I talked to Leopold today about books on pony anatomy, and while he did express squeamishness at what I intended to do, he did give me 2 books on the subject. I’ll read them later, but talking with him about the intricacies of movement sparked another line of thought I hadn’t considered in the past. Necromantic spells, when reanimating a corpse, do not require the caster to individually puppet the bodies of the deceased. They show some signs of autonomy, or even intelligence. The skeletons I’ve seen around Silver Star do the tasks my servants handle at home. I must have tea with him posthaste to discuss the matter.

That was quite a productive talk. Silver Star’s paranoia knows no bounds, but as it dominates his personality, it makes him easy to navigate. I know him well enough to predict his behavior, and his guard is down around me. The Machine’s processing power also helps me analyze many scenarios to perform simple conversational optimizations to direct his tree of thought.

I learnt much of the nature of necromancy from what he described. What fuels the intelligence of the undead is the soul of the deceased individual. While the physical matter of the brain of the dead is no longer present, there is knowledge also contained in the soul. He explained it to me as like the double helix of DNA. On the one side is the physical nature of bones and skin, and the opposing side being the soul. As long as enough of the body and soul are still around, the full knowledge of the original creature can, in theory, be recreated. Natural error correcting also exists, meaning it is still possible to recreate the entire creature if there are a few gaps in both the soul and body.

Apparently, the reason for the historical taboo on necromancy is the bad results that often come from attempts of resurrection. According to Silver, most corpses begin losing data immediately upon death, so unicorns who attempted to fully bring back long-dead relatives often brought them back with major mental disorders. On the other end of the spectrum, those who were too successful would recreate the body and mind of the target at the moment of their death - which may be with cancer or a lethal wound causing them to immediately die again.

What I find fascinating is the selective nature of how it can function. Not all of the mind of the original creature has to be recreated, and in fact is not encouraged. Silver says his personal servants have the intelligence of a child. Recreation of the entire body on the other hand is apparently usually too difficult with too much data loss and the requirement to sift through the good parts and the parts that were that creature’s cause of death, hence the ubiquity of skeletons. Furthermore, partially recreating the more living parts of the body just causes more hassle as they will die without a full digestive system, which then needs skin and et cetera. Full bodily resurrection then means you have to feed it, which makes the partial reanimation more desirable.

I asked him then, if the skeletons are missing most of the features of a living creature, how are they powered? This is where necromancy and healing diverge. The two fields overlap when referring to true resurrection, but where healing seeks to restore a target to perfection, necromancy often substitutes the features of living creatures with magical simulations. The energy given to the soul in skeletons is usually standard magical energy which is used for locomotion, sensing, and thought.

The glowing eyes usually seen on reanimated skeletons is a side effect of how standard uses of necromancy don’t reanimate living tissue. The eyes, therefore, are magical constructs which are connected to the soul to give it the ability to see. Sight is the most important sense to recreate, but touch and feel are also required for a full semblance of life. Silver Star says his method is to combine the two by adding magical strands which snake along the bones which feed movement information to the soul. This can tell a skeleton if it is properly balanced, for example, and his method is supposedly sensitive enough for the soul to hear commands through the vibrations of the bone on the strands.

This method of controlling the masses is versatile and scalable which is why I believe it has been the most popular method for powerful magic individuals to amass armies. Everycreature has, of course, heard of the Dread League and their city of Magehold beyond the far north, but they haven’t done anything significant in my lifetime. Aethelflaed says she remains in contact with one of the necromancers there. According to the last letter she received, which was dated quite a while ago, they were preparing for war with the Arcturian Order which was mandated long ago with containing them.

I used to think Aethelflaed and Ceadda were siblings. They look relatively similar and I thought they shared a last name. However, it turns out I simply didn’t pay enough attention - Aethelflaed’s last name is Sigeweard, not Sigeweald. I’ve traveled to so many pony nations and yet I still can’t work out how their names work.

I can appreciate the effectiveness of necromancy and the healthy body of literature available in the field, but it is not something I wish to pursue. It does tick all of my boxes, but the key with mind control is that I am controlling a being under it. If I were to succeed in world conquest with necromancy, I would rule over a planet of half-aware automatons - there would be no point.

Mind control is only a temporary measure. Once the world revolves around me, there will be no purpose other than to serve me. The next generation will not need it. Besides, I won’t need to mind control every creature in the world to create a society that controls everycreature. It may not even be possible for me to meet every creature across the continents to mind control them in the first place. Society is the best form of mind control. There are zebra foals in Roam, chicks in Nova Griffonia, and yetis in the Storm Kingdom being born today that will know no other order than mine. They will know to fear the deer.

Necromancy creates a clear boundary between who serves me and who is not a part of me. Fifteen years from now, when a changeling in Grenclyf opens their doors to see my servants, what will they think? If what they see is a pile of bones, they will be alienated and grow treasonous thoughts. There is no camaraderie across the boundary of mortality. However, If it is their own friends and families with familiar faces and voices, they will conform, adapt, and serve in turn.

That isn’t to say this endeavor has been entirely irrelevant. I am fascinated by the idea of modifying the expression of the soul. I have been experimenting on the mind and the body, but the soul had not crossed my consideration. If necromancers pick and choose what parts of the soul they can reconstitute, perhaps I could alter an already living soul. Food for thought.

Author's Note

I never understood how necromancy was supposed to work, so here's something I came up with. There's also a bit of an exploration into Viira's motivation which I'm still not super clear on. Her in-game description and a few of the Viirad focuses reference wanting to make deerkind dominant, but most of her "dialogue" in the focuses suggests purely self-interested power lust. I took this to mean that she does have some vague notion of wanting deer to be recognized, but that she's mostly in it for her own power and control because she enjoys both of those things.

Also, Aethelflaed lore! I don't think there is much of anything for most of the Barrad advisors and concerns so I'm fleshing them out a bit.