Liliana Vess (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deathsmajesty) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2024-03-07 06:01 am
deathsmajesty) wrote in fandomhigh2024-03-07 06:01 am
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Necromancers Guide to the Undead, Thursday, Period 1
"So the week before we left for vacation--" which they absolutely would not be discussing, thank you "--we began discussing zombies. Today, we are continuing that discussion with a look at intelligent zombies. As I'm sure you can all guess, an intelligent zombie is one that has its mind - and usually its personality - intact. They are generally rare, requiring a great deal of mana and skill to create. While it's possible for an intelligent zombie to spontaneously emerge on its own, the odds are infinitesimal, as it requires a specific confluence of events. As far as necromancy can tell, a spontaneous intelligent zombie is what happens when a spirit that would have become a ghost somehow gets trapped within its body and there is enough ambient mana to raise the corpse as a zombie. It's certainly possible and individual cases have been documented, but we still do not yet understand the phenomena that allows it to happen, nor has any necromancer that I've heard of been able to produce a spontaneously-arising intelligent zombie."
And maybe don't think too hard about how they'd go about trying to 'produce' one, okay?
"For the most part, if you're interacting with an intelligent zombie, a necromancer has been involved. Most commonly, to create a sapient zombie, a necromancer has simply done deliberately what happens accidentally with a spontaneous rising: bound the dead soul to the body. This can be done at the time of death, which makes it easier, or the soul of the departed can be called back from the Æther. I referenced this in one of our classes about ghosts; a skilled enough necromancer can collect enough of a person's soul to be a reasonable facsimile of the person they were in life, which does include their thoughts, memories, and even secrets. Anyone capable of casting a spell that allows them to speak with a corpse is, at least briefly, creating an intelligent zombie: an animated corpse that can think and talk and remember. Most spells of that nature have a specific duration, however; a certain amount of time is common, or a certain number of questions. However, that spell is...inefficient, at best. Beyond the time limit, the corpse can choose to lie or misdirect, and it's only animated, not ensouled, which means that it can't learn new information, doesn't comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can't speculate about future events. By binding the soul to the undead body, an intelligent zombie is capable of learning, comprehending, and speculating..."
Liliana trailed off, brow furrowing and head cocked to one side. She was tired - it had been another night of bad dreams - but she could have sworn she'd heard someone call her name. It wasn't the Chain Veil, as it wasn't calling her 'vessel' or 'root of destruction' but, for a moment, she truly thought she'd heard Liliana...
"Did any of you--? Never mind," she said, shaking that off and continuing with her lecture. "If you bind a whole soul to a corpse - it can be any corpse, not specifically the body the soul had worn in life - you will get a zombie version of that person. Which is often useful, say, if you need information that only they know, or you're looking to make a statement and only the risen corpse of the lunarch will do." As a completely hypothetical example, of course. "However, sometimes you may not want a specific person, simply a zombie that is capable of thought and speech. For that, you can make something not unlike a patchwork quilt of souls, plucking bits and pieces of souls from the Æther until you have enough to bind. It's slightly less complicated than it sounds - it's not like a puzzle where you have to find pieces that fit together to make a harmonious whole, but more like filling a cistern with water. Eventually, you get enough soul stuff to make sapience viable and from there, you can imprint the kind of personality that you want upon your zombie. These zombies are fascinating; they start off close to blank slates, but with instruction and time, they begin to evolve into their own person, capable of going above and beyond simple obedience. Some of my colleagues liken it to raising a child, you can watch the personality develop and chart its growth from needing to be told what to do and how to being a fully autonomous being, with its own opinions, beliefs, preferences, and conversational acumen. They make excellent household staff, for the record."
Every Vess manor across the Multiverse was staffed by at least one intelligent zombie of that variety - often two, so they wouldn't getlonely bored dulled from lack of interaction.
"Binding the soul to a corpse is usually done to other people; for necromancers that wish to make zombies of themselves, they embrace lichdom. Instead of binding the spirit to the corpse, liches remove their spirits, putting them into a sanctified vessel prepared for just that purpose. In this way, a necromancer may obtain something close to immortality, even though their body has physically died, their spirit lives on and their will remains their own. The method of becoming a lich is referred to as the Ritual of Becoming or Ceremony of Endless Night, wherein, under the light of a full moon, the necromancer creates and consumes the Elixir of Defilation. There are various ways to create this elixir, though the most common and easiest to create almost universally entails acts of utter evil. Other elixirs that do not require heinous acts to create are possible, but these are much harder and therefore far rarer. The elixir invariably kills the drinker but if the process is successful it rises again some days later as an undead lich, in full control of its faculties. The benefits to becoming a lich are numerous: you're effectively immortal, capable of sustaining tremendous physical damage, and are immune to disease, poison, fatigue and other effects that affect only the living. Furthermore, because the soul is separated from the body and stored elsewhere, killing the body will discorporate the lich, but will not kill it; after some time - varies by strength of the lich itself - the immortality magic will recreate the destroyed body. The only way to permanently kill a lich is to find the vessel that the soul is stored in and destroy that instead - obviously, no easy feat, especially since those vessels are magical themselves and therefore are resistant to non-magical means of destruction." Her nose wrinkled. "The downside of becoming a lich is that, well, you're dead. Yes, you've obtained immortality, but you're still a walking, talking corpse, without even the pretense of mortality that most vampires have."
And maybe don't think too hard about how they'd go about trying to 'produce' one, okay?
"For the most part, if you're interacting with an intelligent zombie, a necromancer has been involved. Most commonly, to create a sapient zombie, a necromancer has simply done deliberately what happens accidentally with a spontaneous rising: bound the dead soul to the body. This can be done at the time of death, which makes it easier, or the soul of the departed can be called back from the Æther. I referenced this in one of our classes about ghosts; a skilled enough necromancer can collect enough of a person's soul to be a reasonable facsimile of the person they were in life, which does include their thoughts, memories, and even secrets. Anyone capable of casting a spell that allows them to speak with a corpse is, at least briefly, creating an intelligent zombie: an animated corpse that can think and talk and remember. Most spells of that nature have a specific duration, however; a certain amount of time is common, or a certain number of questions. However, that spell is...inefficient, at best. Beyond the time limit, the corpse can choose to lie or misdirect, and it's only animated, not ensouled, which means that it can't learn new information, doesn't comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can't speculate about future events. By binding the soul to the undead body, an intelligent zombie is capable of learning, comprehending, and speculating..."
Liliana trailed off, brow furrowing and head cocked to one side. She was tired - it had been another night of bad dreams - but she could have sworn she'd heard someone call her name. It wasn't the Chain Veil, as it wasn't calling her 'vessel' or 'root of destruction' but, for a moment, she truly thought she'd heard Liliana...
"Did any of you--? Never mind," she said, shaking that off and continuing with her lecture. "If you bind a whole soul to a corpse - it can be any corpse, not specifically the body the soul had worn in life - you will get a zombie version of that person. Which is often useful, say, if you need information that only they know, or you're looking to make a statement and only the risen corpse of the lunarch will do." As a completely hypothetical example, of course. "However, sometimes you may not want a specific person, simply a zombie that is capable of thought and speech. For that, you can make something not unlike a patchwork quilt of souls, plucking bits and pieces of souls from the Æther until you have enough to bind. It's slightly less complicated than it sounds - it's not like a puzzle where you have to find pieces that fit together to make a harmonious whole, but more like filling a cistern with water. Eventually, you get enough soul stuff to make sapience viable and from there, you can imprint the kind of personality that you want upon your zombie. These zombies are fascinating; they start off close to blank slates, but with instruction and time, they begin to evolve into their own person, capable of going above and beyond simple obedience. Some of my colleagues liken it to raising a child, you can watch the personality develop and chart its growth from needing to be told what to do and how to being a fully autonomous being, with its own opinions, beliefs, preferences, and conversational acumen. They make excellent household staff, for the record."
Every Vess manor across the Multiverse was staffed by at least one intelligent zombie of that variety - often two, so they wouldn't get
"Binding the soul to a corpse is usually done to other people; for necromancers that wish to make zombies of themselves, they embrace lichdom. Instead of binding the spirit to the corpse, liches remove their spirits, putting them into a sanctified vessel prepared for just that purpose. In this way, a necromancer may obtain something close to immortality, even though their body has physically died, their spirit lives on and their will remains their own. The method of becoming a lich is referred to as the Ritual of Becoming or Ceremony of Endless Night, wherein, under the light of a full moon, the necromancer creates and consumes the Elixir of Defilation. There are various ways to create this elixir, though the most common and easiest to create almost universally entails acts of utter evil. Other elixirs that do not require heinous acts to create are possible, but these are much harder and therefore far rarer. The elixir invariably kills the drinker but if the process is successful it rises again some days later as an undead lich, in full control of its faculties. The benefits to becoming a lich are numerous: you're effectively immortal, capable of sustaining tremendous physical damage, and are immune to disease, poison, fatigue and other effects that affect only the living. Furthermore, because the soul is separated from the body and stored elsewhere, killing the body will discorporate the lich, but will not kill it; after some time - varies by strength of the lich itself - the immortality magic will recreate the destroyed body. The only way to permanently kill a lich is to find the vessel that the soul is stored in and destroy that instead - obviously, no easy feat, especially since those vessels are magical themselves and therefore are resistant to non-magical means of destruction." Her nose wrinkled. "The downside of becoming a lich is that, well, you're dead. Yes, you've obtained immortality, but you're still a walking, talking corpse, without even the pretense of mortality that most vampires have."
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