Necromancy

Necromancy is the art of utilizing the Undead to perform esoteric feats. Those who utilize this form of magic are known as Necromancers.<ref name=":0">Necromancy
Primarily focusing on ghosts, also called echoes, Necromancers can take the ‘echo’ of a dead individual and bring it to bear, influencing the world. They straddle a place between present and memory, life and death, and leverage this position to see and manipulate things others wouldn’t be able to. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref>

Someone who specifically binds ghosts and other spectral beings into items is called a Valkyrie, with a male Valkyrie sometimes being known as a Valkalla,<ref name=":1">Interviewer M. Saville (S):  The tape recorder is on.  Good evening.  Thank you for agreeing to this.

Anabelle (A):  Your offering was adequate.

[...]

A:  I am Lord of this city.  Conventional wisdom calls me a Valkyrie.

S:  A shaman, imbuing objects with power and incorporeal Others.

[...]

A:  [Tromos, her familiar] opened up a whole world for me.  Dream, fear, a bit of the divine.  I’ve taken a more old-school path, Valkyrie-wise, with a little bit of worship in there. - excerpt from Gathered Pages: 2 </ref><ref name=":2">“Gudbrand,” Joyce said, looking down at the list.

“Valk-something?” I asked.

“Valkalla,” Joyce spoke.

[...]

“He was unhappy with the fact that she only bore girls.  Valkyries and the various offshoots, they work with spirits and souls.  Rather than have girls, he used his newborn daughters.”

“As fuel,” I said, just a little spooked at the thought.

[...]

That left two options.

The valkyrie man who had turned his own children into fodder for his practice, and the scourge, who dealt specifically with Bogeymen and the Abyss.

[...]

I caught sight of the Valkyrie-man.

Unlike Crooked Hat, the Valkalla was undeniably bad. - excerpt from Execution 13.5 </ref> and is a sub-type of Necromancer with some overlap with Shamanism.<ref name=":1" /><ref>“I read it because I thought maybe it was related to vestiges like me.  And it is.  But this one focuses on ghosts too, on historical elements, and some more practical applications.  You’ve got practitioners who specialize a hundred percent on ghosts and vestiges.  A kind of necromancy.”

“Death magic.”

“Right.  In this case, you’ve got practitioners convincing warriors, usually dying soldiers, that there’s an amazing afterlife of parties and respect for their deeds waiting for them, so the warriors agree to give up their spirits after death.  Use that agreement to help make a vestige or create a ghost, a representation of their skills or their knowledge, their strength, whatever else, and imbue all of that into a vessel.”

[...]

“But I like the concept.  I like the author.  The book talks about working with ghosts being an option for a practitioner without many resources, in an area where practitioners have already taken hold of everything worth holding, or where the Lord forbids certain practices.  You take a ghost, you imbue an object, and you’ve got…”

“A magical item?” - excerpt from Damages 2.3 </ref> An archaic term for a particularly dark necromancer is Dark Necromagus.<ref name=":3">Duress 12.3</ref>

Methodology

Necromancy is the art of manipulating the undead to do your bidding, amongst other things. Necromancers especially focus on ghosts,<ref name=":0">Necromancy
Primarily focusing on ghosts, also called echoes, Necromancers can take the ‘echo’ of a dead individual and bring it to bear, influencing the world. They straddle a place between present and memory, life and death, and leverage this position to see and manipulate things others wouldn’t be able to. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref> but many also work with souls, corpses, vestiges etc.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":2" />

This art consists of playing with the delicate balance of life and death energy, so attempting to do it poorly can result in the practitioner become a Ghoul.

Items created by Necromancers include infusing weapons using sacrificed infants so that they will block any attack, infusing thematically-associated items with ghosts so that their powers can be called on by the wielder,<ref name=":4">“Ghost dropped these off.”

He extended a hand, and he dropped two objects into my outstretched palm.  A box of matches and what looked like a piece of burned pillow?

No, a stuffed animal’s limb.

I could feel the ghosts within.

[...]

Without breaking stride, I grabbed the matchbook and lit a match from within.

A wraith flared into being as the match touched snow.  A man, too burned to make out features.  A husk, made uglier by the wraithmaking process. - excerpt from Void 7.11 </ref> infusing a doll with a spirit and then transferring your wounds to it. Minions made by Necromancers aside from simply binding ghosts include creating Banes from dying humans,<ref name=":3" /> mutating ghosts into Wraiths,<ref name=":4" /> strengthening ghosts by pouring lesser ghosts into them, or using an Implement to let your ghosts resist salt. Other abilities displayed by Necromancers include turning yourself into a swarm of ghost-lights,<ref>Ghosts were streaking across the street, more like flashes of light than people.  All towards one central point.

They congealed into a form.  The Shepherd. - excerpt from Subordination 6.6 </ref> granting yourself ghostly intangibility,<ref>I shifted the position of the sword with one hand, steered with the other, and sailed within a hair of the Shepherd, blade’s point sticking out.

A jouster’s run, in a way.

I stopped at the far end of the alley and turned around.  I nearly lost the sword as it came close to slipping from my lap in the midst of my using the clutch, but I caught it and fixed the position.

The Shepherd had turned into a ghost.  Or adopted ghostly defenses for himself.  Untouched, untouchable in the conventional sense.

[...]

He turned ghostly.  It didn’t help that much.  I still had the box of salt over the handle, and even largely empty, there were trace amounts of salt inside.  Enough to fuck with a ghost.

Enough to fuck with him.

I felt the impact this time, and came very close to both crashing the bike or having the sword’s blade lever over to cut me in the side.  I managed to just barely avoid both.

He felt it too, and he folded over.  A punch in the gut at thirty kilometers an hour.

[...]

I hurried to turn around, riding over and past the fallen Shepherd’s spectral body, hoping there was salt on the tires.

No such luck, as far as I could tell.  He was dissolving much as the other banished ghosts had.  He, too, would reappear somehow.  If I’d had more salt, and if the Eye hadn’t been in the immediate area, I might have tried to bind or disrupt him.  But I didn’t, and the Eye was close enough to get in the way. - - excerpt from Subordination 6.6 </ref> and inflicting near-death experiences on your foes.

Notable Necromancers

• Anabelle (Valkyrie)<ref name=":1" />
• Bane's Master
• The Shepard (Valkalla)
• Gudbrand (Valkalla)<ref name=":2" />

References

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