Kindly Necromancers

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

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?

While kindly might be a strong word for Abydos in Banestorm, it is a city of necromancy where the necromancers are not any more evil than the rest of the world. Their theology focuses on Lazarus, who was returned from the dead.

Usually I go for the pragmatic necromancer:

-Why risk the life of a living person when you can send a zombie into danger instead?

-Why practise slavery when the dead can do much of the same labours?

-Why allow the wisdom of ancestors to be lost when you can summon their spirits?

The preservation of knowledge is one of my favourites, because it can be a good cause. Discovery or revival of old sciences. Imagine how much of Roman technology could be recovered in the Roman period if you could actually consult the Romans? I know there's logistical problems there, but such an idealistic scholar would be a candidate for kindly necromancer.

Back in That Other Game (Pathfinder), I had a shaman who wasn't exactly a necromancer, but used necromancy... she was an honest businesswoman, a very loyal friend, a committed healer, and also fully in favour of using undead backup when the opportunity arose. In this case, it was just have the necromancer be a person, capable of kindness.

For my main villainous necromancer, while she doesn't have a conscience (for supernatural reasons), she was raised in a very loving family and genuinely believes that kindness is the healthiest way to interact with people. In essence, unless and until ruthlessness served her, she was good to them. Part of her psychology is she realised all the bad things she'd done for power didn't mean all that much if she wasn't free to do a favour for someone she liked.

Someone who realises when you sacrifice everything else for power, then what you have isn't really power anymore... and necromancers are often in a position to have made those mistakes, and smart enough to learn from them.

[evileeyore]

There are two ways to determine if a Necromancer is 'good' or not:

Does raising the dead harm the soul? If no, then Necromancy is not inherently bad.

Is the Necromancer working for the common good or personal gain?

[Flyndaran]

That requires perfect knowledge by everyone involved. Most people may believe souls are harmed even if they aren't according to word of GM, or simply find the idea of using corpses as objects offensive.
Violating local beliefs for any reason even if they're doing so "for their own good" is not very moral to most people, I'd say.
It's probably easiest to just declare that locals are fine with it without getting to much into how and why they're fine with it.

[AlexanderHowl]

I generally think that the majority of people will feel aggrieved with anyone violating the corpses of their loved ones, whatever the reason, so zombies are out of the question for anyone necromancer who desires respect instead of revulsion. A necromancer who communes with the ancestors would gain respect from the local community in many cultures though, and they could probably become quite wealthy off giving a voice to the dead (or getting advice from the dead). Then again, captured enemies and executed criminals might serve as an acceptable source of bodies.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I generally think that the majority of people will feel aggrieved with anyone violating the corpses of their loved ones, whatever the reason, so zombies are out of the question for anyone necromancer who desires respect instead of revulsion. A necromancer who communes with the ancestors would gain respect from the local community in many cultures though, and they could probably become quite wealthy off giving a voice to the dead (or getting advice from the dead). Then again, captured enemies and executed criminals might serve as an acceptable source of bodies.

A necromancer who practiced his arts on condemned criminals to turn them into post-mortem slaves might be tolerated but he would not be well-loved. In real life executioners were not well-loved either.

[Flyndaran]

A majority of people from real world cultures that values such things, sure. But we're already dealing with impossible settings, so what's one more unlikely cultural artifact like not caring much about corpses?

If NPCs don't care about them as proxies for the living, then they also wouldn't go out of their way to perform acts with/on them likely to offend real world players.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Varyon

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.

I like the idea of a ubiquitous Skeleton labour, where properly cleaning the bones and hiding them under a uniform is legally mandated. Social crimes will include selling shoddy work with bits of decomposing flesh still clinging and nobles flouting the rules about Skeleton uniforms with personalised and highly decorated garb.

If the uniform is sufficiently voluminous, then the living can wear a fake uniform and pretend to be 'harmless' Skeleton workers, for a wide variety of nefarious purposes.

The uniform is itself might be magical, due to the monopoly of the Necromancers Guild, meaning that without breaking or bypassing spells, you can't remove or peer under the uniform.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Is the Necromancer working for the common good or personal gain?

Why is working for personal gain a bad thing? As Adam Smith remarked, the butcher, the brewer, and the baker provide us with our dinners not out of benevolence, but because its serves their own interest to do so, because we pay them for it. So long as the necromancer is serving their interest by providing a service to customers who want it at a price they're willing to pay, and not by killing, enslaving, or defrauding them, I don't see the harm in their getting paid for their skill and their labor.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Why is working for personal gain a bad thing?

You know what I meant.

Yes, you can work towards the common good and personal gain. However when one's motives are purely personal gain and their actions do not benefit the common good, then they've crossed the line from "good" to "bad".

It's a sliding scale from one to other, and yeah, one can straddle the middle.

[starslayer]

I don't see the need for a good necromancer to practice a type of necromancy that is 'accepted as part of the social order'.

Necromancy, the this is illegal creepy icky stuff, is a great practice for rebels.

Being a rebel is not a bad thing, it means challenging authroity. And in many settings have noble or even heroic rebels, authority is often cast in a negative light as well. They rebel against injustice, racism, inequality- if they use necromancy as the tool for rebellion against those evil motivations; then objectively necromancy for that person is good.

Example:
In one of the fantasy games that I play in the human aristocracy is stiff, and inflexible, coupled with many magical protections and healing magic being born pretty much anywhere but first in line to inherit a title means that your only use is in political maneuvering. For men this means being sent to some horrible frontier in the hopes that something useful grows or is found there in a few generations. For women this means being married off for political purposes and spending the rest of your life birthing future heirs.

For one such young girl born into that world it was a bleak outlook, a golden cage was still a cage, so she studied necromancy, was uppity and strong willed and when it was finally possible just ran away from home.

She's gruff, short tempered, has no problem getting her hands dirty and has great empathy for people who are being crushed by 'the system/the man'. She will go out of her way to help folk who are being scourged by paladins with way too loose a definition of 'evil' for their current 'smite evil' campaign. She'll listen to village of kobolds saying they fear for their pups with the human village across the river spreading into their hunting grounds.

She'll save a dying child without question, just don't ask how she was able to work a 'healing' that would normally take a whole slew of priests- its just easier to work with existing parts than to try and rebuild missing ones from nothing.

To the downtrodden, those with social stigmas, and members of 'monsterous' races she is eminently approachable. To 'proper' society she is icky and gross and often a criminal- for doing the right thing with the 'wrong' tools; or for doing the 'wrong' thing altogether (like striking down a noble who was taking far too many liberties with their surfs with a nasty curse or two).