Necromancer



"Though some might say there is not much point to turning the earth into one gigantic graveyard, these people are fools and will never understand anyway."

- How to be a Villain, Neil Zawacki

A practitioner of a kind of Whatevermancy, the Necromancer is the master of the art of death. Necromancy, the magic of interrogating the dead, has been practiced since at least Ancient Greece, where it was known as Necyomantia, and probably earlier.

In typical media they're the epitome of the Evil Sorcerer, showing none of the respect Due to the Dead, using the dark arts to create an army of skeletons and zombies (or any kind of Undead being) to ravage the countryside or enslave souls of the damned for their own evil and twisted purposes. Any villain that practices necromancy is guaranteed to fall hard onto the far side of the evil scale, and any hero who dares to dabble in it can kiss his position on the good side good bye.

However, necromancy didn't always have the evil connotations that it has in media today. The word 'necromancy' comes from the words 'nekros' (dead) and 'manteia' (prophecy), meaning that necromancers are more likely to summon spirits for divination than armies of rotting zombies. It was widely practiced across the world until the Renaissance, when it was equated with demonology and got its bad reputation.

This means that sometimes necromancers are seen in a more sympathetic light, using their powers to commune with the dead, heal others, or use their power over souls for good ends.

But since that's not nearly as interesting as zombies, the idea of a necromancer unleashing waves of zombies still persists. Of course, that doesn't stop them from unleashing the hordes on the bad guys instead!

Commonly overlaps with Necromantic; either someone attempts necromancy in order to bring back their loved one, or this was the start of their descent into evil. Sometimes a character will approach a necromancer for their help in bringing back their beloved. It's not unheard of for a necromancer to be one of The Undead themselves, often a lich.

Even if they aren't liches or other forms of undead themselves, they are likely to have unlocked other ways of prolonging their own lives to unnatural lengths. Furthermore, they may become partially undead.

Only metaphorically related to Thread Necromancer, where one resurrects dead forum threads.

Do not confuse with necro-romancer. Or a Neck-romancer.

Anime and Manga

 * The Big Bad of the 2003 anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist uses forbidden Human Transmutation and could be seen as a necromancer.
 * Meiou (Dark/Underworld King) Ixpellia from the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise. The Ancient Belka king who ruled over the Garea empire and had the ability to raise an army of Mariage out of a battlefield of corpses. She's actually a nice little girl being forced to do things she doesn't want, but having an army of cyborg zombies that invades and burns down neighboring countries gave her a rather bad reputation.
 * Charles zi Britannia in Code Geass Nightmare of Nunnally's Geass, "The Dead Rise," allows him to raise the dead to fight for him, creating soldiers that are virtually unkillable . He raised some of the best soldiers from the dead in order to claim the throne, including the current Knights of the Round.
 * There are three in Naruto -  All use the Impure World Resurrection technique.
 * Gecko Moria from One Piece is one, to a degree.
 * Faust the VIII from Shaman King. He's the descendent of the original Dr. Faustus who made a Deal with the Devil and Faust learned about being a shaman and necromancy from his books. He did it to resurrect his wife from the dead so he's got the Necromantic thing going on as well. Finally, his basic fighting technique is to summon tons and tons of skeletons. Not to mention he's about the most evil character we see until The Big Bad shows up.
 * Doll from Half Prince is a spell caster class called necromancer; she doesn't really summon zombies, she summons flaming spell monsters which generally act as meat shields for her team. However, if she's really motivated, she can summon a freaking undead dragon; however, since it generally scares her, she's only done this twice so far.
 * The protagonist of Ghost Talker's Daydream works part-time as a necromancer. It mostly involves fighting ghosts, so there is no "evil sorcerer" part there. Yet for some reason, she considers her main job as a dominatrix way more respectable.
 * Eucliwood Hellscythe of Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? is one of the rare sympathetic necromancers. Her magic allows her to heal, kill, and create zombies (in this case, immortal, self-aware undead).
 * One of Kenshiro's creepier one-shot foes from Fist of the North Star was an evil priest-looking guy by the name of Zaria who could hypnotize people into "zombies" via Nanto Ansho Ken and ultimately revives a group of his mooks that Kenshiro had just given the Your Head Asplode treatment to. Naturally, Kenshiro considers this level of disrespect for the dead unforgivable.
 * The most powerful Newtypes of Gundam's Universal Century can perform a limited and relatively benign form of necromancy, communicating with and (in extreme circumstances) drawing power from the spirits of the dead. In fact, since it requires a great deal of human empathy, it's pretty much exclusively limited to heroic Newtypes.
 * Emperor Muge Zorbados, Big Bad of the Super Robot series, Dancougar
 * The main character Chihiro from Sankarea is a zombie afficionado and a wannabe necromancer. Things get complicated when he actually succeed in necromancy, bringing his cat, as well as the eponymous girl, Back from the Dead.
 * The somewhat recent manga Necromancer features one as the main character.
 * Rental Magica had one overenthusiastic fellow who used a rare magical substance to raise a crowd of zombies and was impatient enough to slaughter a village for this purpose rather than unobtrusively collect corpses like everyone else does. His former supplier; came to wear a widow's outfit after the incident and sent the protagonists to deal with him when he tried to gather another portion of the magic plant on his own. He also used a Paper Talisman to incapacitate a ghost, but this only made her more upset  after she shrugged it off.

Comic Books

 * As of Brightest Day, Aquaman can animate and control the corpses of sea creatures as a side effect of his death and resurrection. As the main page for the comic states, "Summoning a zombie kraken may be the most awesome thing he's ever done."
 * Thomas Edison in Atomic Robo.
 * The Goon's arch enemy, the Nameless man uses massive zombie hordes to do his bidding. He also appears to have knowledge of communicating with spirits.

Film

 * In both Excalibur and Dragonslayer, the wizards (Merlin and Ulrich respectively) are called necromancers at some point. As neither film involves undead hordes and feature more traditional wizards, it is clear the older meaning is being invoked.
 * from Dead and Buried is an excellent example of this, what with

Literature
"But folk who have tasted of death are only partly alive. In the dark corners of their souls and minds, death still lurks unconquered. By night the people of Dagon moved and loved, hated and feasted, and remembered the fall of Dagon and their own slaughter only as a dim dream; they moved in an enchanted mist of illusion, feeling the strangeness of their existence but not inquiring the reasons therefor. With the coming of day, they sank into deep sleep, to be roused again only by the coming of night, which is akin to death."
 * Malory mentions that Morgan learnt "nigromancy"... in a nunnery...
 * While most of her magic doesn't seem that related to the dead, she is the one who ends up taking Arthur to Avalon... which has interesting implications.
 * A remarkable benign example appears Gulliver's Travels. The Necromancer shows Gulliver the spirits of lots of dead people, so he can interview them and learn about the past (and eat food made by a great dead chef).
 * Necromancers in A Madness of Angels tend to try their hand at immortality by swallowing papers with the traits they wish they had in a Golem-esque way. They die for real as soon as the paper is taken out, but it in the meantime, they live exactly to the constraints of the paper (meaning if you forget to, say, write down that you still want to see colors or actually feel things, you're life undead won't be very pleasant).
 * In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Sauron was called "the Necromancer" (though in this case it probably meant controlling the spirits of the dead, not their corpses). Given Tolkien's influence on the fantasy genre, this could be the Trope Maker.
 * Sauron appears to have more control over the corpses of the dead than their spirits, if the Barrow-Wights are anything to go by; according to the supplementary materials they are evil spirits (not the souls of the original deceased) sent by the Witch-King of Angmar, Sauron's Dragon to possess the bodies of dead kings to torment their former subjects.
 * Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Making Money has the Department of Postmortem Communications, which is absolutely not Necromancy because Necromancy is a bad form of magic and is done by evil wizards, and since the wizards in Postmortem Communications aren't evil wizards, it's not Necromancy! Just ignore their raising of the dead. And all the skull decorations (they're fake, except for the talking one). And the fading "NECR" on their door.
 * Note that they use the classical definition of contacting spirits to ask about the future, which is apparently evil. Contacting them to ask about the present or past, on the other hand, is okay.
 * This is continued in Unseen Academicals where the head of the Dept. of Postmortem Communications, Dr Hix, is allowed to get away with minor acts of evil, so long as they are within University Statutes.
 * Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy features several necromancers as villains—and the Abhorsen, who has similar powers but uses them to fight necromancers and other undead threats.
 * In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessman of Mars, Tara is accused of being "one of those horrid Corphals that by commanding the spirits of the wicked dead gains evil mastery over the living"—which could only be killed by Royal Blood.
 * Averted in the novels based on Diablo (see Video Games).
 * Legacy of Blood has Kara Nightshadow as a heroine, and is genuinely one of the good guys. She often has to explain to other characters how her use of death magic doesn't conflict with her apparent alignment.
 * The Kingdom of Shadow and Moon of the Spider feature Zayl and his "companion" Humbart. Humbart is a spirit bound to a skull. Nothing else, just a skull. He can see, hear, and talk, but that is about it. Zayl makes it a point to keep Humbart hidden when he's around anyone else, lest they think he's evil.
 * The Sin War trilogy even briefly explains the origins of the Necromancers. There are 3 worlds in the Diablo multiverse, they are basically Heaven, Hell, and Sanctuary (Earth). Heaven is at war with Hell, and both sides think they could win by "recruiting" the mortals of Sanctuary. Necromancers want Sanctuary to stay neutral/not involved. They would like to kick ALL Angels and Demons out of Sanctuary, but, lacking the ability to do so, they wind up fighting against whichever side is winning. Usually Demons/evil has a stronger influence, so the Necromancers are on the side of the Angels/good.
 * Well, Angels aren't really good in this setting. Most of them despise humanity and want to wipe them out, and they probably would if they ever defeated the demons, so keeping the fight between Heaven and Hell going is in humanity's best interests.
 * In the universe of The Dresden Files, necromancy on human remains is absolutely forbidden by the laws of the White Council. Of course, there are many illegal necromancers, and they've been shown to create zombies, control ghosts, and consume the spirits of the dead to increase their power.  (Usually not done because of the way Necromancy works. Two things feed into the potential power of a reanimated body; age and psychological complexity.  )
 * The magic can also be used to forcibly prevent someone from dying long enough for their body to be repaired. One necromancer uses this to try and sell Harry a Dark Is Not Evil take on the whole business.
 * Which is left a bit ambiguous, said necromancer in question has joined the dark side for altruistic reasons. And not vague, Social Darwinist-esque motivations either. She saved a man's life for no benefit, a fact which Harry notes with dismay.
 * The more traditional sort of necromancer also shows up, called an "ectomancer", who can summon and speak with ghosts, but can't outright command them. The ghosts like this sort a lot better.
 * Also, Ghost Story gave fans an answer to a question left over from the TV series: "Just how powerful IS the ghost of a necromancer?" The answer? The ghost of a knowledgeable, experienced and skilled necromancer (as opposed to the ghost of someone newly dead) is downright terrifying. It turns out that Harry wasn't kidding when, in a previous book, he described necromancers as equal in power to faerie queens, demon lords and archangels.
 * To be blunt, one famous necromancer, when the entire White Council and all their allies finally kill him, he manages to come back. And not just once, but seven freaking times.
 * Anita Blake is a licensed necromancer who often uses her powers to interrogate the dead (when she isn't busy sexing them up for one contrived reason or another).
 * Subverted in Harry Potter. It's possible to reanimate a person's corpse into an Inferi, but Necromancy is considered virtually useless because the body has no soul (in keeping with Dumbledore's statement in the first book that "No spell can raise the dead") and thus no will or intelligence. They do, unfortunately, work rather well if you have a large number of them guarding an artifact, as Harry finds out...
 * Given that wizards seem to have more success enchanting inanimate objects with certain amounts of animation and intelligence if they want assistants, this is about the first setting I've seen where necromancy is Awesome but Impractical.
 * Necromancy is an aspect of Sartan magic in The Death Gate Cycle, but is forbidden because for every person brought back to life, another somewhere dies untimely. The Sartan of Abarrach, however, were desperate enough to disregard this, and became a whole culture of necromancers.
 * Chronicles of the Necromancer is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and features a good necromancer as its main character.
 * Brian Lumley's Necroscope series gives us both sides of this. Those that talk to the willing dead are called Necroscopes, the evil bastards who torture the dead are Necromancers. There are no crossovers between the two.
 * Chloe Saunders from the Darkest Powers trilogy. In fact, she is almost certainly the most powerful necromancer in existence, and possibly the most powerful necromancer to ever exist. In a necromancer's case, though, having a lot of power is not always a good thing. Most necromancers eventually go insane later in life, and the trend seems to be that the more powerful they are, the faster it happens.
 * In a world with sorcerers, witches, werewolves, half-demons, vampires, and all other sorts of supernatural creatures running around, necromancers really got the short end of the stick: They can talk to ghosts (who usually harass them), which makes them look schizophrenic since a necromancer can't tell a ghost from a living person; and they can raise the dead (but only one at a time, involving a complicated ritual, as well as practice and skill, and a willingness to shove a soul back into its rotting corpse). Fun times!
 * Chloe's problem with zombies is actually reversed because of her insane amounts of power. Rather than needing a ritual and other things, she accidentally raises the dead in her sleep. Seeing as how she's a genuinely good person (and the protagonist, to boot), she was horrified to find out that she could do something like that, and sleeping anywhere where there might be corpses of any species is a big no-no for her.
 * Johannes Cabal the Necromancer and the sequel are about a necromancer who sold his soul to Satan to get the skill. In-universe it's not really viewed positively, and the character jokes about his favorite wanted posters of himself.
 * The Zombie Master in Piers Anthony's Xanth series may qualify as a necromancer as his power is raising the dead, ie: creating Zombies. This does not make him popular but he is in fact a regular sweetheart and gets the girl (okay after a few hundred years spent undead but still..)
 * The writings of Clark Ashton Smith featured a number of necromancers. Notable examples being The Empire of the Necromancers, The Charnel God, and The Last Incantation. The reasons run the gamut from Necromantic to Night of the Living Mooks.
 * H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward features a group of immortal necromancers, most notably the titular protagonist's ancestor, Joseph Curwen. They can resurrect the dead temporarily by converting their bones or ashes into mystical "saltes" through alchemy, and speaking an incantation, and torture them for esoteric knowledge lost from the world of the living. It's implied that their ultimate goal is to resurrect undead legions to take over the world under their command.
 * In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The People of the Black Circle", the king is murdered by necromancy.
 * In "The Devil in Iron", Khosatral Khel revives his city with it,


 * In Amanda Downum's The Drowning City and The Bone Palace, the protagonist, Isyllt Iskaldur, is a necromancer. She is not portrayed as evil, although she is sometimes treated as such by others. Her abilities do not appear to include summoning zombie armies, but do include dealing with ghosts, whether communicating, capturing or banishing, as well as raising the dead temporarily, experiencing the final memories of the dead, aging and corroding non-living things rapidly, invoking cold, and related things.
 * Necromancy is an aspect of Black Magic in Mithgar, and mostly follows the more traditional sort, as a necromancer's primary abilities are used in summoning and compelling dead spirits, usually to force information out of them. One necromancer, Baron Stoke (also one of the series' viler villains), did learn to create a zombie army, but died before he could use it or pass the knowledge on.
 * Towards the end of The Malloreon by David Eddings, we learn that among the many forms of magic practiced by the Dals was necromancy. Much like the older meaning of the word, the necromancer we see summons back the spirit of the recently dead to answer questions.
 * Percy Jackson and The Olympians:, Hades, and Persephone are all necromancers. They are also all good guys.
 * Subverted in Septimus Heap: DomDaniel is referred to as a necromancer, but none of his abilities match the epithet.
 * Necromancy is naturally an important part of The Witch Watch, given that the start involves the protagonist being raised from the dead by mistake.
 * The protagonist of Frankenstein, naturally, creates a monster using parts of corpses, using science rather than magic.

Live-Action TV

 * Ned, the main character of Pushing Daisies. The soul gets revived along with the person in his instance, so no zombies. In fact, one of the first things he says in the series is an objection to those he revives being called undead, when they're merely "alive again".
 * There are, however, plenty of gruesome cases where it's probably a blessing that he sticks to his guideline of keeping them alive for only one minute (otherwise something else dies); at any rate, even the better cases aren't quite normal afterward, as while they can be killed again (and thus permanently), they nonetheless stop aging.
 * Angel refers to necromancers on occasion, and features Los Angeles necromancer Magnus Hainsley as a minor villain in the last season. As expected from a series that constantly subverts fantasy and horror tropes, Magnus turns out to be a short, bald fast-talker who seems more like a car salesman than a sorcerer. He does prove to be a powerful enemy, though, given that he has "power over the dead" and the heroes confronting him are a vampire and a ghost (or close enough to a ghost for his purposes).

Music

 * Rush's "The Necromancer".
 * Necromancer by Van der Graaf Generator, in the spirit of Good Is Not Nice.

New Media

 * In Descendant of a Demon Lord, Necromancy is a highly esoteric (and depending on the location, illegal) discipline of magic. In 7.1, Celes aggressively recruited some bandits to be her soldiers, telling them she'd kill them and animate their corpses if necessary, and some of those listening seemed to consider necromancy not real. Necromancers are almost always bad people, but necromancy is not regarded as something inherently evil by many sorcerers or other monsters. Like most tools, it can be used for good or bad. Unsurprisingly many decent sorcerers would jump at the chance to learn necromancy no strings attached. Still, since necromancers tend to be bad, they are often distrusted.
 * The protagonist of Vigor Mortis is a natural necromancer, whose existence contradicts the doctrine of the dominant religion where she lives, and where most magic is regulated, necromancy is one of the few schools of magic that is outright banned.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

 * Bakeneko and Nekomatas are Yokai that can control corpses like puppets.

Tabletop Games

 * A good deal of Magic: The Gathering creatures are called necromancers, while the actual creatures generally have creatures types of cleric or wizards. Users of Black Magic in the settings tend to have dead minions.
 * Dungeons & Dragons has Necromancy as one of its schools of magic. Its practitioners were called necromancers.
 * Interestingly enough, earlier D&D editions had healing spells in the necromancy school. But since necromancy was categorized as magic over life forces, it made perfect sense.
 * The 3.5 supplement Heroes of Horror include the class Dread Necromancer which, among other things, turns into a lich upon reaching level 20.
 * The irony being, of course, that D&D's clerics always made better necromancers than the necromancers themselves. The power to repel/destroy/command undead? Cleric class ability. Animate Dead spell? Clerics got it way earlier than wizards. Speak with Dead spell, the main way to interrogate a corpse? Cleric only. You get the picture.
 * However, in Pathfinder, the oft-called 3.75:th edition, Necromancy Specialists gain the Command/Turn Undead ability as well.
 * As do the Dread Necromancer (see above)
 * The 2nd Edition had a guidebook called The Complete Book of Necromancers, as it seemed Necromancers had too much potential (as villains, mostly) to simply be a chapter in The Complete Book of Wizards.
 * A rare case of a Good-aligned Necromancer was detailed in Dragon Magazine #283. Danna of the Skull is a Necromancer of the Anatomist Prestige Class who uses her skills for forensic investigation, although her spellbook is not listed. Of course, the article where Danna appears is in one of their tongue-in-cheek April editions, meaning the material contained within is not intended for any serious campaign; Danna is obviously meant as a parody of Agent Dana Scully.
 * Used many, many times in various The World of Darkness gamelines:
 * Vampire: The Masquerade had the Giovanni clan, a Mafia family of vampires with a long history of necromantic practices. The corpses served multiple purposes, one of them being that, since the Giovanni bite causes a lot of pain, they provided a more reliable means of blood than feeding on live humans.
 * Vampire: The Requiem brings them back as the Sangiovanni bloodline. Out with the Mafia ties, in with the necrophilia.
 * Mage: The Awakening has the Moros path, sometimes called the Necromancers. They have an innate understanding of the ways of Death and Matter; doesn't necessarily mean they're bad people, though.
 * Geist: The Sin Eaters has the Necromancer Archetype; however, it's less about raising the dead and more about understanding the mysteries of death and the Underworld. Though, as the titular Sin-Eaters have death-themed powers (making them all necromancers in a way), there are of course rituals to raise zombies.
 * GURPS has the Necromantic College of magic. In fact, the highest-level Healing spell, Resurrection, requires its casters to know some necromancy, including Summon Spirit.
 * The GURPS Fantasy World of Yrth has the Kingdom of Abydos, where the art of Necromancy is considered holy. Everyone who is anyone of any importance is either a necromancer or undead. And labor, being zombie-based, is smelly but cheap.
 * In Exalted, Necromancy is to Sorcery as the Underworld is to Creation; a deadened reflective parody, requiring a different set of initiation Charms to access and being a form of Mutually Exclusive Magic—see that page for more details. Whereas Sorcery is derived from Creation's living Essence, Necromancy is derived from the necrotic, decayed Essence of the Underworld—and ultimately, the Void.
 * Warhammer Fantasy Battle has mortal necromancers, vampires, and the Egyptian themed lich-priests. There's also Nagash, the first and greatest necromancer, an Omnicidal Maniac who attempted to raise all the dead of the world as his servants. It used to be that necromancy automatically drove one insane; this seems to have been relaxed, though the vast majority of necromancers are still villainous.
 * The setting makes a difference between those that use the lore of death (more classical necromancy, communicating with the dead and one of the eight winds of magic) and those that use necromancy (animating the dead, a form of dark magic).

Video Games

 * In Battle for Wesnoth, necromancers are quite common, and are the reason for The Undead being a faction in themselves and a major, recurring threat to Wesnoth. The allure of immense power and potential immortality (via transformation into a Lich) draws in practitioners of the dark arts, and although the extreme strain of their training causes most of these 'Dark Adepts' to become extremely frail and weak physically, it does give them impressive magical firepower. The Adepts' higher-level promotions, the Dark Sorcerer, Necromancer, and Lich, often lead the Undead armies in battle, making them perhaps the most powerful individuals in the Wesnoth-verse. However, they are hated by everyone. Everyone. Necromancers, both alive and undead, have been involved in so many wars and battles throughout the various campaigns, since before the creation of the titular kingdom to hundreds of years after it's fall, that they have become somewhat of a cliche in Wesnoth.
 * A core profession in the MMO Guild Wars, which can animate fleshy minions from corpses, vampirize heath, and fling curses (and they often have to sacrifice a percentage of their health bar to do so). There's also the Ritualist class introduced in Factions, which are Necromancers of a sort dealing in binding the spirits of the dead rather than animating corpses. The game is heavily geared to dual-class, and unsurprisingly, these two work great in combination, whichever is primary.
 * Also worth noting is that neither are evil. They're both dark, certainly, but both PC and NPC Ritualists and Necromancers are most often unambiguously on the side of good. They serve Grenth, the god of death and cold, but Grenth isn't an evil god (though he can be a bit cruel when Wintersday comes around). In fact, he basically punched out the old god of death, who was evil, and took over.
 * Necromancy figures heavily into Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft, including a World of Warcraft playable race composed entirely of undead.
 * And while the game has yet to bring in an actual Necromancer class, it does have the Death Knight, who gets death-themed powers and a ghoul pet.
 * In the game's expanded universe, necromancy is usually portrayed as a naturally evil, corrupt, and tainted form of magic that withers the user and the land itself. The Lich King and the undead scourge practice a form of necromancy that is akin to rape, while the Forsaken, the playable undead race, practice necromancy with much more respect to the undead they raise.
 * An endgame boss class in Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones. For the record, he didn't start out the game as evil, but began a slow descent into madness. Him being possessed by a demon didn't help at all either.
 * Similarly, the Summoner class (available only to Knoll and Shaman!Ewan) gets the Summon skill that lets them raise "phantom" minions to fight for them.
 * Diablo II has its Necromancer player character. He can raise skeletons, summon golems, revive the dead, dish out poison and element-less magic damage, debuff enemies with curses, and a favorite of many players: make enemy corpses explode.
 * In a sort of inversion, it should be noted that the Necromancers in Diablo II are not presented as evil at all; the manual describes them as simply being "very much in touch with the natural cycle of life and death", making them sound a little like a different kind of Druid, and putting them more in the Neutral-to-Good range. While their in-game player model is certainly gaunt, pale and lanky, by their given back-story, they're not even particularly dark or emo. (It might be noted that their theme is not completely consistent here.)
 * They are actually strictly Neutral when it comes to Heaven vs. Hell. The problem is that Hell has a stronger presence, so the Necromancers are currently (mostly) good.
 * It is noted in the game's manual that the Necromancer's appearance comes from spending all his time studying magic in old crypts and libraries.
 * It's somewhat implied that Necromancy is the only type of true magic (rather than divine miracles, such as those used by the Paladin) in the game's world that doesn't have the potential to corrupt its user into a servant of the demons.
 * Two Glyphs in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia allow you to summon zombies to fight for you.
 * Which is in turn taken from the Necromancer enemy in that game. Circle of the Moon also has a Necromancer boss who sometimes summons skeletons. Shaft takes this to bizarre levels in Rondo of Blood - he summons previous Castlevania bosses in the main fight against him (not necessarily dead ones though), but in the next level you fight his ghost, who summons the skeleton of the first boss and an enemy in the second stage.
 * The Elder Scrolls has a sect of necromancers called the Order of the Black Worm who use evil Black Soul Gems to capture the soul of sapient beings. Good necromancers do exist, but their presence is overshadowed by the evil ones since the Cyrodiil Mage's Guild banned necromancy out of fear of the Order.
 * Alternative Character Interpretation holds that the the Black Worm wasn't evil. Given that the Guild's decision caused most non-necromancers to to leave as well, and the fact that necromancy is only illegal in the Province of Morrowind, means that the guild was persecuting people that have every legal right to practice their craft.
 * Necromancy is only tolerated, not generally approved of, and even that mostly only in Cyrodiil. In Morrowind, you can find a book that explains that necromancers are not well-liked anywhere in the Empire, but can reanimate the corpses of executed criminals if they manage to get an official license. Anything more than that, though, and they become their own customers, so to speak.
 * It was tolerated much as any other school of magic, and no more prone to the kind of abuses the Guild is responsible for policing. For centuries mages defended their right to study necromancy for the sake of philosophical research on the nature of death—this was explicit in books found in previous TES games. And it wasn't the Guild's decision to ban necromancy per se, it was due to one charismatic man, supported with appeals to emotion and logical fallacies, pushing the limits of his administrative privilege to bring the Guild to the brink of ruin over his own vendetta. At least he was willing to die for his convictions, and frankly he deserved to.
 * By the time of Skyrim, the Mages' Guild is long gone, and its equivalent in that game, the College of Winterhold, is just fine with teaching necromancy. Necromancy is also better represented mechanically - where previously the player could at best hope to get a Summon Zombie spell, Skyrim allows you to zombify specific dead things, up to and including giants. Granted, the two College members who practice it are a guy who wants to keep things on the down low and someone who was kicked out of Morthal because of a Noodle Incident.
 * A whole army of Necromancers are the primary antagonists in Nox.
 * The magic taught by Opalneria Rain in Grim Grimoire. In this setting, the summoned undead are actually the most effective for fighting against demons due to them being composed of pure spirit. (ie, with no flesh that can be corrupted.)
 * Marona from Phantom Brave is the most adorable little girl around, who can summon the spirits of the dead in the forms of Phantoms. Despite what Ivoire tells you, she's not evil. Interestingly, there is a mercenary later in the game who summons skeletons and zombies; it's not the same thing.
 * Nevertheless, in later Disgaea games, her mere presence can power up members of the party who are of The Undead.
 * A secret class in the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy V. They are basically glorified Blue Mages who can't be healed by normal means, and are only available once the Bonus Boss is killed.
 * Subverted in Tales of the Abyss. While he is known throughout the world as The Necromancer, Jade never re-animated corpses.
 * EverQuest plays the "Necromancer = Evil Sorcerer" bit painfully straight. In the original, being a Necromancer automatically flagged your character as evil (getting them a Kill On Sight reaction from non-evil-aligned city guards), even if they were part of an otherwise Neutral or Good race. In Everquest 2, you literally cannot be a Necromancer unless you are evil. Only evil characters can start as one, and if a Necromancer performs the City Betrayal questline, they spontaneously stop being a Necromancer. (Conversely, if a Good Conjurer performs the questline, they spontaneously become a Necromancer)
 * The first Legacy of Kain game, Blood Omen, features Mortanius the Necromancer as one of the main antagonists and most powerful member of the Circle of Nine. In something of an aversion, his powers are connected to the Pillars of Nosgoth, specifically the Pillar of Death, making them completely natural and no more evil than throwing a fireball. In fact, he's one of the most sympathetic characters in the series, setting the series in motion by bringing the main character back to life as a vampire as part of an elaborate Evil Pllan.
 * in Arc Rise Fantasia, although before his name is revealed he's called the "Deathchanter".
 * Roswell of Yggdra Union, although he's not evil. is one of these as well.
 * Given the existence of Dry Bones Troopas and Bony Beetles (aka Dry Buzzies), Bowser qualifies as this. Given the existence of Dry Bowser, and his subsequent resurrection, Bowser Jr. takes after him.
 * Orin of Touhou isn't actually a neko-romancer, but she does have a lot of trappings of one, ordering spirits around and fighting with a troupe of "zombie" fairies (Touhou fairies are immortal, and these ones are just dressing up). The series' real necromancer is Seiga, who raised a Jiangshi subordinate, though Seiga doesn't do much with the dead otherwise.
 * The MMO Rift also has Necromancers as one of the mage souls (classes). The backstory is that the soul comes from a heroic necromancer named Corthana. She had been kidnapped by the evil cult necromancers. She learned the magic of necromancy from them but was clever and took out all the parts that Regulos had snuck in to brainwash them into being his evil minions. When her paladin brother busts in to save her, she turns on the cultists, slaughters them with their own magic, and even tore out her own blood to heal her brother when he was injured. But as they fled, Regulos' high priest caught up with them and slew her brother, and in her rage she became an avatar of a lich and avenged him right then and there. By the time the game takes place in, her heroic deeds have redeemed the art of necromancy and the necromancer players are even praised for continuing her legacy (especially as Ascended necromancers seem to actually possess her knowledge and memories.)
 * Necromancers, if not evil, are unfortunately easily corrupted and quick to succumb to megalomanium, this is why the art is still frowned upon, even though it's not an outright horrible thing for someone to do.
 * Big Bad Wannabe and Hot Witch Daria from Warriors of Might and Magic.
 * Necromancers are a staple of Artix Entertainment's fantasy games. Necromancer itself is a class in Adventure Quest, Dragon Fable and Adventure Quest Worlds.
 * Specific necromancers include Zorbak, Kabroz, Vayle, Noxus and Obsidia.
 * Zorbak's robot in Warp Force, Zorboz, can reanimate machines and turn them undead.
 * The February 2012 update of Dwarf Fortress features them. It's actually the first type of magic put in the game, and being Dwarf Fortress, the players themselves are able to use it. Keep in mind, so are migrants to your fortress, and even random merchants or whoever else reads one of the "secrets of the life and death" written on slabs by the gods, which inconveniently results in body parts in the refuse pile coming to life and attacking you.
 * As It happens, quite a few mainstream Roguelikes feature Necromancer as a class, notable among those being Slash'EM and Dungeon Crawl.
 * The first Golden Sun didn't have many references to necromancy, but The Lost Age has the Dark Mage class series, unlocked with an artifact in a small Bonus Dungeon under Kibombo (where it's normally kept for the local witch-doctors to use), which can summon zombies and inflict curses upon enemies, among other things.
 * Dark Dawn doesn't have class-enabling artifacts like the Tomegathericon, and by extension no Dark Mage classes... but Himi's exclusive Curse Mage class series does much of the same, which is pretty weird since she's normally a cute little Shrine Maiden.
 * Also, Sveta's Spirit Sense Psynergy can be used to read the minds of the dead, for the more benign "speak with dead" version. The results can be horrified recollections of the moments leading up to their deaths, or amusing snark and comments on how cool being a ghost is.
 * The freeware RPG Master of the Wind has several characters involved with necromancy and treats it as a complex, divisive issue in the world of Solest (the game's setting).
 * Heroes of Might and Magic III features the necromancy-themed faction as the protagonist for the fourth set of campaign maps, and the antagonist of the final campaign. Pop-up boxes featuring story snippets tell how the necromancers raze whole villages and then raise the bodies of adults as zombies or skeletons (a theme central to one campaign in the first expansion, and connected with most campaigns in the second). That said, necromancers are hardly the worst people that can be found, and at least some of them seem to keep some measure of ethical compass.
 * As a town, necromancers were introduced by Heroes II. They were aligned with Archibald, the... not so good... candidate for the throne of Enroth.
 * Monster Girl Quest has Chrome, who can only raise near-mindless zombies that are very slow, and the far more competent La Croix, who's capable of raising Queen-class monsters, dragons and even with the same intelligence they had in life.
 * In Wizard 101, the Death School is one of seven schools available to players. You know, cause this game is for kids!
 * The Sorceress in Dragon's Crown has spells that can animate corpses, a case of Bad Powers, Good People.

Web Comics

 * Black Mage Evilwizardington of 8-Bit Theater is skilled at necromancy. He reconstructed and redecorated the Temple of Fiends by willing it to change, as it was made from corpses.
 * Xykon from The Order of the Stick.
 * And also his newest major minion, Tsukiko, who not only creates the undead but... uh... really likes them too.
 * The world of Erfworld knows them as "Croakamancers". Of the main characters, Wanda Firebaugh the Croakamancer.
 * The lead villain of Harry Potter Comics.
 * Jacob, Helixa, and Rilian from Dominic Deegan.
 * On his airship trip Dominic meets a "good" necromancer  who claims that his job is more traditional speaking with the dead than animating corpses.
 * Richard from Looking for Group.
 * True Villains: It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be painless. It is not going to be legal. It is, however, going to be fun.
 * Yakuv from Reliquary is an unusual good guy version; necromancy is considered a Gift from God in his culture.

Web Original

 * From the Global Guardians PBEM Universe: The Bone White Queen, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Disease and the consort of the Blood Red King, is the most powerful Necromancer in the setting. She is fond of killing entire families with various plagues, then reanimating them as minions.
 * Necromancy Quest: A Play By Post Game set in the Old Kingdom universe (see the Literature section), with the player character taking the role of Abhorsen.
 * The Questport Chronicles has a necromancer—a Cloudcuckoolander who is infamous for resurrecting certain spirits accidentally.

Western Animation

 * Dr. Byron Orpheus of The Venture Brothers is a professional necromancer. Though a Large Ham, he is (arguably) one of the nicest people in the series. He is quite polite when speaking with dead souls, and is horrified when he thinks that his attempted resurrection of  has instead resulted in bringing them back as zombies.
 * Although he does trap the souls of two "foul mouthed rednecks" in some dolls after they wouldn't stop calling him gay. One would think that he'd be used to it, judging by the way he looks and dresses.
 * Said rednecks were hassling him in the hopes of starting a fight. And he did try to warn them.
 * The Aladdin series has Mozenrath, definitely the "raise an army of zombies against the hero" type of Necromancer, though he has non-necromantic powers as well and isn't seen raising the zombies on-screen (or calling them zombies). It's possible he inherited some of the zombies, but he can create them as well, as shown by the zombie version of his mentor in his first episode. And at least part of him could be considered Undead.
 * Megatron from Transformers Prime does this with robots.
 * I don't recall him ever being referred to as one directly, but Skullmaster of Mighty Max fits the bill rather well, his main power source being a legion of souls in his gem (souls given willingly) and at he has a zombie army made of the bodies of those who gave up their souls.
 * Of course, he's got plenty of other kinds of magic at his disposal.