Throughout recorded time and, some say, even long before that, sentient beings have feared Death. The One Way door, the Journey With No Return. It's only natural, that in the face of this fear, like all their others, intelligent Awakened beings seek to control the source OF the fear. And, as so often happens, fear of, and mastery of a thing breeds a similarity and love TO that thing. Necromancers are Magicians whose fear of Death has transcended itself to become almost worship. From Egyptian Priests whose love/fear relationship with Death came to dominate an entire civilization, through Medieval Hermetic Alchemists who sought the Elixir Vitae in the inanimate through the purification of Lead into Gold, and the animation and re-animation of un-living flesh. From the bargains with and bindings of Ancestral Spirits of the Loa by Bokor and Houngan alike using voudoun, through the countless generations of magical weavings aimed at one thing alone -- to Understand the imponderable mysteries of Death itself, to court it and hold it at bay.
Unfortunately, the Awakening has only increased this trend, and all too often, innocents are caught in the crossfire. We've already covered the current "Hot Topic"... the situation in Chicago has, of course, attracted a good deal of attention to the issue of Insect Spirits and the Shamans who serve them. But Necromantic Magic represents an almost more significant danger: While, like Insect Shamanism, it's a no-win situation that results in the progressive and eventually fatal deterioration of its practitioner, in most cases Insect Shaman neither coordinate nor cooperate... Necromancy, on the other hand, is based on bodies of esoteric work stretching back thousands of years, and tends to encourage cooperative efforts and secret operations. While the magical conditions that inevitably result in this self-destruction are relevant to magical forensics in Necromantic crimes, a brief overview of the legal status of the spirits of the dead and magic dealing with them is in order first.
One of the primary fields of public awareness of the issue, of course, is "Voodoo", more properly known as Vodoun -- Haiti and the other members of the Caribbean League, due to constant exposure to Vodoun Lore, acted quickly with the Awakening and passed comprehensive laws forbidding the practice of Zombification, or animation of corpses. These laws were quickly adopted in almost all countries, and the practice remains illegal in the UCAS and CAS, which will comprise your jurisdictions. But Take Note: Due to MegaCorporate extraterritoriality, many MegaCorps DO allow this practice, unfortunately, so be sure of your jurisdiction when investigating individual cases! Also note that even where the practice of Zombification and its related procedures is illegal, the classification of the crime varies widely, anywhere from "Public Nuisance" to "Magical Assault"... but it is NEVER legally classified as severely as similar enslavement, etc. of living beings would be.
While the legal status of the Necromantic crimes of Zombification (et al) is fairly straightforward, the legal status of actions involving ghostly beings is much less clear: In most cases, while the practice of Necromantic Magic is considered criminal, the conjuration or control of ghosts is NOT illegal -- far too many gray areas exist in regard to freedom of Religious Expression in many religions that revere their Dead, as well as successfully differentiating between Ghosts and other Spirits in a legally binding way. As a rule, most jurisdictions will have one or more pieces of legislation under consideration at any given time, but even those which pass tend to be struck down in actual practice due to these factors... if you suspect you're involved in a case connected with Necromantic Conjuration, do yourself and your department a favor, and stay closely informed on the currently in-place and upcoming laws in your particular jurisdiction.
«««BLOCK DELETE -- 25 MpU: Rather than include the Thaumaturgical theory Dr. Nicholson goes into here, I'll sum up. :-) Here's the gist: Necromancy is magically addictive both Psychologically and "physically" -- practice of Necromancy erodes your normal Conjuring abilities at roughly the same rate as it increases your ability to Conjure the Dead... it also seriously warps your Aura to the extent that the effects even bleed through to be sensable by Mundanes, and that warped aura makes you progressively more vulnerable to having the Death Energies you work with to turn the tables and make YOU do what THEY want... which generally involves killing things. Now back to Doc Nick's coverage of how the Star Bright Boys tend to approach dealing with that fact -- Silence»»»
««« Bright boys....Love you're much too kind. Most of the LS people wouldn't know a zombie if it bit them on the bum. Well, possibly then, but then it'd be too late, eh? -- Pink »»»
«««MOST, yes... this is lecture notes for the Magic Crimes Specialists... the one-guy-in-the-department they dig up (pun intended) when "Spooky Stuff" happens and they'd rather pretend to actually be doing things. HOPEFULLY no-one reading this post is thinking of actually USING necromancy, so rather than relaying what the AVERAGE Star has a clue about (read: Nadda), I'm referring to the 1 in a thousand that specializes. -- Silence»»»
Due to Necromancy's progressively addictive and damaging nature, and the fact that use of Necromantic Magics can be documented by Forensic Aura Analysis, We've managed to get laws passed outlawing it patterned after controlled-substance-use legislation: Mind you, having a Necromantically-tainted aura isn't, in and of itself, illegal, but it IS admissible as corroborative evidence in the all-too-common case where other illegal activity is provable, and it virtually always garners a much more severe sentence than the crime itself would otherwise. Due to the nature of Necromantic Magic, far-gone Necromancers will tend to be involved in grave-robbing, and generally kidnapping and serial murder. These are NOT nice people, gentlemen. Also note that by Precedent, because Spirit-provided evidence is inadmissible, even documentable atrocities testified to by the spirit of the deceased will NOT be considered... if you MUST interrogate the victims of Necromantic Crimes, do so only for the purposes of locating material proof... anything else will prejudice the Judge AGAINST your case, making a hard matter to prosecute even more so.
In the 21st century, compiled data on Necromancer-commited crimes and profiles has yielded a fairly comprehensive picture, but you are warned that for every practitioner of Necromantic Arts who fits the profile, you'll find a dozen that differ to one degree or another on most points, with a single exception: ALL Necromancers are at LEAST Adepts of some other magical ability and the ability to contact Astral Space. A so-called "Awakened" Magical ability other than Physical Adepthood and an Astral contact are REQUIRED to utilize Necromantic magics. Note the qualifications here: I did NOT say Sorcerous ability is required, and I did NOT say Conjuring ability. Just one or the other. And the ability to perceive in astral space. The Average Necromancer is also a member of a Magical Initiatory Group, and tends to Initiate as often as possible within the Necromantic "Tradition". These Initiatory Groups tend to serve as the focus for all the Necromancer's Workings and learning, and generally organize along lines similar to the Seolpa Rings for much the same reason: Necromancy has been an outlaw practice since LONG before the Awakening, and many of the sub-cultural skills developed by underground groups everywhere has protected, by necessity, any line of masters and apprentices -- those WITHOUT such skills were generally uncovered and disposed of in one way or another.
Unfortunately for us in Law Enforcement they, like many subversive anarchic groups, took to the old Internet with enthusiasm, and their common bonds of death-related mystic interest and avid search for ALL surviving "magical wisdom" homoganized their Lore and teachings to a remarkable degree, so that when the Mana levels rose to a level to support their activities, word spread through the community immediately, and effective techniques were quickly winnowed from the dross. Thus Necromancers very quickly adapted to the Sixth World with even greater speed than the essentially technologically-underpowered Voudoun practitioners or repressed and closely watched American Native groups. They used this lead time to go even further underground, and have had a small but slowly growing pool of Necromantic Mages developing intricately connected but effectively independent groups for decades. Fortunately, they relied heavily on the Internet for coordination of their lore and recruiting efforts, and the Crash of '29 seriously hurt their organization. The specific emulation of the Rings system is assumed to be quite deliberate, as by all evidence it came about approximately 2 or 3 years after the original Yakuza Purge of Korean Nationals from their ranks and the successful establishment of the "Seulpa Ring" system.
Most Initiatory Rings (Which the Necromancers themselves term "Circles") tend to bury themselves in layers of secrecy and disinformation, much of which even extends to the mundane front line of non-necromancers who form Front organizations. Generally, the Circle will consist of high-grade Initiates operating several "morally neutral" registered Initiatory Groups as founding members able to Mask their Necromantic skills. A few Circle Members in a small number of Initiatory Groups will then set up undercover cabals, each Necromancer arranging for another non-necromancer Group Member to serve as the visible instigator and coordinator, and never more than one Necromancer per cabal. These fronts will then involve themselves in Policlub shells sub rosa, but several Circle Members will target the same Front Policlub, allowing the Circle itself to call the shots indirectly. Within the Front Policlubs, the Circle will prompt yet another secret sub-group, generally across several such Front Poli's, and it is from within this group that the Circle will draw its wannabe outer cabal, from which, in turn, appropriate prospective members are studied, and then Initiated. A candidate generally learns NOTHING even of the original Initiatory Group ties until after Oath and Ritual Link have bound him to the Circle. From this point, dribs and drabs of information and misinformation are doled out, varying greatly from Circle to Circle... when numbers of high-grade Initiated Necromancers have reached the point where the Innermost members of the Circle feel that secrecy would become difficult, they expand into splinter groups just as the Seulpa Rings do, creating a myriad of new Circles with no contact or coordination beyond the highest levels. Despite clear patterns and evidence of this sort of system, the multilevel Front system layered through the Seulpa Ring style disorganization coupled with the limited punitive levels of most CAS and UCAS Anti-Necromancy Laws has made serious assaults on the "Necromantic Underground" quite difficult -- generally, Lone Star has had better luck targeting the activities of the Circles without reference to Necromantic Crimes, using the groups inevitable illegal operations and unlicensed Thaumaturgy to win convictions.
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