy has more definitions that just "dead magic" apparently.

wikipedia wrote:

In modern time necromancy is used as a more general term to describe the pretense of manipulation of death, and generally has a magical connotation. Modern séances, channeling, Spiritism and Spiritualism verge on necromancy when the supposedly invoked spirits are asked to reveal future events. Necromancy may also be presented as sciomancy, a branch of theurgic magic.

so whatever you call the other branches of necromancy, the form we're dealing with here, is the ability to raise the dead. no matter how you do it, i think it is impossible to re-animate skeletons and flesh, unless you use telekenesis to move them with your mind.

what the problem is are the definitions, people are trying to find loopholes in the loose definition of necromancy on the wiki, and I think that needs to be refined more so people cant exploit that.

but no matter how many other definitions of necromancy you use, necromancy's effect on raising the dead is negated.

But souls don't die... so... If necromancy is the manipulation of dead shit, wouldn't the term only apply to things involving dead bodies?