Fandom High School

The plane that awaited Liliana's students in the Danger Shop was something straight out of a nightmarescape. Even the ground beneath their feet was foul; any surface that wasn't bare rock or murky seawater was made up of rotted flesh and piles of bones, as if the entire plane is a gigantic slab of corpses. Dead bodies were everywhere, either whole or in parts, and traveling anywhere meant stepping on hills of diseased flesh or climbing up mounds of festering bones. The stench of death was strong on the ever-present wind, the sky was shrouded with thick gray clouds like dirty funeral shrouds, roiling with thunder and spitting violet lightning.

"Welcome to Grixis," she said when the whole class had assembled. "Yes, this is a real place, it's part of a a plane named Alara. When Alara was sundered, each of the shards was cut off from two different colors of mana, while a third became dominant, overshadowing the remaining two colors. Grixis is black-aligned, with red and blue as its secondary colors, and cut off from both white and green. This is the result of that mana imbalance: a plane where the hills are drifts of bones, the valleys are decaying flesh, and the seas are murky, polluted deathtraps. Because it does not have white mana to protect it or green mana to strengthen it, the mana of Grixis is actually entropic, and self-destructive, dissipating over time. As a result, Grixis, the plane of death, is dying. Ancient enchantments slow decay to a crawl, allowing the landscape to fester for centuries. This plane is inimical to life and every day is a struggle for survival for Vitals, or those beings still who still manage to cling to their lives and their vis. Vis is the life energy that suffuses a Vital's tissues and bodily fluids; it empowers demons and fuels all of the magic on Grixis. Because it is both so rare and so powerful, it is a heavily sought after resource." She gave them all an amused smile. "You are, of course, all very Vital indeed."

A fresh gust of wind brought not only the foul smell, but also a loud screech of pain and rage. Probably nothing, don't even worry about it. Liliana certainly seemed to give it to no mind, instead pointing to a large set of walls in the distance. "That is a Hermitage," she explained, "small, protected towns where human Vitals take shelter and try to eke out an existence. Even within their walls, survival is difficult; constantly under siege by flesh-hungry undead, attacked by the hordes of necromancers greedy for vis, and tempted by the promises of demons. This is your final, class. Make it from here to that Hermitage and help the residents in some meaningful way, either by assisting them with the defense of their home, or by helping them figure out a way to provide food for the inhabitants, since farming above the subsistence level isn't particularly viable. You don't need to split up and cover both options - you are being graded on your survival and your contribution, what anybody else does is none of your concern, unless you choose otherwise. Working together is a valuable strategy, but it also increases your danger and your likelihood of getting noticed. It also opens you up to the possibility of betrayal. Do as you see fit, but remember the assignment: Get to the Hermitage and personally make a valuable contribution. There are no A's given helping others achieve their goals."

And with that, she stepped back, a throne chair assembling itself behind her out of the discarded bones surrounded them. "Any questions before you begin? Last chance."

"And today, we're returning to Innistrad to discuss another type of vampire," Liliana said. "Continuing the trend of of different planes handle similar concepts, the vampires of Innistrad are not actually undead. They have what they refer to as a 'condition of the blood,' though what that means is unknown to me, as they have refused to share more unless I join their ranks." And she had no intention of doing that, though it was very rude that neither Olivia nor Runo would tell her.

( The main takeaway: Vampire politics are spicy. )

After the lecture ended and Liliana had answered any questions that may have arisen, she summoned the portal she had arranged yesterday. "And now, for a field trip," she announced.

Having class as usual was a generally stupid idea, but Liliana was nothing if not stubborn and contrary; err, that was, 'if not committed to her class.'

Nailed it.

"Today," she announced to whatever students in her class managed to show up, "we begin our last unit, the discussion of vampires. I have discovered since my arrival that vampires hold a particular space in pop culture and, perhaps even more than ghosts or zombies, they have been subject to revisions, rules, and romanticism in how they are portrayed. From ravening monsters to romantic heroes, vampires have been reformed and rewritten so often to fit the needs of the story that there are no real universal rules that all sets of vampire media follows. Today, we are going to discuss some basic aspects of vampirism, at least as you know it, and use that to serve as a point of comparison as we examine vampires in the future."

Because, Gaia help her, even Liliana did not have the ability to focus enough to deliver a full lecture about anything right now.

"So, some questions for you. Are vampires real where you're from, or simply creatures that exist in imagination? If yes, what rules do they follow; that is, what makes a vampire a vampire? What are their aspects, their characterizations? Do the stories of vampires in your world accurately portray them, or are liberties taken? How are they perceived by the population at large? And those of you for whom vampires are fictional, what rules, aspects, and characterizations do you think of when you imagine a typical vampire? Why? What works inspire you to imagine one type of vampire instead of another? Why? Are there any types of media that you would consider to form a vampiric 'canon'? What depictions of vampires to you disagree with or find ridiculous?"

Yes, that seemed like plenty enough for them to address. "Take notes on your answers and, as we start truly getting into the discussion over the next week, keep track of where your answers overlap with the vampires you're familiar with and the places they diverge."

Class met in the Danger Shop today, Liliana giving the class a bright smile. "Today, rather than continuing to visit Innistrad, although it's a truly lovely place for zombies, we are instead going to visit Ravnica, an ecumenopolis or a planet-wide city." Like Coruscant, if Liliana had known to make that comparison. "On Innistrad, ghouls remain, for the most part, outside of the social structure. They are the works of necromancers, Stitchers and ghoulcallers alike, and most necromancers tend to keep to themselves more often than not." There was a reason Vess Manor was all by itself and not in a bustling town somewhere.

...And that reason was because angels were obnoxious, but that was another story.

"In Ravnica, things are different. Ravnica was - and is again - ruled over by ten Guilds who wield immense power and claim dominion over different parts of Ravnican city life. With a plane-wide city, two of the most important aspects of keeping a population healthy and viable are sanitation and sustenance. Meat is at a premium and so is fresh produce, the latter often supplied by the Selesnya Conclave, which is just as much a cult as their fellow guild, the Cult of Rakdos, but don't have the manners to be open about it."

Tell us how you really felt, Liliana.

"But for those who cannot afford the astronomical price of meat or magic-grown produce - and, shocking no one, that's most of the world - the Golgari Swarm is the guild that provides it. They are also the city's main source of sanitation. Today, we're going to shadow a group of Golgari Street Swarm, the Golgari labor class that includes corpse scavengers, low-ranking street shamans, rot farmers, tunnel trolls, various elementals, and fungal horrors - and, of course zombies, as the Golgari welcome both the intelligent and mindless variety as members. The Golgari aren't the only guild that welcomes undead, of course. The Orzhov Syndicate is run by a council of ghosts; the leader of House Dimir was a vampire before he got imprisoned and killed, I believe; the Cult of Rakdos count plenty of types of undead amongst their ranks...but of all of them, the Golgari are by and far the largest and most welcoming of the undead, likely because the guild was founded by the necromancer Svogthir, humbly referred to as the god-zombie." Whoops! Tangent again! "Anyway, each neighborhood of Ravnica tends to have its chapter of the Street Swarm, and each chapter is led by a local swarm boss. Each Street Swarm is divided into two sections. Spore Druids specialize in fungi, moss, molds, and other decomposers, to help rid the streets of filth and garbage, and Reclaimers are scavengers who patrol different areas of the city and gather the dead to be recycled."

Yeah. She said recycled. Don't worry about it.

"It's all a simulation, of course, but I've still programmed in waders and tall boots for you," she said with a grin. "Suit up, this is going to get a little messy."

Liliana looked positively delighted to be in front of the class today and it was with great impatience that she waited for the bell to ring and class to begin. Considering they were meeting in the Danger Shop, currently configured to look like a normal classroom, that may or may not spell good things for the rest of you.

"Zombies!" she said. "We've finally gotten to zombies. As we've discussed previously, necromancers are capable of raising, controlling, and interacting with all kinds of undead, from spirits to skeletons to mummies. Mummies will be getting short shrift, I'm afraid, as apart from their ceremonial wrappings, they're basically either skeletons or zombies and by covering both of the latter, we negate the necessity of discussing the former." Boy was she going to have to revise this class after her trip to Amonkhet. "However, most necromancers have specialties - and my specialty is ghoulcalling. That is, I summon zombies directly from graveyards and have them do my bidding. Or, to put it bluntly, we're on the part of class that I wrote my undergraduate thesis on and have spent nearly the last two hundred years studying."

( Welcome to her TED Talk. )

"Additional strategic thoughts: first and foremost, don't let yourself get surrounded and overwhelmed. Zombies are slow, but their strength is in numbers - save when their strength is in strength, but we'll get to different types of zombies next time - and even the strongest and most tireless fighter can't fight off an entire horde by themself. Second, zombies aren't like humans - they don't have morale, they don't get afraid, they don't get tired. They are persistence predators and they will not stop until you or their necromancer is dead. Which is the last bit of advice I have for you - if you cannot outrun the zombies and there are too many to safely fight, your best bet is to go after their controlling necromancer and hope that they were raised quickly and will die with their master. Some necromancers do raise zombies specifically to go feral after their deaths, but that's just a risk you're going to have to take." She smiled at the assembled students.

"Any questions?"

Today, class met in the Danger Shop, and when they opened the door, they found themselves walking into a small village. The buildings of the village were adorned with the pointed arches and half-timbered houses that students of Earth history might associate with medieval Germany, and the large church at one end of the town featured the stained-glass windows, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, and spires that any fans of Gothic architecture would recognize at once. Next to the church was a forebidding-looking graveyard, with surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Around the village were peaceful-looking pastures that gave way to deep, forbidding forests full of a dense fog that glowed chromatic colors of dark green, purple, and gray. Further out in the distance were indigo and black mountains with peaks tall enough to disappear in the clouds. Those with particularly keen eyes might notice a large manor house on the horizon, beyond a sinister-looking swamp, a purple banner blowing in the wind.

"Welcome to Wollebank, a shepherding village located in Stensia, a province on the plane of Innistrad," Liliana said with a large grin. "The other week, we discussed the creation of ghosts and spirits. This week--" finally "--we're getting down to the details, that is, the specific kinds of ghosts and spirits there are. Now, there are, of course, numerous types of ghosts when we look at spirits in aggregate over the various planes of the Multiverse, but Innistrad is based on Gothic horror tropes especially prone to the creation of undead, both naturally and not." She gestured above her head and the clouds parted, revealing a large moon hanging on the horizon. "Innistrad's moon, often called Heron Moon, dominates life on Innistra. The moon is a vast desert made ​​of pure silver and its cycle drives the seasons, the hunting patterns of the monsters, the strength of various ghosts and spirits, harvests of the humans, the lycanthropic curse, and the vampiric frenzies."

She gestured again, and this time the night sky parted like a curtain at the theater, revealing a roiling, chaotic mass of energies and colors, like the inside of a hurricane made of pure magic. "And this is the Æther, which, for the purposes of this class, will be given the accurate-enough-I-suppose definition of 'the magical and spiritual essence of the plane.' After death, spirits are intended to rise up and rejoin the Æther, becoming part of part of it once again. The humans on this plane refer to this rejoining as 'the Blessed Sleep,' as they don't really have a concept of the Æther unless they are a high-ranking member of the Church, a powerful enough magic user, or a Planeswalker. They believe once they have obtained this Blessed Sleep, their souls will be forever safe from necromancy. This belief is mistaken, as a powerful enough necromancer can reach into the Æther with their will and collect enough of a person's soul to be a reasonable facsimile of the person they were in life, but we generally don't go advertising that, as Innistradi peasants can sometimes be agitated into picking up torches and pitchforks, and dealing with mobs is hardly anyone's idea of a good time."

Was your teacher speaking from experience? Who knew?

"While many planes, departed spirits are inclined to seek out and rejoin the Æther naturally, more often than not, Innistradi spirits cling to the world of the living, unable or unwilling to depart. Many necromancers theorize that it's the moon's influence that keep all but the strongest spirits earthbound, almost like a spiritual tidal lock, but it's a difficult theory to prove without being able to affect the moon." Remember that sentence, class! It was going to turn out to be a helpful example of dramatic irony! "Therefore, one of the responsibilities of the hordes of angels that infest this plane is to escort the willing souls of the departed up to rejoin the Æther. However, even when they're not too sad to do their damn job--" cue much eyerolling from your teacher "--there are plenty of souls that make the transition to ghosts anyway. Most mortals cannot see the various kinds of ghosts and spectres that exist around them, but I've programmed it so that you can."

A snap of her fingers and the clouds rolled back over the sky, obscuring the Æther, once more, and instead of the class standing in an empty landscape, now there were ghosts in a variety of appearances drifting about. "On most planes, spirits primarily draw upon either white mana, for your friendly, helpful types, or black mana, for your inimical, hungry ghosts. Innistrad also sees ghosts that draw upon blue mana, which are more the trickster types, and red mana, that are the bloodthirsty, vengeful types. Today, you're going to explore this section of Stensia and see what you can learn about ghosts and ghost lore."

This was much kinder than Liliana's own early lessons in necromancy, where she had done this exact type of thing, but for real.

"Ghosts," Liliana said, exactly at nine am after the bell or whatever rang for class. "Ghosts, or, more properly, spirits, are the most common form of undead. As I mentioned last class, there are two major classifications of spirits: an item or a concept that has been imbued with enough mana - usually via some form of worship - and, as such, has gained some form of sentience; and, as is relevant to our class, an entity that is composed of energy related to a deceased sentient creature. Most often, a spirit forms from a dead person, but it is uncommon but not unexpected to run into the spirits of animals. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of the animal spirits that one runs into come from animals who had significant bonds with people. Of those animal spirits that do not have those bonds with sapient creatures, most of those come from creatures with either pack- or herd ties. Which mean that, for the the overwhelming majority of animal spirits, they come from creatures with a sense of we. Those vanishing few solitary animal spirits were all from creatures that were incredibly old and venerable. Their lingering after death seemed more due to inertia than anything else; their sense of self had grown strong enough to remain, even after their physical body had given up."

( Who ya gonna call? )

"So think of your favorite ghost story, or at least one you know very well. What happens in it? What is it that creates the hole large enough that they remain?"

First period was an offensive time to have class and yet, here she was, leaning against her desk, clutching her precious cup of coffee as if it were the only thing keeping her going.

Quite possibly because it was the only thing keeping her going. Mornings were a curse even on normal days. Today...well, she wasn't going to think about anything but her class this morning. She was especially going to ignore the petulant rumble of her stomach, thank you. Sure, she'd skipped breakfast this morning for...reasons...but she'd been skipping meals for two hundred years. There was no excuse for this kind of behavior, stomach. She was just going to drink more coffee and ignore it while her students filed in.

"Good morning," she said brusquely, as soon as the bell rang. "Welcome to Necromancer's Guide to the Undead. I am your professor, Liliana Vess, and I am the necromancer in question. I have been studying necromancy for over a hundred and seventy-five years, as well as receiving my degree from the College of Witherbloom at Strixhaven University, with a Dreadbones major focus and a Bleed Doctor minor focus, all of which adds up to saying that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the various necromantic arts and the taxonomy of the undead. Now, the required caveats of the class."

"The first and foremost is, of course, that while all of the information I will be providing you is true in my Multiverse, no guarantees can be made for how things work in yours." And if you thought that Liliana was aggrieved about that, you were entirely correct. "For all I know, one of you may come from a dimension where the undead are created and controlled by the healing powers of hugs. That has nothing to do with the veracity of my information, simply the absurdity of your reality. Secondly, this is a purely informational course. I am teaching you about these creatures, yes, but in no way is this a class focused on how to create or control them. If that's what you were hoping to get out of this class, you should have read the summary more closely - that being said, if you're interested in pursuing necromancy as a calling, I commend your life choices and feel free to see me after class to discuss this further. And finally, this is not a debate class. I don't actually care about your opinions on the morals and ethics of the creation of the undead - Ethics was offered last semester and if you missed out, that's your burden to bear. If I believe a discussion of ethics is valid for whatever lesson we're discussing at the time, I'll ask you to share your opinion. Otherwise, assume I'm not interested. If you decide to bore me with your ethical pontifications anyway, I will indulge you only so long as I have the patience for nonsense - and, as I am most emphatically not a morning person, it will not be a particularly long time - and then I will toss you out of class in your ear so the rest of the class can get back to learning."

The door was over there, folks. Feel free to use it now if you didn't like any of the above.

"Now then, I've since learned that I'm expected to give over a full class period to introductions, rather than just getting right in to teaching--" Yes, she looked aggrieved about that, too. Look, aggrieved was clearly the emotion of the day. Seventeen classes was already barely enough time for a survey course, and here she was, losing one to introductions. "--so let's begin with your name, the reason you signed up for this class - if you're here by mistake, take a moment to come up with at least a semi-plausible lie - and what, if any, knowledge or experience with undead you already have. If you have none...suggest to me your favorite piece of media involving the undead. It will give me a chance to see what nonsense I'm up against."