The Magic of Magicbuilding: Elementary Magic, Part Three

Welcome to the Magic of Magicbuilding, our little spinoff feature that focuses specifically on building a magical system for a fantasy setting.  This week, we're moving to the less intuitive magics, such as using necromantic energy to magically scooch your chair in a little bit.

What We Have So Far

Last week, we wrapped up elemental magics.  This means we've got a basic idea of what spells would be used with a basic understanding of elemental energy.  This time around, we're going to start delving into the dimensional energies that don't involve simply manipulating or creating the basic elements.  As a reminder, let's summarize the other energies on our list:

  Fae Magic.  Energy from the dimension of the fae manipulates thoughts and emotions.  The mechanics behind this (and the next couple of magics, to be honest) can be summarized with a shrug: we know what happens at a macro level, we know why (the fae-specific energy causes the effect) but if you asked us how that works, we aren't 100% on that.  It's not just about pheromones, that's for sure.

  Necromantic Magic.  This one is fun.  Necromantic magic is more inclusive than one would think.  It doesn't just involve bringing a semblance of life to the dead; it also means bringing animating energy to anything, alive or dead.  There are, of course, lots of potentially disturbing questions involving the soul, and even with necromancy you couldn't bring someone back from death because the energies involved don't have anything to do with thought... but still, a necromancer is at least as handy as a doctor if you aren't planning on shuffling off the mortal coil any time soon.

  Mutagenic Magic.  Rather than controlling life or death in a living organism, or controlling a living organism's thoughts and emotions, the magic inherent to the many-limbed and oozy monsters controls a living creature's shape.  On some level, this can involve crude healing, just as necromancy does.  For example, you could use this magic to convince a lopped-off limb to reattach itself.  Enhancement of your body is also possible with this magic.  There are an incredible number of dangerous edge cases, though; for example, this is the magic you're most likely to use to accidentally give yourself cancer.  That's considered a tame side effect.

  Spatial Magic.  This is magic that alters the laws of physics at a local level, which has a lot of applications.  Nearly all of them will kill you and everyone you know immediately; a few of them will retroactively kill you before you were born.  For this one in particular, we're only going to discuss those magical effects that can be considered "safe."

Because each of these types of magic has consequences that don't immediately come to mind when we label them, we're going to spend a bit more time on them individually.  Let's start with, say... necromancy.  Since we made that comment about scooching chairs earlier.

Necromancy:  Fun at Parties

Let's dial down a little bit about what we mean when we discuss necromancy.  As we've said, it covers life energy, but that energy isn't solely related to living or dying.  It is also the energy responsible for animating the undead, and here we should do another little review.

We've mentioned previously that the undead of our setting are a little different than the undead normally found in fantasy realms.  For us, intelligent undead are small-bodied shapeshifters, beings capable of instinctively using necromantic energy but not equipped with any kind of useful body.  They, in turn, are rather eager to track down said useful body, which they appropriate and ride around like some kind of Japanese-style mecha.  They prefer the bodies of the once living, because while they can and do use magic to move bodies around, it is way easier to do so with actual ligaments, tendons, and muscles.

Of course, this implies that ligaments, tendons, and muscles are not necessary for necromantic locomotion, which brings us to the other type of undead- inanimate objects (whether they were ever alive is moot), which, powered by necromancy, can now move.  Necromancy can make a tree dance, a chair trot, or a pile of rocks pull itself into the shape of a lumbering giant.  It's important to note that it can't make that movement natural, and so there will be consequences for that motion.  Under the best-case scenario, using necromancy to switch inanimate to animate means the object undergoes stress... and unlike a living thing, it has no process in place to recover and repair the damage caused by stress.  So it is that if something is dead, necromancy can make it move, but it will also inevitably cause the object to slowly self-destruct.  Under the worst-case scenario, we skip straight to the "self-destruct" bit.  An object that can't support its own weight, for example, even with necromantic energy in play, is rapidly going to turn into a pile of smaller objects with names like "rubble" and "debris."

Intelligent undead are well aware of these problems, for the record, and occasionally take pains to try and mitigate them.  This is where you get stories about the undead eating people or feeding on their blood; some clever monster gets the idea that their body might last longer with new parts.  Results are mixed, especially since such activity tends to lead directly to angry mobs destroying said body when they find out.  The most intelligent of the undead have found a more stable racket:  medicine.

You see, we've covered what happens when you pump dead things with necromantic energy, but not the living.  It turns out living things like necromantic energy and biological processes tend to accelerate under its influence.  Done recklessly, life forms will rapidly age, wither, and decay.  Done selectively, to processes that you really need sped up, like healing from a gut wound, for example?  Necromancy can manage in seconds what would take weeks to normally recover.  As of this point in our setting, the jury's still out on whether repeatedly being healed will eventually impact your potential lifespan, but there's already a firm consensus on whether it can be used to ensure you make it to tomorrow.

Of course, precise use of necromancy like that requires a great deal of expertise, which is where those intelligent undead come back in.  There are tons of patients who, on death's door, are willing to treat with the undead.  The undead, in turn, have a regular need for bodies, the fresher the better.  Some benevolent undead might accept an IOU, contracting with the patient to collect their corpse when necromancy is no longer enough to keep them going.  More pragmatic sorts might require a variety of "cash upfront," only healing the dying once they have an already-dead in custody.  Either way, they won't have a hard time coming up with takers.

Basic Necromantic Spells

Now that we've talked through necromancy for a bit, it should be pretty straightforward to come up with some necromantic spells, yeah?

• Animate.  Probably the most straightforward.  You give the energy a simple command that translates to "move this object yea far in blah direction."  The energy does so, assuming that it can do so under its power, using the object as a "body."  You probably won't get a stone to fly through the air, for example, but you could probably make it roll.  More complicated varieties of this spell simply have more commands layered on.
• Entangle.  The name's meant to be evocative of a broader idea; necromantic energy can be used to move plants around, and plants, as living things, both soak up necromantic energy and can endure more movement than, say, a rock.  Druidic types could command trees to reach down and grab their enemies, and though there may be groaning involved, the trees will obey.  Of course, as they soak up more necromantic energy, trees tend to rapidly age, which might explain why the oldest woods guarded by druids are darkened realms with cruelly curved branches hanging overhead.
• Invigorate.  You convince a body to draw upon its reserves immediately.  For the casual mage, this translates to a boost of energy and some rapid weight loss.  For the desperate, this gives manic strength at the cost of devouring one's own body.
• Heal.  The most basic form of necromantic healing is simply convincing the area immediately around a wound to heal much more quickly than usual.  Since "quickly" and "correctly" are two different things, you'll likely want an actual doctor handy to make sure that bones are properly set and wounds properly sealed before the ten-second recovery process begins... unless you like limping around with a bunch of scars, that is.
• Wither.  Effectively, you provide a living thing with too much necromantic energy.  This is safer with simpler life forms, like grass, but if you're willing, you could definitely age an enemy to dust.  Just remember that, even with sigils, some of that energy will hit you too.  Do you really want to age a year every time you turn a foe senile?  Food for thought.

Conclusion

With this, we have a firm idea of the advantages and disadvantages of necromancy, and an idea for how undead creatures will choose to interact with intelligent species.  If our setting is peaceful, we can even see certain undead living openly in cities, working in hospitals or private clinics.  There might even be special religious roles they could take on, looking after a city's dead in exchange for the right to use certain of them as needed.

Next week, we'll look at another of our weird magical energies, but no promises that it will be as benign as necromancy was.