Necromancy

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.

Lyctorhood

"The Lyctors were not born immortal. They were given eternal life, which is not at all the same thing."

A Lyctor (LICK-tor) is a powerful necromancer who has ascended to immortality through the Eightfold Word (later called the "lyctoral megatheorem"). The Lyctoral Saints act as servant, guard, and disciple to The Emperor. Lyctors retain their necromantic abilities even in space.

A myriad ago, the Emperor resurrected the First House and became the Necrolord Prime, the first necromancer of the Nine Houses System. Despite this miraculous feat, there was much work to do in order to create a functioning Empire.

Originally, ten people (five necromancers: Augustine, Mercymorn, Gideon, Cassiopeia, and Ulysses; and five humans: Alfred, Cristabel, Pyrrha, Nigella, and Titania) attended the Emperor as his disciples. Over the next hundred years, they would be joined by three more pairs (Cyrus and Valancy, Cytherea and Loveday, and Anastasia and Samael).
In the early days, the disciples worked with The Emperor to rebuild the Dominican System. They established eight of the Nine Houses and their associated cultures and infrastructure. These Houses have crystallized into "types," taking after the Lyctor who founded them. The Ninth House was later founded by Anastasia, and purportedly against God's wishes.

However, these disciples were bound by the limits of the Emperor's power—unable to stray from him without straining his powers. To support them, the non-adept humans developed the concept of cavaliers, using their physical strength to protect and power their necromancers, but their necromancers still could not stray from the grace of God without surrendering their immortality.
The necromancers begun researching into the theorems of magic so that they might unlock the secrets to immortality. Together, they created a laboratory in the basement of Canaan House and discovered the pieces that when combined together became a "mega-theorem" and unlocked the secret to immortality and near-infinite power.

Despite their power, Lyctors are not invulnerable. As the war has raged on, many of the Saints have fallen both in the pursuit of knowledge and at the enemies hands. By the start of Gideon the Ninth, only Augustine, Mercymorn, Gideon, and Cytherea remain, a pitiful half of his original force. Simply put, the Empire is dying.

"The Emperor calls now for postulants to the position of Lyctor, heirs to the eight stalwarts who have served these ten thousand years: as many of them now lie waiting for the rivers to rise on the day they wake to their King, those lonely Guard remaining petition for their numbers to be renewed and their Lord above Lords to find eight new liegemen."

The Lyctoral Theorem

The original eight established a set of ten theorems that, when combined, would create the mega-theorem that allowed a necromancer to ascend. Aside from the awe of the mega-theorem, each piece revolutionized what were thought to be the bounds of necromancy in and of themselves. The eight created a series of laboratories in the basement of Canaan House that test and prove each piece of theorem. It is these testing chambers that the new scions are expected to use to reverse engineer the process.
The terrible truth that the new penitents discover is that the steps must be performed on their own cavalier: killing their sworn sword and consuming their soul to become immortal.

• Preservation
• Analysis
• Transference

  Discovered by Second House team Gideon and Pyrrha Dve, the transference section of the Lyctoral theorem is outlined in labs #1-2 of the basement Facility, Transference/Winnowing. This section of the theorem outlines "the utilisation of a living soul."

• Fixation
• Incorporation
• Consumption
• Reconstruction
• Power

  Believed discovered by Eighth House team Mercymorn and Cristabel, this theorem was modeled in Laboratory Eight's Diversion Procedural Chamber. This section of the theorem outlines "avulsion": the forceful taking of power from another soul.

Cavaliers, Necromancers and their Bond

Cavaliers

"Some of them [the ten disciples] took up the sword and became the first cavaliers, in the hope that their strength of arms might prove useful..."

A Cavalier is an inhabitant of the Nine Houses System, trained in combat and weapons, who has sworn themselves to defend and serve a particular necromancer. The cavalier-necromancer bond is an honored tradition that forms the basis of both cultural and military history.

A myriad ago, following the extinction of the First House, The Emperor resurrected first his guardian, A.L, and then the Planets themselves-- permanently changing their character to thanergetic, or planets that produce death energy on a stable basis (i.e.: without dying), in nature. With this shift that the inhabitants of the Nine Houses began to birth necromantically capable children.

"They were disciples to begin with.Ten normal human beings, though half were blessed already with necromantic gifts. [...] They realized in the first hundred years how difficult their situation was, even as necromancy spread through the Nine Houses."

Necromancers were born frail and slight, and unable to use necromancy away from their thanergetic home planets or a sufficient source of thanergy; whereas their non-adept counterparts could train, fight, and kill to create fresh thanergy, but lacked the innate ability to sense and manipulate the world around them through necromancy required to use it. The pairs pledged to each other to protect and serve, to "take their togetherness as assumed,"[2] and became the first necromancer-cavalier bonded teams. Though the nature and definition of this bond has shifted over time, cavaliers remain a staple of Nine Houses society.

In most Houses, anyone may choose to apply for training to become a cavalier, but the most successful cavaliers tend to be physically strong fighters with an aptitude for combat strategy. As in any partnership, the cavalier's physique should match their necromancers style of work-- Camilla Hect is a smaller, more agile, and highly intelligent fighter to compliment her necromancer's generally non-violent and communication-driven approach to conflict; whereas Protesilaus Ebdoma is an immensely strong and large man in order to serve his necromancer's physical limitations that are exacerbated by her illness and protect her from those who might target a "weak" opponent.
A cavalier must also have a natural inclination towards service and obedience. Though the bond works both ways, and in a balanced partnership the necromancer will be equally obedient to their cavalier, cavaliers with a penchant for risky and dramatic ploys, untempered aggression, or extreme hubris are unlikely to make effective matches.

Cavalier status is trained and award by each House in accordance to their own specifications, although most Houses take the form of some military academy for non-adept fights and dueling ranking system. Traditional cavaliers favor the rapier and the dagger, but many cavaliers train in a wide variety of weapons and select specialized primary and off-hand weapons. A swordsman may not be considered a cavalier until they have sworn an oath to a necromancer.

Cohort Cavalier - a military soldier bonded to a cohort necromancer, these cavaliers tend to have a greater focus on dueling ranking and military service history when establishing quality.

Social Cavalier - A cavalier bonded to a noble necromantic heir to a House, these cavaliers tend to have less of a focus on specific training accomplishments, and often include family ties in the pairing process.

Cavalier Primary - the lead cavalier of a House, attached to the premiere necromancer.

Cavalier Secondary - a second most skilled cavalier, often also attached to the premier necromancer (or in some cases a close relative, such as the child and heir to the premier necromancer).

Necromancers

"'Medical necromancy,' said her adept [Palamedes] drily, 'there's an oxymoron for you."

A Necromancer is an inhabitant of the Nine Houses System born with "thanergetic nervous systems,"[2] or the ability to perceive and influence thalergy (life energy) and thanergy (death energy). Though each House is ruled by a necromantic scion, necromancers may take a variety of roles in life such as careers in the military, researchers, roles in the clergy, and more.

A myriad ago, before The Resurrection, there was no necromancy in the then-thalergetic Nine Planets. Following the extinction of the First House, The Emperor resurrected first his guardian, A.L, and then the Planets themselves— permanently changing their character to thanergetic, or planets that produce death energy on a stable basis (i.e.: without dying), in nature.

It is with this shift that the inhabitants of the Nine Houses began to birth necromantically capable children. With the re-establishment of the Nine Houses, each House founded a necromantic line of leadership passed down (with the exception of the Ninth House) from the resurrection to the present day. The miracle of necromancy is thought to be a gift from God and has spurred a culture that ties necromancers closely to their home planets.

There is nothing within a person's genetics that points to a necromantic aptitude, nor is there a presence of any additional organs ("apart from heightened activity from organs we would otherwise mark as vestigial").[4] Instead, necromancy seems to be based in proximity to the thanergetic planets during foetal development, as children born out of the Dominicus system are never necromancers. Parents will keep their newborns on grave dirt until they are able to land on a thanergetic planet.[5] In fact, there is no inherent hereditary quality to necromancy, as both adept parents and non-adept parents produce necromantic children in similar proportions. Most of the Nine Houses have taken to using vat-wombs and necromantic experts to increase their ability to sire necromantic heirs, including creating children several years after their genetic parents have died.

In many cases, the necromantic aptitude results in a physical weakness of the necromancer's body. Adepts tend to be small, slight, and frail in nature, though there are always exceptions to this rule. Some researchers, such as the Seventh House mystics of "the perfect death", believe that innate frailty in the necromancer (such a terminal illness) can boost the necromantic abilities and create "the perfect necromancer." Palamedes Sextus refutes this assertion with: "The technical fact that dying enhances your necromancy is vitiated considerably by the fact that you can't make use of it. You might have access to a very personal source of thanegy, but considering your organs are shutting down—"

Classifications of Necromancers

• Anatomist - an expert in human anatomy.
• Animaphilia - a flesh specialist.
• Generalist - an un-specialized jack-of-all.
• Occultist - taboo, one who studies the river and its mysteries.
• Psychometry - reading thalergy/thanergy signatures of objects.
• Siphoner - taboo, one who draws thanergy or spirit magic from others.
• Speaker to the Dead - a summoner/medium of ghosts.

"Deep space was a necro's nightmare, because nothing had ever been alive out there, so there were no big puddles of death lying around for Harrow and her ilk to suck up with a straw."

Necromancy requires the presence of a large amount of thanergy. In the Nine Houses, the thanergetic planets themselves provide ample energy for necromancers to work. Off-planet, necromancers are aided by Lyctors, who kill planets to generate thanergy, or by cavaliers, who kill smaller organisms such as animals and humans to create thanergy. Deep space is a necromantic impossibility and many necromancers will choose to travel with dirt from their home planet to limit the ill effects of the thanergetic void on their bodies.

A SERMON ON CAVALIERS AND NECROMANCERS

taken from the collected works of M. Bias

I have heard critique of cultural depictions of necromancers as romanticising an essentially military bondage; it is hard not to see these critiques as ignoring the poignancy, the humanity, and the quintessentially Nine Houses qualities of the concept. Have we, as a civilisation, had a love affair with the idea? Yes! Has it been the keystone of all interstellar exploration and success in military conflict? Yes! Was Be My Cavalier VII six too many sequels for that worthy first novel? Yes; but be it ever so saccharinely depicted in poetry and prose, our concern with the relationship between a necromancer and their cavalier remains at its heart our pure ideal: that though as a people we are divided between those who are attuned to, and afflicted by, the aptitude, and those who are withdrawn from, and spared from, the aptitude, we two groups share a symbiotic relationship. Those who hold the sword must hold it for the necromancer. Those who were born with thanergetic nervous systems ply their art only by the grace of the sword. The necromancer is weak, and the sword is strong. The sword is weak, and the necromancer is strong. Our pleasure at the bond unbroken between necromancer and cavalier is a Nine Houses acknowledgement of the equality granted to us by God.

This is not to say that the relationship entered our consciousness fully formed, nor that we have not watched it change through the eras. Its application in military circumstances has changed just as much as its application in society and in fiction. Necromancer-cavalier pairs are never sent out without the backup of modern Cohort regiments: those soldiers who make up the frontline Cavalier units would be the first to differentiate their work from the work of the classic cavalier. The social cavaliers—attached to the premier necromancers of their house—are under fire from traditionalists for contributing to the "worrying trend" of granting the title of cavalier to people who go unranked in swordplay: the use of "cavalier" as a metaphor. But this argument is at least five thousand years old: we have reams of editorials criticising cavaliers primary who have failed to travel and gain fame and "at least captaincy." Society would consider this an unnecessarily harsh requirement of a cavalier primary nowadays: even Second House cavaliers primary most often begin their higher services as a lowly lieutenant.

What has not changed is the essential equation. A necromancer who must leave her House and fight requires a swordswoman. A swordswoman leaving her House to fight requires, amid the bullet-fuelled barbarism of other planets, a necromancer. Of course, it is the swordswoman who makes the necromancer's art possible: thalergy planets reject the necromancer, and require fresher death than we do in the Nine Houses to perform. But without the care and craft of the adept, would the first assault not be merely a suicide strike? Perhaps the swordswoman may survive alone where the necromancer would find it difficult or impossible: but this is the mathematics we come back to. The one binds to the other. More warriors, and the necromancer would be hard-pressed to perform the feats that come with intimate knowledge of another's thanergy; more necromancers, and the swordswoman's burden to supply thanergy would multiply with each adept, to say nothing of the difficulty of protecting more than one person. Both halves serve as sword and shield. The long-standing relationship is required for the heat of battle; unfamiliarity with the other's methods will lead to death.

Our concern with what the relationship should be is a long-standing one. The love between them should be centred on duty. No matter the House, the vow is short—

One flesh, one end.

The Emperor confirmed long ago that this oath was taken from the Lyctors themselves, in the early years of discipleship after the Resurrection. With this as our understanding, how beautiful an oath it is!

"One flesh" is the underpinning of our whole Empire. We are born necromancers, or we are not; yet we are one. The non-necromancer will still have necromantic children. The necromancer will have parents who lacked the aptitude. The possibility is within us. We live under the thanergenic light of Dominicus, are born, grow, and die in his thanergetic Houses; the Resurrection made us so. We are fundamentally different to those born on thalergy planets outside the Empire. Our anxiety drives the expectant parent to arrange to give birth back home, or concern themselves with the baby's proximity to grave dirt sourced from home. Our necromantic characteristics make us more like the Emperor. As he was once man, and became God, and was God and became man, so were we dead and became alive; so were we alive and became dead. The necromancer and the cavalier are no different. They are one flesh. And yet that is only one understanding of the mystery that characterises us as a society.

"One end" is necessarily martial. We may take "end" as in the sense of goal or desire; the necromancer and cavalier work toward the same thing, no matter their differences in personality or method. Both members of the pair must work together to secure whatever path has been marked for them by House or empire. One end is one Empire. Love between a necromancer and cavalier is vital to differentiate them from a soldier's love of the Emperor: they are carrying out a personal devotion that beautifies both types of adoration. If the cavalier and the necromancer do not take "one flesh, one end" as a maxim for their passion for each other, their bond is nonexistent. They must each take the other as their ideal. The necromancer must be a pure expression of their art to the cavalier. The cavalier must strive for perfection in theirs, to gain the necromancer's admiration and trust. They do not have to enjoy each other's society; they must simply take their togetherness as assumed. The cavalier who will not sleep in the same room as their necromancer must question themselves as to why. Their love is the love that fears only for the other: the love of service on both sides. Some have tried to characterise this relationship as the cavalier's obedience to the necromancer, but the necromancer must be in turn obedient to the needs of the cavalier without being asked or prompted: theirs is arguably the heavier burden.

As we are concerned with what the relationship is, so are we concerned with what it is not. The love of the cavalier for the necromancer, and the necromancer for the cavalier, is not the love of a spouse. It cannot be libidinous. "Sword-marriages" wherein a necromancer and their cavalier married to one outside party as dual spouses were almost certainly the invention of the fiction writer, or more likely, the pornographer who cannot see anything beautiful without wanting to make it lewd. This is proved in the fact that, after a myriad of thought about the matter, marrying your cavalier remains taboo at best. There have been those who have argued eloquently that it is traitorous to the ideals of the Necrolord Prime. There is still a precedent in the Fifth for spouses to become a cavalier at particular times, but this is regarded as a stubborn holdover that is characteristically Fifth to not remove from their practise. Neither can the love be familial love, which is why the necromancer and cavalier cannot be parent and child; sibling rules have relaxed, but only in times of unusual paucity. Many Houses still cleave to the idea that the best cavaliers are those who from the cradle know both what they are and at whose side they are destined to stand; the Second House has notably argued against this, stating that this results in a sibling relationship. History gives us successful and unsuccessful examples of both methods: of the cavaliers and necromancers trothed nearly at birth, or of the necromancer and the cavalier who join as strangers to each other.

It has gone out of fashion to have "pattern" marriages as a hard rule; for one reason that adhering to "pattern" marriages often led to blurring of traditional cavalier families and administrative families, leading to the need for new branches of both. Atrial marriages, of necromancer to necromancer, and of their cavalier to cavalier, worked only inside House lines; ventricular marriages, of necromancer to the other necromancer's cavalier, and vice versa, worked best with outsiders. "Swap" or "bruise" marriages are still common in this way—non-adepts sent in to marry necromancers on both sides—but are hardly done to "pattern." In this era of mixed Cohort regiments and long placements out in space, mixed-House marriages can occur by sheer accident, or—in the case of the Sixth—by hopeful design. The only "pattern" left is the Sixth's rigid adherence to set childbearing pairs, albeit this is acknowledged within the Library to often have little to do with love and everything to do with genetic scarcity. This fluctuation of style and whim has not touched the central tenet of cavalier and necromancer, nor what they represent to both each other and the children of the Resurrection.

As we approach the celebration of a myriad of years serving the Necromancer Divine, our King of the Nine Renewals, first and last among us, we may see the cavalier-necromancer bond as a gift to us in long standing. Like him, it has not changed; like him, although we may build altars and light candles, the fundamental substance beneath does not wear or tarnish with long years of worship. The necromancer stands with her cavalier. The cavalier stands with her necromancer. They are one flesh, and one end, and they are all of us.

A LYCTORAL NOTE ON CAVALIERS AND NECROMANCERS

NEARLY TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLD, KEPT IN SECRET IN A CHEMICAL FILE WITHIN THE LIBRARY OF THE SIXTH HOUSE TO GUARD AGAINST THE RAVAGES OF TIME

valancy says one flesh one end sounds like instructions for a sex toy. can't stop thinking about that so can someone stop cris and alfred before the sex toy phrase catches on, thanks