Necromancer: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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** 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 ''[[Discworld/Unseen Academicals|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
* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]'s ''[[John Carter of Mars|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"
* 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 [[Character Alignment|alignment]].
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* ''[[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 cheap but smelly.
* 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]]
* ''[[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).
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== 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 [[Squishy Wizard|extremely frail and weak physically]], it does give them [[Glass Cannon|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
* A core profession in the MMO ''[[Guild Wars]]'', which can animate fleshy minions from corpses, vampirize heath, and fling curses (and [[Combat Sadomasochist|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 [[You Mean "Xmas"|Wintersday]] comes around). In fact, he basically punched out the ''old'' god of death, who ''was'' evil, and took over.
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** [[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 persicuting 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
** 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 [[Our Giants Are Bigger|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]]''.
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* From the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]:'' The Bone White Queen, the [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of Disease and the consort of the [[Complete Monster|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.
* [[Viridian Dreams Quests|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
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