Necromancers are magicians who manipulate the force of death, draining life from the living, and disrupting death in dead things, giving them a semblance of control over corpses. To many, it is an eerie and disturbing form of magic.
Example Backgrounds: Crypt Keeper, Experimental Golemist, Mage-Mortician, School of the Umbral Vulture, Grave Robber.
Level 1 Talent
Death Magic: The first step in mastering necromancy is a power over negative energy, and you have become proficient in controlling it. At will, you may summon a shadow or animate your own shadow and have it perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food. Once you give the command, the shadow performs the task to the best of its ability until it completes the task, then waits for your next command. It can also enter a dead creature to give it a semblance of life, and while it does so it may perform those same simple tasks. Whatever form the shadow takes, it is quite weak; it can lift no more than 20kg and can be easily pushed aside by people who wish to move past it. When you make checks to command your shadow, the relevant attribute will ordinarily be learning and you may add your proficiency bonus as though you had a relevant background. You can control no more than one shadow at a time regardless of the form it takes. Additionally, your magic is not as dependent upon the mechanisms of ordinary life as others - you do not need to sleep and can get the benefits of a night’s rest with two hours of light activity, and you suffer no ill effects for going without food or water for one week, at which point the deprivation begins to affect you.
Level 2 Talents
Animate Dead: When you come upon a dead creature no larger than a horse you may animate it. You can only have one minion animated by this talent at a time. The animated corpse follows you around and obeys you commands, and will avoid moving more than 250m away from you if it can. If your animated corpse would make a skill check, it has a 2 in fitness (and a 0 in all other attributes) and can add your proficiency bonus to checks where fitness is the relevant attribute.
Negative Energy: Your dark magic has given you the power to suck the life out of things. You may perform great deeds of magical decaying, such as deeds related to causing plants to wilt, causing things to rot, and causing things to be damaged as they would be by time.
Level 6 Talents
Magic Jar: When you gain this talent you acquire a magical ritual jar that can be used to hold souls. When you have defeated a foe no larger than a horse, and it lays dying, you may trap its soul in your jar, and when you do its body rises under your command. This creature is capable of everything it was in life (magical abilities excepted) and is not obviously dead - if it could speak while it was alive it still can, and has all of its former knowledge, which it can use to pass as its living self. You may only have one soul in the jar at a time, and may release any soul you have in your jar at any time you wish. When you do, the body of that soul turns to dust.
Ghost Walk: You’ve learned to temporarily separate your soul from your body, to the form of a ghost. You may spend 1 adventure point to put your body into a temporary coma while your ghost floats free, for up to two hours. While your ghost floats free it is invisible, intangible, and can levitate. It can float through walls and you can see and hear as though you were standing in its place. After two hours your mind is sucked back into your body, and you may choose to reunite your ghost with your body early at any time.
Legions of the Dead: Your magic is able to reanimate undead and leave them to work autonomously from you. Your party’s club may employ an undead squadron hireling for 1 pull. Undead squadrons have 2 force and 2 labor. Ordinarily when people behold an undead squadron, they are disgusted and/or horrified, which may affect the difficulty of completing certain jobs. Through your magic, you may, at any time, choose to perceive using the senses of one of the undead in your party’s undead squadron.
Level 10 Talent
The Path of the Lich: Through dark magic, you have become undead. You no longer need to sleep, eat, or breathe, and you cease aging. When you gain this tallent, decide whether your appearance may changes to something more fearsome, or remains approximately the same. When you are injured you may ignore the effects of that injury on skill checks (for example, if you gain an injury to your fitness, you ignore the penalty to fitness checks). If you do die, provided that your phylactery is not also destroyed, your body regenerates near to your phylactery over the course of the next 7 days.