Necromancy

Harrowhark Nonagesimus illustrated by Warickaart

Necromancy is the proper title for the magic and science practiced by the adepts of The Nine Houses System (also known as the Dominicus System). Necromantic adepts are skilled in the manipulation of thalergy and thanergy, and are classed into three schools: bone magic, flesh magic, and spirit magic.

Thalergy

Thalergy, or life energy, is an inherent property of most objects in the universe. Produced by cellular growth and reproduction, most planets and all organisms contain thalergy. Though some necromancers can directly manipulate thalergy in certain scenarios, they work primarily from the energy derived from thalergy's decay into to thanergy.

Thanergy

Thanergy, or death energy, is produced by cell death. Though most planets inherently produce thalergy, this can be converted to thanergy, enabling necromancy. Once started, this conversion of thalergy into thanergy is a continuous process, known as thanergetic decay. Though thanergetic decay usually takes generations, eventually a planet suffering from thanergetic decay will be left completely uninhabitable. The Nine Houses are the only planets that have a stable, non-decaying thanergy output, as a result of the Resurrection. As such, adepts of the Empire require alternate sources of power when outside the system.

On thanergenic vs. thanergetic

The descriptive forms of thanergy and thalergy are commonly mixed up when using "-genic" and "-getic" suffixes.

• Thanergetic: A blanket term for something that contains or exhibits the properties of thanergy (e.g. "thanergetic bloom" or "thanergetic link").
• Thanergenic: Something that actively produces thanergy in a stable, non-decaying way. Typically used when describing a planet of the Nine Houses. Only the Nine Houses are known to be thanergenic planets.
• Thalergetic: A blanket term for something that contains or exhibits the properties of thalergy (e.g. "thalergetic enzymes" or "thalergetic complexity").
• Thalergenic: Something that actively produces thalergy. All planets were thalergenic before the Resurrection, and any planet that has not been flipped by the Empire remains thalergenic.

Schools of Magic

Bone Magic

The school of magic chiefly to do with manipulating the extant thanergy of bones, or impregnating them with additional thanergy. Bones being the only known source of long-term storable thanergy, bone magic is to do with animating and "programming" bones (such as by raising skeletons), manipulating inert or living bone, or forming bones into patterns it wants to fill (topological resonance).

Bone creation - reproducing skeletal matter from a sample - is the ultimate end state of bone magic.

Flesh Magic

"...a flesh magician: someone whose entire education was in the carnal. Experts in things that were yellow, and wobbled. People who thought there was something really interesting to be found in meat."

The school of magic chiefly to do with manipulating the extant thanergy of flesh, or impregnating it with additional thanergy. Flesh is a conduit for short-term storable thanergy, and in the right circumstances provides immense thalergy and thanergy boosts to the magician. Flesh magic is wide-ranging, covering preservation, imbuing, manipulation, creation, and processing. Flesh magic is also used for self-manipulation of the human body, either to make it perform better or to make it perform worse, often quite suddenly.

Blood Magic

A subschool of flesh magic, blood magic is primarily used for warding.

Lymph Magic

Another subschool of flesh magic, and an alternative to blood magic, but is widely regarded as being lesser.

Spirit Magic

The school of magic chiefly concerned with the River, ghosts, and revenants, as well as with liminal magic spaces and nexuses. Spirit magic is diverse, and can range widely from creation of anti-thalergy and anti-thanergy spaces (impregnation of spirit energy into non-River spaces) to manipulation of people's souls, forming conduits to the River, to the conversion of another person's spirit and thalergy to thanergy. It is also the school of magic that lets the living access the River, the afterlife space to which the dead are drawn. The subschool of River magic is practiced only by the Emperor and his Lyctors.