[GLOG] Wizard School: Practical Necromancer

A GLOG Wizard School based on my fluff post about low-status working necromancers. Use with your wizard class of choice - I favour this one.

Starting Equipment: spellbook, cheap pen you got for free at some careers event 1d10 years ago, guild membership card, sewing kit, flask of embalming fluid.

Perk

You can sacrifice a drudge you control within 30' to reroll a mishap roll with a -1 modifier. If this new roll is 0 or less, the mishap is negated. You can keep doing this if you have more drudges to sacrifice, and the modifier is cumulative.

Drawback

Your skin is desaturated and papery and you smell a bit wrong. This doesn't penalise stealth, but you are very obviously a necromancer and will be treated as such, with disdain, apathy, or, worst of all, pity.
Also, when you die, your body will reanimate instantly (as raise drudge) and march by the most direct route possible to the nearest Necromancers' Guild chapterhouse for processing.

Cantrips

1) With a touch, set a timer in a willing creature's body which causes their skeleton to vibrate, harmlessly but noticeably, when the time elapses. Can be set for up to 24 hours, in increments of 1 minute.
2) With a touch, lock a willing creature's limb or digit in position from a chosen joint, impervious to pain, fatigue, and muscle strain, until they release it with a command word.
3) Your breath repels ordinary vermin up to the size of a mouse.

Mishaps

1-3) Same as the "generic" mishaps for your system of choice.
4) Become undead for 1d6 hours.
5) Reroll your Constitution on 2d6+1. Lasts 1d6 hours, then Save; permanent if you fail.
6) Drudges ignore your commands for the next 24 hours.

Dooms

1) Your metabolism twists painfully. Halve the effect of all healing you receive, mundane or magical.
2) Your senses deaden and your muscles grow cold and stiff. Disadvantage on initiative rolls and on anything that demands reflexes or reaction speed.
3) Your deadman's switch misfires and attempts to reanimate you, but, since you're still (just about) alive, it only takes your body. You remain alive as you march off to the chapterhouse, though hunger and exposure will probably kill you before you get there.

Spells

0) Raise Drudge
R: 15', T: [dice] roughly humanoid corpses, D: 0
This is always your first starting spell, even if you'd normally roll for your spells. Determine your other spells normally.
This spell takes 10 minutes to cast.
You reanimate the target corpses as drudges (see below for stats), specialised undead built for manual labour. Drudges stay under your control indefinitely and obey your spoken commands absolutely, and you always know their positions relative to you. You can destroy a controlled drudge at will with a command word. Drudges are also destroyed if you travel more than [max MD] miles away from them.
Whenever you cast a spell with a range listed as 0, you may choose a drudge within 60' to count as the caster.
You can't usually control more drudges than you have maximum MD; you can use this spell to reanimate them beyond that limit, but the MD you use stay invested permanently, one per target, until the drudge is destroyed. Creatures that temporarily count as drudges due to other spells don't count towards this limit.

1) Vigour Mortis
R: 30', T: any number of drudges you control, D: [highest] hours
For the duration, the targets work [dice]+1 times as fast as they ordinarily would on simple manual labour tasks - digging, chopping wood, laying bricks, and so on.

2) Necrophone
R: touch, T: one drudge you control, D: [highest] hours
The target becomes a conduit to the spirit realm. You can speak messages into it to relay them to the ether, allowing you to communicate with spirits, ghosts, and most forms of undead regardless of linguistic or metaphysical barriers. They can talk back to you and the target translates in a gnarly, rasping monotone.
Two drudges enchanted with Necrophone can be used to relay messages to each other like CB radios, with no maximum range besides your maximum control range for your drudges.

3) Sweep
R: 0, T: [dice]x20' radius area around caster, D: 0
All loose, lightweight debris in the area is drawn to the caster like a magnet - dust, leaves, papers, anything a gust of wind could blow away. This doesn't harm the caster, even if the debris normally would. The debris remains stuck in place until peeled or swept off.

4) Hazard Protocol
R: 30', T: up to [dice] contiguous 5' cubes, D: [sum]x10 minutes
Everything in the targeted area becomes temporarily safe to handle. All chemical, biological, and radiation hazards are neutralised, though physical damage and magical threats are unaffected. Creatures with special attacks that would be neutralised may Save to resist.

5) Detonate Drudge
R: 60', T: one drudge you control, D: 0
At the start of each following round, roll 1d3. On a 1, the target explodes with percussive force, destroying it and dealing [sum] blunt-force damage in a [dice]x5' radius. This explosion doesn't start fires.

6) Fumigate
R: 0, T: [dice]x10' radius area around caster, D: 0
A cloud of toxic gas billows from the caster. Each living creature within range up to the size of a large rat takes [sum] damage, dissipating into smoke if killed this way. Exceptional or magical creatures can Save vs. poison for half damage. Living creatures bigger than a rat take [highest] damage and always get a Save.
This spell's area of effect is doubled if used in an enclosed space.

7) Necroinfusion
R: touch, T: one willing creature, D: [dice]x10 minutes
The target temporarily, partially necrotises. They get +4 to Save against metabolic hazards like poison and disease, and are affected as both a living creature and an undead, whichever is better for them. They also count as a drudge under your control, as though raised with raise drudge, for the purposes of targeting them with spells and casting your spells through them.

8) Rot Minerals
R: 0, T: [dice]x5' cone originating from source, D: [sum] minutes
When you cast this spell, choose stone, metal, or vegetable matter. Within the target area, the chosen material decays and takes on the consistency of very stale porridge - it holds its shape, but interfering with it will quickly collapse it into lumpy sludge. Precious metals and lead are unaffected.

9) Subvert Undead
R: 60', T: one undead, D: special
You attempt to seize control of the target. Compare your [sum] to the target's HD. If you match or beat it, the target falls temporarily under your control, and is treated as a drudge for the purposes of targeting it with spells and casting spells through it. The duration depends on the margin by which you won:
[sum] >= HD: [dice] rounds, during which the target is stunned and immobile.
[sum] >= 2xHD: [dice] rounds.
[sum] >= 3xHD: [dice] minutes.
[sum] >= 4xHD: [dice] hours.

10) Scourskin
R: 0, T: self, D: [sum] minutes
The caster's skin becomes powerfully alkaline and solvent. It can burn markings into almost any material, neutralise adhesives, and inflict [dice]d3 damage with a touch, or [dice]d6 against oozes and similar acid-based creatures. The caster is also immune to acid for the duration.

11) Render
R: 30', T: any number of living and/or undead creatures and/or corpses, D: 0
Over the next 10 minutes, up to [sum] HD of the chosen creatures, lowest HD first, and all chosen corpes, are rendered helpless, ground and compressed together into a single homogeneous lump of meat, gristle, and bone dust. This is usually fatal. Creatures may Save to escape at intervals based on their HD; on a successful Save, they emerge having taken 1d6 damage for each prior failed Save, which may kill them regardless.
HD < [dice]/2: No save.
HD < [dice]: On cast.
HD >= [dice]: On cast and 5 minutes later.
HD >= 2x[dice]: On cast and 4 and 8 minutes later.
HD >= 3x[dice]: On cast and 3, 6, and 9 minutes later.

12) Graveyard Shift
R: 120', T: roughly humanoid corpses, D: [dice] hours
You must invest at least 2 [dice] to cast this spell. It takes 10 minutes to cast.
As raise drudge, but affects up to [sum] corpses within range. They last only for the duration and don't count towards your limit.

Monster: Drudge

HD: 1
Defence: as leather
Move: normal, half normal underwater (can't swim, can walk along the bottom)
Morale: immune
Intelligence: programatically precise but only as good as its instructions
Speech: none, understands creator's language
Damage: 1d6 punch, only when specifically ordered, can only attack every other round, can't use weapons
Special: effective Str 18 for lifting, carrying, and other menial feats of strength; perfect internal clock, accurate to the second

A damaged drudge can be repaired to full hit points with 10 minutes' work. When destroyed, a drudge collapses into fine grey dust, and can't be re-reanimated.

[Fluff] An Alternative Take on Necromancy

Messing with the dead is a common and pervasive cultural taboo, so it's little wonder that necromancers get such a bad rap in fantasy fiction. Honestly, though, I've always felt that defining necromancy as Evil Magic and declaring its practitioners Evil by association is a little unsatisfying.

So here is an alternative take on why necromancy has such a rough reputation, one which I hope presents some interesting questions and story opportunities, and is a little friendlier to player character necromancers to boot.

 
"Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia", art by Yongjae Choi

The Viewpoint

Most people, and especially wizards of other disciplines, look down on necromancy not because it's evil, but because it's considered low-status. There are four main reasons for this.

1) It's gross. Even a fresh, intact corpse is not a pleasant thing to work with - it's uncanny-valley fuel, full of smells and fluids to which the living have justifiably negative responses - and it only gets worse from there. Preservative fluids and incense help, but the end result is still far from pleasant. Necromancers also tend to look a bit weird, thanks to a combination of dirty, lightless work environments and exposure to the same chemicals that make their creations palatable. 

2) It's perceived as low-skilled. This is a misconception, fuelled by the fact that necromancy is a relatively safe school. Getting good at it takes years of training and practice, but it's not prone to dramatic mishaps - botching a reanimation generally just leads to some light thaumic blowback, which is easily managed with protective trinkets, rather than an explosion or rift in reality. If your life's not at stake, thinks the non-mage, then what's the big deal? 

3) Its uses are prosaic. Undead workers have a number of practical applications, especially in fields deemed too tedious or unpleasant for humans - they've seen use in logistics, sanitation, and warfare, and there have even been experiments in using groups of programmed undead as primitive calculators. But the image a necromancer leading a squad of zombies through a blocked sewer isn't exactly romantic or inspiring.

4) Memento mori. The average resident of $fantasy_setting is likely more familiar with death than, say, me, but her awareness of mortality does little to dispel the anxieties surrounding it. Necromancers, by their very existence, remind her that one day she will die, and what she is in death will be largely unaffected by what she was in life. Her corpse will be worth no more than the dirt-caked zombie cleaning out that flooded storm drain across the street.

"Sibsig Muckdraggers", art by Zack Stella

The Consequences

So what does this all, like, mean?

Well, necromancers under this paradigm have a better time than their counterparts in other settings, but they are very much second-class citizens among mages. You still go to college to learn necromancy, but it's more like a trade school than a research university, keeping costs to a minimum and kept afloat by guild dues and reluctantly-granted government subsidies. Actual tuition fees are low; novice necromancers pay for their education partly through aiding more experienced necros as apprentices, and partly by signing away their reanimation rights to the guild, ensuring one more body for the stockpile when the time comes.

About those subsidies - necros have compensated for not being popular or glamorous by making themselves necessary. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were the first profession to pull together something resembling a modern trade union, complete with internal elections, collective bargaining, and a demand for recognition by managers and the government. In a world where undead labour is a relatively known quantity, few would object to sewer cleaning or rubbish collection being made "dead work", only to be performed by a sanctioned guild necromancer.

Corpses are a vital currency. The community probably produces more than the guild needs, but ensuring a steady flow is a priority. More egalitarian regimes might institute a "corpse lottery", where every fresh cadaver has a random chance to be selected for transfer to the guild stockpile. Elsewhere, it could be class-based - handing over a newly-dead loved one to the necros might not be an appealing prospect, but it's cheaper than a burial.

Socially, it's not easy being a necromancer. They're not quite pariahs - most people recognise the good they do for society - but those same "most people" would hesitate to strike up a conversation with a necro, let alone sit down for a drink with one. It doesn't help that their desaturated, sickly complexions make them obvious even in plain clothes. This distance from the general public does inspire a strong sense of solidarity among necromancers.

Obviously, in smaller settlements, things are different. If your village has a necromancer, he's probably self-taught, or maybe he's doing it as a mandatory placement to pay for his training (think Joel in Northern Exposure, for the two people reading this who've also seen Northern Exposure). He'll have a much harder time getting on with the locals, who might view him the same way they view the village wise woman, someone to be ostracised and distrusted except when his skills become necessary. In the absence of a peer group or guild regulations to follow, these "wild" necros are prone to eccentricities and odd personal endeavours. If your world still needs a source of more conventionally villainous necromancers, a makeshift workshop at the edge of a tiny, suspicious hamlet is a pretty good place to lose the plot and get high on your own power.

1d6 Reasons the Necromancers are On Strike

1) We do vital work to keep society running that nobody else is willing or able to do, and it's about time our pay reflected that.

2) The Conjurers' Guild may claim that their summoned servitors are more effective than undead, but we believe they're dangerously unreliable, and they present a clear threat to jobs we've performed tirelessly for generations.

3) Despite our fervent objections, management seems intent on mandating the use of the new corpse preservative dianimide. "Improved odour" or otherwise, we are deeply concerned by reports of dianimide-induced sickness from overseas; if we cannot work safely, we will not work at all.

4) The Broken Backbone may not be your idea of a good night out, but it's the only tavern in the city where necromancers aren't turned away at the door. We want a guarantee from the mayor that it won't be demolished in his efforts to "redevelop" the district.

5) The local priesthood continues to condemn us as "unclean" and "heretical", in violation of the compromise we agreed upon last year. Let's see who's unclean when refuse piles up in the streets and the sewers stop flowing...

6) Wealthy families are using a legal loophole to buy their way out of the corpse lottery. All are equal in death, and these selfish acts show disrespect both for us and for the wider community.