Editing Magipunk:Magic (section)

=== Necromancy ===

A forbidden and outlawed art, Necromancy none-the-less flourishes in Atathorn. The first and perhaps most pernicious art of Necromancy is the ability to sacrifice another person for power, which can fill a power token (and is indistinguishable from a "normal" token) or be immediately used to power some other spell. This is, in fact, a variation on the legal arts used to create power from blood, but it is far more efficient. 

Later arts of Necromancy allow the necromancer to kill a person's body, but tie the soul to its preserved flesh. When creating the undead, the freshness of the body determines the amount of sentience brought back to it – if the person has been dead for more than a few hours, nearly mindless zombies are the best that can be managed. Even if the binding rituals are performed at the moment of death, however, the process is twisting to the intelligence inside. Loss of some intelligence and some memories is inevitable, and dark urges lurk constantly at the minds of the undead. Some are more able to restrain these impulses than other, but the urges grow worse as time draws on. 

Undead require a constant supply of mana to maintain their state. If the spells maintaining them are allowed to go too long unrefreshed, permenant losses of both the physical state of the body and the acuity of the mind take place, and, eventually a rapid decomposition and release of the soul occurs. 

The undead are considered abominations with no rights in Atathorn – anyone may destroy an undead and suffer no legal consequences of any kind. None the less, there are persistant rumors that some of the most important citizens in Atathorn are secretly undead. 

On a side note, individuals who are exposed to a great deal of magical energy during their lives may sometimes spontaneously rise as undead after death. Increasingly, this is a problem with Prayer-Mill workers and others in occupations which deal with large amounts of raw magic. The undead formed in such ways are very primitive, extremely stupid, and generally very short-lived. It is possible for a Necromancer to control such an undead. 

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