Revit

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>>50133973
They're just your standard, generic bad guys for the PCs to fight, nothing special about them. You did make me wonder what a setting would be like where necromancers aren't seen as evil, but as harmless weirdos.

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>>50133973
They love their daughters unlike some abusive parents.

>>50134214
I assume in a setting where necromancers don't use the souls of the dead to power themselves or just communicate with spirits and not rise the dead.

Magic is split into 3 general branches:

>Elementalism which is the intelligence to bend the natural forces to your will. they're a form of scholar and somewhere between true magicians and engineers.

>Divinity - Faith based magic where people follow gods in order to get some of their power.

>Mysticism - Faith based magic where the power comes from their belief in themselves and the power of their fellow humans.

Elementalism is pretty much a neutral science. Divinity is of course seen as the force of justice. Mysticism is seen as neutral to most people except those who practice divinity who think that it's a gateway to evil

Magic comes in two forms: Scientific and Ritual

Scientific has the propensity to fuck shit up in the same way as tech. It requires radioactive/exceedingly toxic materials. Its given a society with largely 1850s tech access to high explosives and poison gas.

Ritual has the subset Occult,involving dealings with devils and other evil beings. Largest group using Occult magic are fascist dorfs who use rituals to turn the slaves the monarchy flooded the economy with into fuel to run their tanks, trucks,and blimps.

>>50134949
Nice

They are extremely uptight about their appearance, striving to show no skin or display their sexuality for they view anything beyond their dark rituals to be vile and evil.

>>50133973
Bureaucrats, all of them. The dark arts are completely legal and the easiest form of magic. However, to avoid misuses and over saturation, all forms of dark arts have been placed behind a massive wall of paper work, so much that the bureaucratic empire the necromancers inhabit is entirely covered in a layer of paper with faded ink and the biggest natural disaster the place has is when the winds send those papers flying and causes horrible paper cuts to all who are naked.

>>50134905
Or go a weird sideways angle:

Nothing but the direct intercession of a deity can prevent a ghost from going to its final reward if it desires to do so. Deities have passed down to their followers holy writ to get souls to pass on as fast as possible, even though souls possess unique and significant power to alter the material. Necromancers are the weirdoes that can actually see, interact, and communicate with ghosts, and must balance coercion with bribery to get the service of said ghosts.

Toss in a setting wide push towards enlightenment-ish thinking and watch the sparks fly.

As for usual settings, 'dark' magics tend to be less inherently bad than just weird or gross. Not everyone can be comfortable ordering around a bunch of soulless husks animated by artificial life force, much less the health risks or the smell. Conversely, they're not any 'better' than less suspicious ways of doing things, merely differently set up.

Necromancy is typically a well regulated practice and industrsy with approved usages across various city states, villages, enclaves,etc.

Certain religious organizations will have trained necromancers among their members who have such tasks as tending to the graves of the faithful to pacify/banish spirits and to keep grave robbers and undead in check.

Healing is a subset of Necromancy derived from the understanding of the body and many doctors find employ with those in need with them usually forming their own organizations or being independents.

Other such services offered are those who travel to various villages and help them deal with hauntings and possessions as well as doing regular maintenence on wards and seals for important bits of infrastructure

Necromancer communities tend to be secretive and self-policing only working with other organizations when needed to take care of rogue members looking for profit or something worst.

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>>50133973
They wear a lot of red, they shave their scalps to tattoo them, and they're ruled by a council of eight people who specialized in one school each.

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Everybody loves the Enchanters because they're so, well, it's hard to explain. They're just everyone's friend.

>>50133973
That depends on what form of 'the dark arts' you're talking about.
>Necromancy
Anything that doesn't enslave souls or cause corpses to walk is clean, as long as it's not used tortuously. For example, inflicting magical sickness on powerful prisoners when regular containment isn't available is common practice for magical enforcers that can.
Walking corpses cause magical distortion because there's a significant difference between the life-energy that animates them in life and the magic that animates an Animate Dead corpse, and that creates magical dissonance, leading the behavior of undead not directly under the command of a mage to be violent and unstable.
The dim, animalistic controller 'mind' set in by a necromancer, once released from a necromancer's grasp, realizes something is horribly wrong with their condition and since they can't sleep, their first instinct is to eat.
>Old Magic
This relies on rituals and not spellcasting slots.
The low-level stuff is harmless but weak, more like fortune-telling and good luck charms than any substantial manipulation of reality.
More powerful stuff generally involves the blood of or a sacrifice of a human or demihuman, using their life energy as magical fuel. Casters of this form can sacrifice their own blood or life force as well, but this tends to make them weak and sickly in comparison to other people. This is your 'creepy stalker desperate for love' magic.
This magic is hardly practiced at all and basically considered myth to most people- it's the chuuni of the magic world. Which is kinda ironic, because it was the basis for every other form of magic before the powers that be decided to switch to a Vancian system because of demand.

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Once created a nation in a nationbuilder game that ran on industry, totalitarianism, eugenics and all of the blood magic. Canibalism and human sacrifice was seen as fine and dandy, accidently opened a portal to hell and tried to invade it, became trading partners with hell and more and more demon blood was introduced first to the warrior caste and the ruling elite, and then proliferated from there.

Of course I tried to constantly find new uses for blood magic. Healing, general combat magic, a sort of cloning, golems, mutations and combat steroids, tearing holes in reality and using it as a super weapons, turning the land into a literal hellscape as a means of scorched earth, also recreated giant creatures claiming to be angels and used them as the most hilariously overpowered unit I have ever seen used in a nationbuilder game.

Might have gone a bit overboard, even the mongol horde told me to chill.

>>50133973
Everyone has the same magical potential as everyone else - because of this, all cultists are deemed a threat. Even the weakest cultist can still be dangerous because he's insane and unpredictable.

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There isn't really a clear defintion for "dark magic". The term "Dark Arts" is applied to all magic, "dark" meaning "obscure" or "esoteric" rather than "sinister". All kinds of magic receive academic study, and if anything is forbidden, it's probably forbidden because it's dangerous rather than because there's something fundamentally "wrong" about it. Even then, it's only the USE that's forbidden, not the study.

>>50134812
Charles II of Spain .exe

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>>50133973
Arcane magic runs the surface of the worlds within the systems in some fashion or another.

Psionics actually work in space between worlds, and are therefore very highly sought after. Technically, the number of renegades this creates would make them "dark arts" practitioners, but really, they tend to get blackmailed into service or caught and neurally resocialized into slavery if they're lucky. The major misfortune is for the ones that get used to power ship functions involuntarially. That's usually more of an Illithid thing, but some pirates have figured out the means as well as high-society aristocrats.

The more secretive and Actual dark arts are Void magic, which functions best in space and is inhibited on terrestrial worlds and the like. Their methods are kept and known by few, but there are concerns about. So far, the drawbacks haven't been too severe, but it seems that shadow magic exposure tends to consume arcane talent over time. What this means at large is uncertain, but on a personal level, extended or habitual use of it will gradually replace any arcane talent the user once held.