Kindly Necromancers

[Kromm]

One thing that came up in a past fantasy campaign was the party necromancer who used the Zombie spell as "Resurrection Lite." The PCs were capable of hiring someone to cast the Resurrection spell but not of casting it themselves; so when somebody died on a quest, a quick casting of Zombie let that person get up, carry their own gear, help out in fights, and eventually drag their corpse back to town to be raised from the dead. The cadaver wasn't dead weight, pardon the pun.

Strictly speaking, this was 100% by the book: The Resurrection spell does not specify that the dead body can't have been previously reanimated by necromancy. The Zombie spell does not state that it prevents later resurrection. In fact, both spells have roughly the same requirement: a relatively intact corpse.

As the GM, I was open to this because it was clever. I let the player of the dead PC control the zombie because, on the meta level, it kept that player engaged and presented an interesting roleplaying challenge: Plenty of gamers secretly love the idea of playing a creepy, amoral monster that goes around saying, "Braaaaains!" . . . for a short time. I even house-ruled that the Resurrection penalty was at -1 per two or three days spent as a zombie, not the usual -1 per day since death.

Anyway, the point is that the necromancer was generally seen in a good light because that person helped ensure that dead friends got back to town with all their equipment, and eventually resurrected. Of course, once that character learned the Teleport spell and could shuttle people to and from town (Heavy encumbrance is pretty forgiving), people did prefer "Teleport back to the temple, pay for the Resurrection, and return to the adventure."

[The Colonel]

As previously noted, a lot depends on the nature of necromancy - where do the animating spirits come from for undead and what other applications does it have? The old TSR Complete Book of Necromancers includes "grey" necromancers who specialise in using the boundary between life and death to inform medical practice and/or who apply their arts specifically to controlling and neutralising extant undead rather than creating more. These sort of necromancers could easily be accepted (or at least tolerated) in most cultures with no more issues than medieval European physicians and surgeons being deprecated for practicing anatomical dissections.
For settings where it is possible to create a new spirit to animate a corpse - thus turning it into, essentially, a flesh golem, the only boundary problem will be desecration of the dead ... which is entirely cultural and can easily be written out of a fantasy culture.
For settings where the undead are part of mainstream society - such as the necropolitans of WOTCs Libris Mortis or the Thanotocracy of High Cromlech from China Miellville's Bas-Lag novels, then necromancy could also be entirely acceptable. Even more so when boundaries between religion and magic are blurred and someone is required to look after the "living ancestors" on the day of the dead.

[FuelDrop]

There are quite a few non-ambiguous necromancy spells in GURPS magic that give us an option.

A necromancer who does exorcisms, casts Final Rest on the dead, finds unquiet spirits and helps them pass on, and the like is an obvious option. You could even have them use Soul Jar as a form of life "insurance", giving the option of putting your affairs in order before passing on even after your body dies.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It is easier to find consensus in a nation of ~350,000 people than in a nation nearly one thousand times larger. Iceland is also a relatively homogeneous nation, so it does not have the bigotry issues of the USA (I knew people in the Navy who refused to give blood because it might have benefitted someone of another religion). As they say, more people, more problems.

Related tangent linked back to the original topic closer, but I could see a definite role for a medium between the recipients of organ donation and their (deceased) donors.

Recipients of anonymous heart transplants in the US seem to fairly frequently develop delusions about who their donor was, and develop personality changes consistent with stereotypes about that imagined profile. The emotional and philosophical weight our culture places on the organ obviously factors in heavily here - the heart being seen as the seat of emotions, and being an interchangable word for various virtues (empathy, courage). Often the recipients don't seem particularly conflicted about this (a Quirk level delusion), and for some it may just be sort of memorializing the (anonymous) donor.

Many of the personality changes can also be seen as consistent with suddenly having better cardiovascular health and improved energy, and therefore getting out and doing more things and therefore picking up new interests - but the more direct "cause-effect" relationship is "clearly" getting the heart and part of the psyche of the donor. Again, a quirk level delusion.

Being a middle aged man convinced that you got the heart of a young man, and using that as an excuse for why you suddenly have an improved sex drive and are appreciating "youthful" music can be more convenient than admitting you had been suffering from cardiovascular-related erectile disfunction before the surgery, and that you'd always kinda liked rap music but felt you were too "decent" for it.

It's when the recipient develops a conviction that the donor was of a specific gender, sexuality, and ethnic background quite unlike their own that they end up seeking psychological counseling. In a game with the actual dead, the belief that a fragment of the donors soul is entangled with yours (and is in conflict with you) may be true, as might the belief that a fragment of your own soul is removed with your original (diseased) organ. A medium might be required to negotiate a peace between the recipient and the donor, and to literally make a place in the recipients soul for the new organ.

[Flyndaran]

There are loads of fiction where organ donors haunt or linger around recipients.
The first example that popped into my head was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Condition_(film)
Where Bob Hoskins' character has to solve his donor's murder.

A proper necromancer could make that easier.

[jeff_wilson]

Anita Blake of the eponymous novel and comic book series is a mostly kindly necromancer. Her United States has very little tolerance for doing bad things with magic, demons, and the animated dead (although vampires are treated as living people). She has a special sense about spirits of the dead and is often able to bolster them to the point where they can communicate, and at least one of the books opens with some exhumed decedent being raised in order to be deposed for a lawsuit over their estate. She rather more often gets called in when a body turns up with either no evidence of how they died or of some new impossible way, and hopes the killer was confident enough to attack from the front.

Ned in the "Pushing Daisies" TV show has the gift to revive dead things with his touch, but if touched again they are dead forever. If they remain untouched for 60 seconds, another of its kind dies to take its place. Ned was making a marginal living as a piemaker serving pies with absolutely the freshest ingredients until he teamed with a PI to touch dead people, again hoping the killer was confident enough to attack from the front.

Then there was the woman of Endor....

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by Kromm

One thing that came up in a past fantasy campaign was the party necromancer who used the Zombie spell as "Resurrection Lite." The PCs were capable of hiring someone to cast the Resurrection spell but not of casting it themselves; so when somebody died on a quest, a quick casting of Zombie let that person get up, carry their own gear, help out in fights, and eventually drag their corpse back to town to be raised from the dead. The cadaver wasn't dead weight, pardon the pun.

Strictly speaking, this was 100% by the book: The Resurrection spell does not specify that the dead body can't have been previously reanimated by necromancy. The Zombie spell does not state that it prevents later resurrection. In fact, both spells have roughly the same requirement: a relatively intact corpse.

As the GM,

Up to this point, I was sure the necromancer in question was your namesake. In fact, I thought that you had told that story in days gone by about Dr. Kromm with his Zombie-50.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Anita Blake of the eponymous novel and comic book series is a mostly kindly necromancer. Her United States has very little tolerance for doing bad things with magic, demons, and the animated dead (although vampires are treated as living people). She has a special sense about spirits of the dead and is often able to bolster them to the point where they can communicate, and at least one of the books opens with some exhumed decedent being raised in order to be deposed for a lawsuit over their estate. She rather more often gets called in when a body turns up with either no evidence of how they died or of some new impossible way, and hopes the killer was confident enough to attack from the front.

...

Temporarily raising the dead (people who could do this were called "animators" and were technically not "necromancers") was a going commercial business. Legal disputes and sentimental requests were msot of it.

Anita was called in on crimes due to her degree in supernatural stuff and her status as a licensed vampire hunter. Raising a murder victim created an an almost unstoppable revenant who was out for vengeance.

A related concept is seen in the Grave Witch series by Kalayna Price. The heroine there does call up spirits of the dead in criminal investigations.

[Pursuivant]

It hasn't been touched on directly, but much of the stereotypical "evil necromancer" trope is based on the idea that the spirits summoned to animate the undead are inherently, cosmically, Evil.

Likewise, there's the assumption that Necromantic spells which involve the spirits of the dead are also Evil because they somehow coerce those spirits, call them back from an otherwise pleasant afterlife, and generally muck about with The Natural Order of Things.

Change the cosmology and you change the necromancer trope.

If you assume that animating a zombie is no more evil than building a weapon or a robot, and that the spirits of the dead don't mind being contacted and manipulated by the living, then necromancers just become another specialist who works with the dead or dying; no more creepy or immoral than a mortician or a pathologist.

Changing the assumptions about the nature of the afterlife could create a class of absolutely, cosmically Good necromancers who act as psychopomps and assistants to dead souls. For example, a priest who says masses for the dead might literally provide the magical or spiritual energy a lost or tortured soul needs to improve their condition. Taken to more heroic extremes, necromancers might act as guardians of dead souls, advising and protecting them from malign influences as they travel to the afterlife or attempt to move from a lower spiritual plane to a higher one.

If you go for an Ancient Egyptian trope which assumes that the deceased's' physical body is necessary for the well-being of their soul in the afterlife, necromancers also act as tomb guardians, forensic anthropologists, and morticians.

If you assume that there is reincarnation instead of an afterlife (or in addition to it) necromancers might help dead souls detach from their previous incarnation and move on to a new incarnation.

Even a "zombies and skeletons" type necromancer could be Good if the nature of the Zombie spell is that it embodies the spirit of the deceased in their bones, creating a free-willed entity.

At the very least, this allows a dead person a form of immortality.

With suitable costumes and masks, you could have a sort of Dios des Muertos society where the living and the dead live and work side by side. By agreement, the dead might perform society's difficult and dangerous jobs, leaving the living to do safer easier jobs, as well as jobs which require a living person.

Alternately, the Zombie spell might turn a dead body into a Soul Jar which preserves the knowledge and personality of the deceased, allowing the living to communicate with the dead at will.

[PTTG]

"Well, when you die, your soul goes on to its reward. That's when someone like Old Dancing Bones Jim comes in. He'll put your remains in the beetle pit, and when he takes it out it's just a bundle of bones. Now most folks get a little scrimsha on their parent's bones just as a show of respect, but the real fancy folks and big shots get a little gold on there. Anyway, once Jim -- or his apprentice -- is done with the polishing and shining, he does his little mumbo jumbo and the bones are re-assembled into a skeletal servant. Some remains are used to plow fields or other heavy labor. The richer folk have their favorite ancestors' bones working in the house, or doing other light work.

That's why we like to take it easy around here. As we say, 'My bones'll work enough when I'm dead.'"