Kindly Necromancers

[AlexanderHowl]

While the fantasy stereotype of necromancers is that they are acolytes of dark gods who do unspeakable things to the living before turning them into zombies, that is really a modern invention. Before their portrayals in the 19th and 20th century, necromancers were just practitioners of magic who spoke to the dead for information, though they might have been able to negotiate with the dead for services in the material world (depending on the rules of the setting). Now, there were practitioners of magic that did creepy things with the dead, but that was because magic was creepy, not because necromancy was necessarily creepy (though Christian and Muslim religious traditions banned it like any other form of magic).

How would you portray a kindly necromancer? Let us set aside the stereotypes implicit in Magic and avoid stuff like necromancers committing necrophilia and raising zombies. Would they be individuals skilled in the abilities of the Death power or the abilities of the Spirit Control power? Would they individual skilled in the Path of Spirits who specialized in the dead? How would you represent them?

[Nereidalbel]

I could see necromancers in the fashion of Steve Spellslinger being rather legitimate.

Pretty good chance he'd get some of my coin!

[Luke Bunyip]

The Eater of Souls from Charles Stross's Laundry Files is a potentially evil necromantic entity, that instead chooses to be a white hat. Assimilated evil, turned to good, if you will.

[johndallman]

The role basically got taken over by mediums working in the Spiritualist tradition. That confines itself to working with the spirits of the dead, not their bodies. So I'd base socially acceptable necromancers on them.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

For a long time I've thought that if the issue is that calling up zombies/whatever using dead bodies is wrong then why not simply give the summoner a spell that creates zombies whole-cloth? None of that nasty desecration business. Doesn't change the "Ah/Ew, undead!" issue.

I think any form of necormancy that doesn't deal with dead bodies/undead is probably a form of dealing with spirits.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The role basically got taken over by mediums working in the Spiritualist tradition. That confines itself to working with the spirits of the dead, not their bodies. So I'd base socially acceptable necromancers on them.

Just the point I was thinking of making, until I saw you had done so first.

[Stormcrow]

I think of Sabriel and the other books in the Old Kingdom series. The powers of the Abhorsen are explained in this Wikipedia article.

[patchwork]

White Wolf's Bone Flowers, perhaps. "I speak for your mother who bore you. I speak for your father who raised you. They are not pleased." They view resolving the affairs of the recently dead as their duty, and information or services provided to them by the recently dead as a sort of tip, really. They're also cold bastards who don't care a lot for the living and part of a society with a very limited appreciation for personal liberty, but sooner or later, you're going to want one, perhaps shortly after somebody puts a bullet in your head. Potentially "nicer" versions of the Bone Flowers could be murder investigators, counselors, Mormon missionaries looking for those post-mortem baptisms, people like that.

Depending on your value system - you lumped making zombies into the "bad" pile so this is probably outside of your intended scope, but you might find it relevant - had a necromancer go full Gordon Gekko in a past GURPS campaign, and pretty much create an industrial revolution with Zombie and Animate Object, among other things. Eliminating tedious, physically stressful jobs so that living humans were free to do more rewarding and complex things. He believed people laying his zombies to rest and smashing his animated looms were simply Luddites trying to choose a life of dangerous manual labor for themselves rather than learn and do something new.

More undead than necromancers, but perhaps something like the Malazan T'lan Imass. They're basically libertarian death knights, who chose the suffering of undeath to fight tyranny forever. Kings who oppress their subjects too much or engage in too many foreign wars answer to the dead, and the dead are not merciful.

[Anaraxes]

Yet another modern yet good guy portrayal would be Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer that appears in a couple of the Dresden Files stories.

[Varyon]

First off, you need a society where necromancy isn't perceived as evil. Once you've established that, you have all manner of uses for whitehat necromancers. EDIT: I should note that not all of the below need to be socially acceptable - choose which are, and this will help dictate the role of whitehat necromancers in your setting.

Labor: Undead would make for a good source of labor. To make this more palatable, it could be a punishment for criminals, and/or the living could sell the right to animate their bodies when they die (the latter could be in the form of recurring payments to their families). Necromancers would be the ones animating and controlling such a workforce, and would also be in charge of maintaining the bodies and making certain nobody does anything unethical with them. Note this works best if there's a way to prevent rotting and the like, as otherwise you're just begging for widespread disease in the living. Cleaning the bones and putting the animated skeleton into some sort of suit that makes it substantially less terrifying might be a good idea.

Speaking with the Dead: This traditional role of necromancers could have all manner of uses for the good of society. Aside from simply allowing clients to have words with their departed loved ones, this would also be very useful for solving murders and the like. This could be combined with the above as well - a man dies in the prime of his life, the family has a necromancer converse with his spirit and get official permission to sell rights to reanimate his body, allowing him to continue to provide for his family beyond the grave.

Final Rites: In settings with "naturally" occurring undead, necromancers might preside over funerals and perform the final rites/etc that prevent the newly deceased from rising as such. Necromancers are also uniquely equipped for combating the undead, as they have a good deal of power over them. This is somewhat diminished in settings where healing magic and the like harms the undead, but even then necromancers have an advantage - a cleric/white mage can cast a spell that destroys an advancing zombie, but the necromancer can turn that zombie into an ally that turns around and takes out one (or more, if he chooses an above-average specimen and/or bolsters it) of its former fellows. Even without naturally occurring undead, if there are hostile necromancers about (and, humans being human, there certainly will be) the good ones can help combat them.

Your Face Asplode: Less on the "kindly" side, in some settings necromancy can be quite effective against the living. Whitehat necromancers can serve as soldiers in the military, as bodyguards for important people, or even as law enforcement (most police are armed, after all), leveraging their magic to kill or disable threats. Note that even if necromancy cannot directly affect the living (or does so in a manner unbefitting of a good character), they can leverage their abilities from the first three categories to serve in such roles.