Apothecaries and Necromancers

This is for those who do more than just your average card tricks. Artificers, Wardens, Diviners, Healers and more reprehensible types, welcome!
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IamLEAM1983
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Apothecaries and Necromancers

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

- both disciplines are so close as to essentially form the same greater School, together
- to fix the body, you need to understand how to hurt it. To hurt it, knowing how you go about fixing it helps
- practitioners still tend to choose one or the other, but that choice implies an understanding of the opposite factor, too

Basic History
- we've always tried to cure our wounds, we've always tried to cause some
- healing and killing essentially go hand in hand. Affirming the native soul's hold over a body is close to helping another enter a new body
- medicine supports this idea, in how very mild doses of poison can have narcotic effects. Plenty of bad things can be very beneficial, if left in the hands of pros
- but this also means physicians know about poisons, how to kill people...
- this takes a fairly simple School and gives it a tremendous degree of historical importance
- Apothecaries have protected kingdoms by caring for ill rulers, or doomed their enemies by unleashing plagues upon the land

How Does it Work?
- Medical school is a pre-requisite, today - or a very good hold on basic chemistry. Before doing anything magic in nature, you need to understand how molecules made in labs can cure diseases. You need to understand that we owe everything to what Nature provides, medically speaking.
- considering, most of them are either doctors or, conversely, career killers. You can also understand how life works by ending it repeatedly...
- once you do understand the basics, you need to ply via the same way Artificers do. The difference is you're trying to project a healing factor onto someone - not fireballs or electricity. A ton of focus is required and a lot of intellectual, conscious belief in the physical process of healing

- the same works if you're trying to curse someone with sickness. You need to essentially fill yourself with the basic "idea" of Being Sick - which can be dangerous
- if your focus slips during a healing spell, no biggie. You've just soothed your own aches and pains instead of a patient's. If you slip while cursing someone...
- ...you've probably just killed yourself, unless you really just wanted to force the common cold on someone. That's typically not what's at stake, though.

- in both cases, this is an excessively demanding School. Practitioners have to be prepared with the idea of being bone-tired if they rely on it
- considering, a lot of users tend to be accomplished regular doctors, and use their arcane skills as a last resort

- if you're primarily a Necromancer, you can open long-dormant arcane conduits into dead flesh or bones, and allow souls you'll pick to incarnate themselves
- this is very rarely the kind of thing you do out of the kindness of your heart... but it can be accidental, too.
- generally, zombie summoners or Ghoul makers are trying to assert some semblance of authority. Can usually be done with zombies, but Ghouls won't appreciate...

- interestingly, liches tend to have a natural bias toward this School. Since they're neither alive or dead, working both Life and Death in various shapes seems to come naturally to them - even if the former mortal didn't have inclinations towards this School
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