Dmccoy1693/NecroInit

Initiation into Necromancy

Introduction into Sorcery goes something like this:

• Dawn - Humanity - Intense Physical Labor, Survive Natural Disasters, Acts of Service w/o recognition
• Zenith - Tutorlage - Find a Teacher, Learn that you don't know everything
• Twilight - Journey - Take eyes off future goal to see here and now
• Night - Fear - Confront fear
• Eclipse - Choice - Choose to sacrifice something

Necromancy is more or less a death equivalent of Sorcery (albeit smaller scope and greater power). It should have a similar initiation. My thoughts are as follows:

• The Station of Dusk, also called the Face of Death, involves the merciless taking of life and learning that all life eventually leads to death. The test involves taking the life of an innocent for no reason and staring into his eyes as he dies. The initiate is to see that life as transitory and in life, there is no meaning.

• The Station of Midnight, known as the Wisdom of the Skull, begins with a searching out of a teacher from beyond the grave and learning from this teacher that all knowledge learned in life is wrong and meaningless. To pass this station, the initiate must desecrate a grave in such a way that a hungry ghost is produced.

• In Purpose, the name of the Station of Daybreak, the initiate learns that in order for some to live and hold power, others must die. In this test, an initiate must go seek out disasters, either natural or the result of war and make sure that not a single person survives without using a single weapon other then their own mind. Seeing one with pity or sparing someone or allowing someone to help others will result in a failure.

• Day - Fear - Kill a single life with no weapon except fear.

• Moonshadow - Choice - Choose to sacrifice something; the sacrifice must be something that helps the person feel connected to life and it's trappings, yet of equivalent significance to the Terrestrial sacrifice.

Comments

Now, this is all well and good. But consider: Canonically, the only reason you can self-initiate yourself into Sorcery is because of the Salinian Working, which basically wrote the "rules" of initiation into the very fabric of Creation. Necromancy has no Salinian Working. So you can't self-initiate. They say so in the Book of Bone and Ebony. But hey, canon is made to be broken. -- OhJames