City with legal necromancy

Hey Veeky Forums i was wondering if you guys could help me out.

im in a 5e game and our GM has said all our characters origins are based in certain cities, when it was my turn he told me i was in the kingdom of Seelie, which is apparently the city of necromancy, where the government is a bunch of necromancers and the undead cover the streets as public servants like construction workers.

The GM then told us to bring a description of our city and all about it to him next game. AKA he wants us to make the cities for him, no problem, i love player input.


tl;dr was wondering if any of you had any cool ideas for a city run by legal necromancy

Other urls found in this thread:

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9663834/
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9682570/
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9697573/
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

The Kingdom of Seelie used to be nothing but a small fishing village near putrid marshes. A mere stop-by for travelers on their way to places of more beauty and wealth.
Barely a name on the maps, it was the perfect place for a young wannabe necromancer to settle after his master had been killed by adventurers.

As most wielders of the dark arts, the hearth of the young lad was hardly pure evil, seeing his trade as but a tool and his studies a mere path to greatness.
Such outlook usually get twisted over the years until the made-up excuses to justify the sufferings inflicted on others eventually stop being believable even by the necromancer himself.

Still, here, the young man was somehow forced by fate. As he was living near the village as some kind of hermit, laying low while studying what few books he had grabbed from his dead master's collection, Seelie was raided by a warband of gnolls.
The defenders of the small settlement were no match for the beastmen and when the monsters they had slained rose up to join back their brothers, the village thought everything lost, until the undead gnolls attacked the living gnolls, throwing chaos into their ranks.
Mere marauders, the gnolls were looking for easy loot and meals, not for a full fight.

Most townfolks were grateful for the necromancer's help. Sure, some were full of fear and distrust but, hey... the kids were alive and the undead abominations hadn't tried to murder any human so far. And as long as the marauders might be around, tolerating the wizard and his pets seemed a safe bet.

He did show some gratitude to that : putting the zombies and squelettons to use helped the village rebuild faster. And with a tireless workforce, many additionnal work could be done. Work that would have broken the back of men or mobilized cattle could now be done in less days and without any cost.

Aesthetically, it would be cool to have the undead wear masks of stone to hide themselves from their old loved ones. And it would say something about how were all the same in death.

For the undead who work as public servants, is it volunteered? Punishment? Or mandatory?

After a few winters, the village came to accept the undead gnolls, espacially since those were the ONLY undeads : no villager had been raised, as this had been a sensitive topic from the very start.

Some animals had, though :
Cows and horses which died of illness or age would be brought back once stripped of their meat, their strength now usable without pause until the very bones should be grounded.
Undead cats proved useful in tracking and eliminating the vermin from the swamp and fields, increasing the food supply and health of all.

Still, the necromancer had his limits. He had been but a bubbling apprentice and was now trying to learn by himself, based on incomplete texts. And his very mind had limits too, unable to control more than a handful of undeads at a time.

When he was seen teaching his dark arts to some children of the village, a deep rift formed among the people.
Most were obviously opposed. Sure, the wizard had saved the village and, for this, he was welcomed to stay in good-yet-uneasy friendship. Sure, his pets had been of great help, allowing better harvests while also providing formidable defenses. But that didn't mean he could turn the village's children into his apprentices, losing their souls to the dark arts !!
Yet some had come to see necromancy as nothing but the animation of bones into useful tools and so they didn't mind too much the idea of being able to create more of such tools.
In the end, it was agreed that only the children whose parents agreed could learn. In the end, only a single child proved to have both the talent and the understanding parents necessary to be trained.

A decade passed, the necromancer and his apprentice grew in power, the number of undeads grew in number and the tales traveled. This attracted three kind of people :
- First, adventurers hell bent on killing the "evil wizard that tyranized the village of Seelie"
- Second, people wishing to actually benefit from the undead workforce, source of Seelie's wealth.
- Third... other necromancers. Often far less frequentable but sometime also far more powerful. Each saw in Seelie something different, who an opportunity and who a threat.

After a few battles between the newcomers, an uneasy peace settled around a "council of eleven" whose members were all necromancers and united by a common vision :
To make Seelie a haven where they could, for the first time, study the dark arts in plain sight and freely, without fear of being killed by rightous heros or jealous rivals. A university of some kind where the necromancers could come and exchange their knowledge while putting to use for the benefit of the local population.

The council proved powerful enough to keep most threats at bay and wise enough to advertised itself as a neutral, pacifist power who would welcome all creeds... as long as no wizard or his property (including the undeads) be attacked.

The village grew into a town at an alarming rate, what with the sudden wealth of dozens of workshops where hundreds of undeads provided as much mecanical power as many watermill could have, creating something of a small industrial revolution.
And since the council was the main provider of both undead workforce and security, it got a sizeable interest in all ventures, making it very very wealthy.

Said wealth was not hoarded :
The old families of the village received their share, rising into something of an aristocracy.
The rest of the population received its share too in the forms of various public services born from large infrastructure works made possible by an endless supply of tireless workforce.

Said supply, however, had its limits.

As said before, no human had been raised so far. Only animals and the occasional monster.
This had helped a lot into getting the necromancy accepted by the population as just another legitimate form of magic.
But marauding bands had stopped even passing near Seelie for years and the limits of undead animals became quickly clear.

With the ban on human undeads still in effect, the only alternative to get undeads who had actual hands was to find some other, more acceptable humanoids.

Adventurers were hired to find and bring back goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls, ogres,... and all manners of humanoid monsters. Preferably alive but this wasn't a necessity.
The necromancers had the gold and many a poor fool was ready to cast his luck for this. Over the next ten years, Seelie became similar to a slaver town, with large holding pens accomodating a great variety of creatures who would be killed and animated as needed.
More and more people flocked to Seelie and, as the council built up the idea of university, the first generation of "Necrobarons" came to be : talented apprentices who, after years of studies, had mastered enough to, if not animate undeads, at least control a few.
They were the taskmasters and sergeants of the town, watching and guiding the undead workforce.
They were part of an rising aristocracy that would one day culminates in the sixty-three families of Seelie, the supporting cast around the Undying Throne and its ruling couple.

There you go.
You can probably build up on that.

I read on an RPG blog about an undead city that was essentially a ramshackle mass of ruins, scaffold and eccentric housing dragged across the desert by hoards of undead and slaves (it becomes hard to tell the difference) in search of flesh to reanimate. It would seek out the sites of battles or the corpses of megafauna and all of the strange inhabitants would strip away the meat for their own ends before the 'city' moved on, like a huge carrion beast.

Hallowfaust is a book all about a necromancer city. You should be able to download it for free just by googling it. I would recommend it.

Some highlights
>Built by exiles at the base of a volcano
>Ruling class of necromancer
>Fear or scare parties are the big means of entertainment
>Citizens wear tokens to be out at night. Visitors get different tokens
>Anyone caught without a token gets taken by skeleton guards
>all the dead are collected for use after appropriate grieving time. You can pay a tax to keep your dead
>Any child with magic talent is recruited for training and membership in the ruling class, is seen as a good thing by the populace

What happens to the poor, the lower classes, when their jobs are taken by undead and there's no incentive to keep them alive?
Are they disposed of or left to fend for themselves?
Or perhaps among the rulers the idea of becoming undead is distasteful so they must keep some people around to fuel the numbers of undead workers. Families of servants kept for specialized work and to reproduce and provide undead materials when they pass. Or maybe the poor are forcibly enlisted into the army, fighting at home and abroad to defend their country and upon death they are shipped home to become workers.

Stone masks are impressive for tombs but for actually being up and around they're heavy to keep in place, expensive, and hard to repair.
Clay masks might make more sense and all masks are fairly similar when painted.

Seems like a pretty capitalist society, the undead seem to provide unskilled labour; forcing skilled labour to be the domain of man. As you aren't going to be able to out compete undead slave labour.

Skilled labour is therefore cheaper in the city, raising the average outcome of all the city. As the people who in other cities are the "poor" can afford to buy the produce or services of their fellow specialists (medical care, embroidered clothes, trinkets). While jobs like street cleaner have disappeared for the living man, there is always work to be done.

While it would be nice if all the former poor were able to get skilled labor jobs with education funded by the ruling council it's not exactly realistic(lol fictional world).
It's not just that people did the hard unpleasant work because it needed to be done, but because that's how they were able to survive.

Try GURPS Banestorm: Abydos. $5 or so for the PDF and EXACTLY what you are looking for. Some very, very spooky shit. Pretty much made of awesome.

Necromancy isn't exclusively (or originally) about reanimating dead flesh, it's also about summoning and communicating with the spirits of the dead. Living people who lack useful skills could rent themselves out to act as mediums. A necromancer would summon up the shade of deceased person who had valuable skills, which would then possess the medium and complete valuable tasks.

I actually experimented with idea of a society based on necromancy a few years ago. One of the facets of the society was that wealthy people would have themselves turned into revenants (zombies which retained their minds) in their 30s, after they had a few kids.

The setting I developed also had a kind of steampunk feel to it, although it was more mist than steam. Ghosts were enslaved to drive engines. These engines became colder the longer they ran; shedding mist and frosting over. I kept picturing victorian era style train engines pulling into a station to the sound of the spirits trapped within them wailing; their housings covered in hoar frost and shedding mist.

Can anyone be a medium? Does it take training? How much does the job pay, especially considering the supply of mediums if the vocation is to replace the jobs displaced by undead?

Even assuming that were to all work out then in this society are skilled labourers doomed to an eternity of forced summoned labour after death? Would the medium vessels spend most of their lives unaware and in no control of what happens to them until their bodies literally can't be used anymore even with magical guidance?

Furthermore why can't the skilled labourer spirits be summoned into corpses instead of the living?

Love the ghost engines.
Personally, I like the idea of "immortality through necromancy" as difficult to achieve with many imperfect versions with drawbacks like vampires.

>Can anyone be a medium?
Yes.

>Does it take training?
No, as necromantic magic is used to cause the possession.

>How much does the job pay, especially considering the supply of mediums if the vocation is to replace the jobs displaced by undead?
It would probably vary from job to job, but probably not much. Acting as a medium of the ghost of a wise sage who will then act as tutor probably doesn't pay much. However, a beautiful young woman could make a killing acting as a medium for the ghosts of the wives of widowers.

>are skilled labourers doomed to an eternity of forced summoned labour after death?
Everyone who can't get their soul warded would be so doomed. Even unskilled ghosts can be slaved to engines ala >Would the medium vessels spend most of their lives unaware and in no control of what happens to them until their bodies literally can't be used anymore even with magical guidance?
Mediums would be pretty cheap, as it's unskilled labor for the living. It's doubtful a medium would be employable into middle age, as younger workers would out compete them. At that point a necromantic society would probably encourage them to suicide via poison, so their bodies would still make useful zombies.

>Furthermore why can't the skilled labourer spirits be summoned into corpses instead of the living?
Skilled labor is hard to compel. Quality of work inevitably suffers if employment is all stick and no carrot. Having a living body for a few hours a day would serve as inducement for the spirit to cooperate.

The major drawback of easy immortality (in any form) is sclerosis in society. Progress almost completely shuts down as prior generations hold onto power for centuries at a stretch.

Oh hey, I have a screencap for this. It's pretty neat.

Hmm interesting, the rich might have gold masks and the criminals have iron masks.

I actually prefer the idea of the undead all wearing the same style of mask as a symbol that we are all the same once we shuffle off.

That or older mediums are used as the payment for services rendered by the ghosts.

>thanks for your service Dave I'm transferring you to John for the next five hours do as you please.
>little Jimmy shiver and shakes as the spirit of Dave leaves his small body, cramp in his small hands creeping into his hands, Dave the watchmaker had worked him hard today.
> Timmy looks across as his father now to old to really serve any purpose other than a vessel for intoxication finished shuddering.
>thanks kiddo, Dave said as he rubbed little Timmy's head pocketing the few coins the necromancer gave him for the watches he had assembled today.

Maybe once you become an immortal, you must give up any elected or inherited positions of power?

Breaks down a bit when immortals gather to form lobbying/organisations/groups or whatever who try to control from the background, but then again the power holders still want to look out for the undead because they're going to be a valued subset and will eventually grow to be a majority.

My take.

Seelie used to be a mining town, one day there was a terrible disaster, lots of miners were trapped, in fact - all of them. a wizard was passing by, and happened to be evil, but not EVIL, he was a necromancer.

People of the village see he is a wizard, ask him to help, he is afraid of being outed as a necromancer, so he animates crustaceans, the villagers think he's merely controlling the creatures instead of animating undead lobsters and crabs.

He gets the tunnel clear and saves the villagers, one of the men who was down in the tunnel was a priest, who had been trying to stoneshape the men out, but hadn't been powerful enough. he thinks his god has forsaken him, but he can tell something isn't square about this wizard, he senses evil. but at the same time, this wizard delivered him, and his god forsook him.

He asks the wizard what's up, he lays his cards on the table "look man, I know you're evil, and I know those things are some kind of abomination, if I try to turn undead what's going to happen"

Wizard comes clean, priest is shocked, but the wizard just doesn't want to adventure anymore, his group of adventurers died, he couldn't save him, they were his family. He just wants to fit in somewhere. He accepts that the priest is going to let the people know he's a necromancer, and he prepares to open his veins.

The priest stops him.

The priest doesn't want anymore of the villages sons to die in the tunnels, he doesn't want to call out to a god who abandons him as soon as he asks for anything more than a light heal or some conjured water.

He offers the necromancer a deal.

They are both well regarded in the community, and start slowly introducing powerful magical golems to the city (Animated skeletons in thin metal suits made by the blacksmith hiding their real nature) they do the mining, and protect the villagers.

That or society just constantly grows, those in power constantly having to fight off the attempts of those below as they attempt to climb the ranks.

as the priest lies to the villagers, he begins to feel his connection to his god waning, but he begins to hear voices as he goes to sleep at night.... dark voices of *insert preferred god of undeath here* this god offers him more power, offers him more control, he just needs to follow some rituals, and urban planning

City is slowly built, it is made by the same skeletons, and slowly more people are brought into the secret, some by accident, some intentionally. the entire city becomes a large necromantic reactor built in tribute to *preferred god of undeath* all death that occurs in the city, animal or man acts as a tribute to him, and in return he empowers his new priest, and the wizard who aide in the construction in an ever larger city. Ever greater mines, and an ever greater industrial base.

As generations pass, and this city grows, people begin to take for granted the fact that humans do not have to do hard labor, they are able to pursue reading, writing, higher education, and most importantly - the arts of necromancy within the priesthood, and from the finest wizard college focused on necromancy in the world. the city streets are lain out in a focus to bring the energy of life and death to the god of the city, and every first pregnancy ends in a miscarriage. small prices to pay for the safety, power, and prosperity it brings.

I like the whole God of death approach and first born sacrifice via miscarriage.

ooh, I got trips.

As time passes people begin to seek immortality through necromancy (That's what it's all about isn't it? Defying and controlling death) There are problems with that, and the cities fathers didn't entirely see it coming. Fortunately the god over the city is jealous of the souls that should be his.

When the wealthy begin to become revenants, or mediums begin trying to summon souls, they find that there is a limit to the length of connections, the souls become frailer, their connection to the prime material more tenuous, because they are being consumed by the god of the city - his power grows with each death that occurs, and each life denied to the living, this is the greatest political issue presently wracking Seelie - the necromancers know these spells work beyond the city, but many of them do not understand why they happen within the city.

The cities fathers know, but are hesitant to say - they themselves live preternaturally long lives, not by their own choosing, but instead through the will of their god - they are also tied to the city, having lost their will or capacity to leave.

Nonetheless - Seelie contains the greatest library, and research facility any necromancer wizard could ever dream of.

The temples to the god of undeath who truly rules over it are immaculate and well tithed, their spires rising high over the city and their necropolises empty holding only memorial slots for families to leave mementos in cubby holes for their families - who wander anonymous through the city performing tasks men may no longer perform.

Could have it that the libraries are a lure, the honey in the trap to catch those necromancers trying to gain immortality and cheat death.

Depends if you want the city to bee good or evil.

ooh, yes! I like that, they also catch adventurers (Trying to burn the necromantic libraries) More vital souls make better fuel for the fires, and also bring non-necromantic spellbooks (sometimes)

Plus, if more necromancers are showing up they are bring a diversity of perspectives which is always good.

using undead effectively for manual labour would mean that you would need a lot of "medium" powered necromancers, that would function as a supervisor for a smaller group of undead that is specialized in a certain field, the most common ones being farming, building and waste disposal. you would also need a caste of "high" necromancers (and other high educated people, both magicians and not) to educate, and with how important it would be for the infrastructure, probably to rule.


using the corpses of your loved ones does not seem like something you would do simply out of convenience alone, but out of necessity. so having low quality soil that makes it hard to farm enough food would probably be a thing, maybe a swamp or a very rocky region, something remote that doesn't have a lot of value to other cities/countries/whatever. seeing as the corpses of your family is doing hard work that you get to enjoy the fruits of would probably instill and create vast respect for the system in the common people. they would treat their lives as a great gift, their ancestors as martyrs and the "everyday" necromancers like we used to treat priests.


you would respect knowledge and the most important place in the town would be the academy, where necromancers practice and new ways to use necromancies researched.


the city would have a lot of neighbours not being all that pleased with living next to a place full with undead and necromancy so they would have to distance themselves from "regular" necromancers, with it being tabboo to use corpses #1, without the persons consent before dying, which would be the norm for people already living in the city and #2, for personal gain. they would also be very separatist and xenophobic, considering that if they placed their necromancy in the wrong hands so would their relation with everyone else quickly decline.

1/2

the use of free Labour for menial tasks would bring the standard of living up considerably, allowing regular people to commonly enjoy the "gift" that is their temporary life. heavy wine consumption with wine from the local vineyards. big parties, yet always slightly reserved due to respect for the undead. community would be very, very important with the ingrained mentality of "in death, we are all equal, and we all help each-other". corruption would be punished heavily.

all in all, i would think of it as some form of gothic communism, but with a sort of technocracy/ magocracy/ theocracy-mixed style government

Most useless post in this thread

>ask OP if he wants the city to be good or evil
>useless
>asking the OP what he wants is useless

...wut?

I think there is a surprisingly harmonius vision of what this would look like - a more grimdark but courteous robot utopia?

>Legal necromancy
>Undead are public servants

Clearly this sends "Good" tones

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9663834/
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9682570/
suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9697573/

All that is old is new again. So say the Millennial Emperor.

you can have a look at Sigil from Planescape
it ain't run by necromancers, but necromancy is legal and a lot of people sell (or indebt) themselves to become zombies after death, doing communal work - i.e. running the mortuaries, etc.

>things can't appear good but actually be evil

that's not even getting into setting-specific stuff like "necromancy literally drags souls screaming from the afterlife and shoves them into an unfamiliar body"

Don't try to justify being a dick dude.

Makes sense as new people join the board, I don't see what the problem is.