Would it be possible to build a peaceful society of necromancers?

Peacefull? yes
Good? no

>>54635013
We literally just had this thread you fucking cunt

>>54635230
Good not peaceful

There is a difference

How would you do it?

>>54635013
Depends on the setting.
Depends how necromancers work in your setting.
Depends how undead work in your setting, assuming your necromancers are the corpse-raising kind.
Depends on your definition of "peaceful".
You have given us insufficient context for anyone to provide a "yes" or "no" answer without lying.

>>54635013
Easily. There's a sourcebook for Scarred Lands, the grimbright D&D 3e setting that White Wolf made, called Hollowfaust. It details life in the titular city, which was built by and is still run by necromancers. It's one of the nicest places around in that world.

>>54635383
Neutral aligned inter-dimensional energy provides corpses with the power to do things.

Necromancers give corpses the pathway to the energy.

If you bind a soul to the corpse, it is sentient, if you don't it's just an automation.

"Peace" is not violently taking others resources, or having others taking their resources

>>54635447
In that case it would depend on what type a person the necromancer is and what their intentions would be with raising the dead. In that setting necromancy would be inherently neutral so it would all depend on the user of the magic. A Good-neutral person would be able to use necromancy in helpful ways like increasing the efficiently on manual labor etc. A Evil-neutral person could cause all sorts of trouble.

>>54635013
Yes.

>>54635242
>>54635202
>>54635383
>>54635763
which one is it?

>>54635013
Depends on how your DM sees undead and necromancy. I've had DMs that see necromancy as not evil itself but the application of it, though you'd still have to deal with the stigma that comes with it, and I've had DMs that see the act of necromancy as evil and any spell that had the evil descriptor as an abomination to the natural order of things. It really depends on the setting. This isn't because evil or good has anything to do with peaceful, just whether it's enough of an affront to the natural order to be constantly attacked by the various forces of the world or not.

>>54635242
I've actually done this before. One of the most peaceful nations in my setting is owned by an ancient LE red dragon who took over because the nation was run by a line of dragon blooded sorcerer kings (one guess who they were descended from)

Long story short, peace is good for business. A concise war would involve getting his variosu bickering nobles on the same page, getting his various bickering offspring on the same page, and worrying about both those groups trying to kill him while also fighting a war. Plus, alot of his many times great grand children are totally nuts so other nations aren't really super psyched on upsetting the status quo.

So yeah, rules one and two for that place are:
1. Be rich
2. Don't be poor
Because the whole thing is kinda a crapshoot if you're not wealthy but if you don't happen to live there and aren't particularly poor it's just your super evil neighbor that happens to be a great trading partner that you should absolutely never ever fuck with because destabilizing it in any way would almost certainly plunge the entire continent into war the second it went wrong.

>The dragon knows all of this and is fucking loving it.

>>54635013
Yes.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Millennial_King

>>54635013
GURPS Banestorm: Abydos.

Infinite man-power which does not require pollutant technologies to work. An army made of recycled corpse, that feel no pain, no exhaustation, and no fear.
Yeah, I really cannot imagine a society where people does not need to do the heavy work or fight to defend it prospering... Like, what people would do free of the burden of work? Study? Develop science and magic? Perfect themselves and society through development of arts?
Are we mad, what kind of hell is that?

>>54638844
Magic?

Art?

Develop computing and make necromancer 4chan?

>>54635013
Yes, although it's really hard to create a perfectly peaceful society in general. They tend to be conquered by less peaceful neighbors.

>>54635013
necromancers are people like you and me, they probably dont want a fight unless its absolutely needed

they probably cant just ask for spare skellies, so they may need to look for "free" sources of bones that people dont care about

Only if you consider graveyards and wastelands peaceful. Necromancer's "utopia" is a common man's nightmare.

>>54640197
Necromancers are not people. They have forsaken their humanity.

>>54640226
Depends if they are undead or not.

You can be a necromancer and human

>>54640226
Hath not a necromancer eyes? Hath not a necromancer hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a conjurer is?

treating necromancers like scum will drive the ones who act like normal people into hiding, and cause the unstable ones to lash out in kind

>>54635013
I could see a Necromantic society work.

The Necromancers form a ruling Council that organizes the Necromancy.

They sell undead labour and get a yearly tribute for the guarantee of state security with their undead hordes.

They also manage foreign policy (de jure, de facto its determined by various interest groups) and intervene when matters of state security are at stake.

Oh and every dead body belongs to the state (except the dead bodies of rich people because they Pay a high fee).

The rest is managed by Local councils and guilds.

The people are actually pretty free and wealthy. No nobility opressing them (Necromancers are mostly scholars), taxes and tarifs are MUCH lower than in the other states and no one dares to attack because of fuck large Zombie hordes.

>>54640588
>dead bodies owned by the state
If you ate the states food, your body belongs to the state

I think all people should be able to become undead, mostly a generic skeleton one, though all undead are welcomed.

Predatory undead have to be sated, ghouls could prepare corpses for skeletonation by eating their flesh. Large companies could sell blood to vampires

Military would be a bunch of decked out skeletons commanded by some wizards.

If anything most people would be highly magical, making an invasion stupid

>>54640588

Pretty cool, bro.

Who exactly controls the undead? Is it the one necromancer that raised them?

Do boat-fulls of corpse shipped to the capital where powerful necros can raise them, or are the itinerant low level necros travelling the land and raising the dead?

In either case, who is in actual control of the undead?

In the first case control would be centralized to a few powerful necros, and we'd need check and balances on them.

In the second case, control would be spread through a multiple of "clerks", and we'd need a bureaucracy to manage them and coordinate the undead.

What checks and balances are in place to prevnet abuses?

>>54640681
Corpses are owned by the government, which sells them to groups of necromancers.

They can then proceed to sell the flesh or blood to other undead, or don't depending on the type of undead they want to make.

Citizens can hire these groups to do jobs, as can the government.

Certain jobs are only done by government groups such as power generation.

A government branch oversees these groups

>>54640721
giving blood should be required, and you should be compensated for it

>>54640681

>Pretty cool bro

Thanks!

>Who controls the Undead.

The individual Necromancer who raised them. Control is transferable to other Necros and mundane people (via magic artifact).

I honestly see the Necromancers organized in a guild/collegium that resembles a University.

The executive positions (commanding an army, overseeing the Bureau of Undead labour etc.) are actually unwanted busy work preventing research and magical progress. So these positions are assigned for a mandatory ammount of time before a Necro is free to pursue his research (until the next assignment is due).

The Necros are organized by their skill and highly skilled Necros are not involved in the day to das business of raising plain Zombies/Skelettons. Thats is grunt work for Novices. Highly skilled Necros either reanimate more complex Undeads (or worse) have to do administrative work.

>system of reanimation

The mundane part of the Government is responsible for collecting the dead bodies. For a high fee a dead body might stay in possesion of the Family (thats why rich people have crypts or reanimated ancestors that dwellin their estates).

The mundane part of the Government is mostly City Councils manned by guild representatives and Land owner councils of free peasants and large Land owners.

These collected bodies are then brought to the nearest branch of the Necro Guild. They have centralized Guild houses at strategic points.

Also withholding a dead body is a serious crime. The Necros and the Councils have a joint Security force that Travels the Country and is authorized to invest possible theft of a dead Corpse.

First Time offenders pay a doubled fee and serial offenders are imprisoned.

Ideally you would have an easy bake undeath package that anyone could partake in(skeletons would be ideal)

If your colleges could get the costs low enough, people could foot the bill of undeath by themselves, or get colleges or churches to sponsor them.

Most people would have to either be trained as a mage, artisan, entertainer, or scientist. Religious organizations could provide jobs as well.

Golems should be taken advantage of, as that way invaders would have to have anti-wizard, anti-undead, and anti-golem forces.

There would always be something to do in the city of bones.

Ideally you could reach a higher tech level than the rest of the world within about a hundred years

>>54640588
One of the cool things undead let you do is sub-water table mining. Normally, an ore deposit more than a half dozen feet under the water table was unminable since the mine would always flood and you can't pump the water out fast enough. With undead you A. don't care and B. don't need slaves to keep the mines running.

You do loose some tricks like using a hot fire and cold water to break up the rocks but it's still a monopoly on the deeper ore deposits.

>>54640741
I can see vampires buying blood over the counter. It actually makes more sense to shepard humans to harvest their blood more than outright murder

>>54642036
Well it could be an industry, company pays people to donate blood, company sells blood to vampires

>>54635447
If you have this well of neutral enemy to make automatons, why bother with corpses at all instead of making living statues?

>>54642067
Do statues have built in joints and/or are built for you already?

>>54642083
Corpses don't tend to have functional joints either. By that logic, you could probably get away with just animating a scarecrow.

>and are built for you already

Corpses aren't that much more free than statues are. If you're going out killing and graverobbing to get 'free' corpses then it's not exactly neutral like you want, and if you're paying people for the use of their dead relatives, then you could probably afford to stuff some clothes full of straw, plant fibers, and some lengths of wood for support.

>>54642185
Strawmen are flammable.

Skeletons aren't.

Also if all corpses are owned by the state, then you basically have an infinite source of bodies.

You just have to make sure a person has 2 kids before becoming undead

>>54642209
It's also exponentially easier to repair or replace a torn seam or broken stick than a pulverized or fractured bone. Since skellies aren't living, they don't naturally heal, which means every minor injury requires a replacement. Unless you've got mass graves full of replacement parts, there's not much you can do to fix a broken skeletal thrall.

>>54642209
>Strawmen are flammable.

If you're a pacifistic nation, then that shouldn't be a major problem

>Also if all corpses are owned by the state, then you basically have an infinite source of bodies.You just have to make sure a person has 2 kids before becoming undead.

Not as infinite in supply as planks, straw, and fabric. If you lose a skeleton or one breaks a bone, it's basically useless and you have to have -somebody- die to replace it.

If you lose a scarecrow, who cares? Just go get some bits of dead organic material from some plants and fix it up or make a new one.

>>54642248
>>54642260
I thought magic took care of basic matience, plus what happens if you want to become undead?

I wouldn't want a straw body for eternity

>>54642297
If magic can repair cracks and fabricate tendons and joints for skeletons, then it can do the same for clay, steel, or any other material. The only reason a skeleton-based workforce is superior to a golem-based workforce is if animation magic is magically better for animating corpses.

>>54635013
>Would it be possible to build a peaceful society of necromancers?
Sure.
Bunch of farmers, but when they die, the giant crop circle they carve into the face of the land turns them into a ghost, which then hangs around and natters with friends, and they form a giant death wall that stops anyone else attacking them. The ghosts can't stray too far from the settlement or they vanish, probably to the equivalent of heaven, if they want to go.

No-one has any energy to think of attacking others because they need to do farming, the spirits are there of their own free will, the "taint of undead" can't spread because it's limited to a certain radius of the magic's origin (and doesn't really exist since that's a made up thing by the church) and outside attackers can't really get to the living core on the inside of the society.

No-one's ever heard of them because they live on a mountainous region. Also the death wall of ghosts warn people to stay out, too, so no-one wanders in by accident.

>>54642056
You'd need a way of keeping the blood fresh. Blood coagulates in under a minute and the blood cells will die in hours of open air.

You could either devise some means of preserving blood (Gentle Repose?) or have the company set up meetings between buyers and sellers (Think craigslist).

So many exciting problems that can be solved so many exciting ways.

>>54642363
I just am wondering if evil undeath churches would be allowed.

And how in the world you would feed ghouls

>>54642297
>I thought magic took care of basic maintenance

To repair a skeleton, you need a necromancer. To repair a scarecrow, a lot of the time you just need some straw and some thread.

>plus what happens if you want to become undead? I wouldn't want a straw body for eternity

And in those cases you could actually go through the process of making a proper golem. After all, bones also aren't going to last for an eternity either.

Basically >>54642348
>The only reason a skeleton-based workforce is superior to a golem-based workforce is if animation magic is magically better for animating corpses.

If this state can so easily make this many undead constructs so simply, then there's really no reason to use them compared to other types, especially if you're worried about the perception of neighboring countries and are trying to be pacifists.

>>54642185
Corpses tend to have structurally functional joints that just need the driving mechanisms revived.

Even skeletons have the advantage of being structurally sound and light weight when compared to a wooden maniquin and the painstaking process of crafting joints is bypassed.

Straw doesn't have the structural integrity to stand on it's own and wood is more bulky and less rigid than bone.

>>54642384
Basically bodies are another resource to take advantage of, why build graveyards when you can just have them work for you.

Sure you could have a bunch of clay statutes, but you would have to shape them, and find clay for parts. As long as you have food, you have bodies, meaning you could effectively set up anywhere.

Plus there are far more benefits to undeath, many gods support it, you gain many spells that are great, and you can take care of other basic problems like ghosts

>>54642248
Have you SEEN the demographics of pre-industrial cities? They were hauling corpses by the cartload some days.

>>54642435
A) Depends on the type of wood

B) Skeletons don't have joints. If you can animate a skeleton, you can animate pretty much anything.

>>54642435
>Corpses tend to have structurally functional joints that just need the driving mechanisms revived.
Are you high? If a corpse has decayed to the point it's been SKELETONIZED, there's no way in hell the joints and tendons are still in a usable state. And if you're using fresh corpses, you've got a short amount of time before rigor mortis sets in and renders it unusable.

>>54642378
Not sure about the churches. People tend to have weird belief systems.

Ghouls would be a matter of limiting the ghoul population. A ghoul would harvest the naturally dead for meat, remove all the perishable organs, and then deliver the bones to necromancers for raising. Because rotten flesh tends to bring diseases ghouls would be an essential part of the corpse economy. You might see smokehouses dedicated to preserving human meat if the ghoul population is big enough.

>>54642466
>>54642468
Skeletons are made to be moved by muscles. if you replace the muscles with magic, they would move as fluidly as a human.

You would have to go through great pains to make a wood construct move as nicely as a human

Yeah, like the movie Fido

>>54642448
>Plus there are far more benefits to undeath, many gods support it, you gain many spells that are great, and you can take care of other basic problems like ghosts

None of this sounds likely based on the assumptions that were put forth. The energy to make undead comes from a random, neutral magical source. Any spells that affect undead should work just fine on anything animated by the same energy. Anyone with the ability to make a golem should be able to handle a ghost that is presumably caused by the same energy. And how are there multiple gods that support creating undead when it's just another generic type of magic involving making golems from corpses? If anything, I would expect more gods to condemn it rather than support it, due to it being considered a desecration and require you to take the body of someone's relative.

>>54642468
Ah, now we're arguing two different things. First, if the meat is still on the bones it's just a matter of reviving the muscles.

On the other hand, if the meat is gone then you're just creating another golem. The only difference is that it's made of bone rather than granite.

Keep in mind that the premise is that dead bodies are easy to obtain.

>>54642520
Round out the ends of thin planks of wood for makeshift ball joints

You now have something that can move more fluidly than a human, since it can bend its arms backwards. Magic holds it all in place anyway, since the skeleton doesn't have muscles anymore.

Magic is serving as what holds it together and moves it. The only advantage a skeleton has is that it's pre-built to fit together. Of course, the skeleton also has the downside that you'd have to melt all the flesh off of a corpse and sterilize it so it wasn't spreading disease.

>>54642529
There are gods of undeath.

I don't remember there being any gods of using the negative energy plane to animate wood statues.

Reminder that the negative energy plane is completely neutral

>>54642557
You also have the upside of keeping a bunch of ghouls happy, who are more than happy to help you clean your corpses.

>>54642558
If this is D&D-style negative energy you're dealing with, there's a whole host of other problems to worry about. We were working with the assumption that this was just generic setting-independent animating energy and not something that verifiably does terrible things to the land and people exposed to it in most settings it's described in.

>>54642558
>negative energy plane

This isn't the premise we were working off of >>54635447

If it's a plane of 'negative' energy like in D&D, then you're dealing with skeletons being a shitty idea because negative energy is the opposite of actual living creatures and will cause other problems because of it.

You're adding other assumptions to the baseline that don't necessarily apply in the slightest.

There are no gods of undeath, because in this world undeath isn't different from golems. At most, there's one, and another god of craftsmen that support the golems, but the magic that affects them both is the same.

>>54642592
>>54642594
Even if all magic comes from the same source, necromancy is kind of its own thing.

The elder scrolls has all magic come from the same source, why don't they only use golems?

Plus there probably is more than one god of undeath, there is probably a god of vampires or evil undead.

>>54642578
>keeping ghouls happy
>an upside

Only if you can keep up with their demand for flesh, which seems to be the root flaw with all of this.

>>54642553
>Keep in mind that the premise is that dead bodies are easy to obtain.

I'm still not certain this holds true. The premise didn't include that dead bodies were any easier to obtain, just that they didn't have any sort of negative or harmful energy.

You still have to either have a state-controlled government that taxes all of the undead, buys them, steals them, executes people for them, etc. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be expensive and shady compared to wood, straw, clay, stone, or any other materials.

>>54642557
Carving out ball and socket joints is professional work. You can't half ass it or the joints will grind. Professional work means a professional wood worker and that means expense. The joints for the hand alone would be at least a week of work by a journeyman carpenter.

A ghoul, on the otherhand, would strip the flesh off the bones for free.

File: joint anatomy.jpg (32KB, 550x409px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 550x409px

>>54642520
This is what a joint looks like. If magic can replace joints, cartilage, ligaments, and synovial fluid, then literally all you need to animate a mannequin as well as you can animate a skeleton is a few artisans with whittlin' knives and some wood. And I can very safely assume that the production rate of mannequin sweatshops is much faster than the production rate of the human womb.

Once you get rid of the large supply of pre-finished goods rotting away in the cemetery, you aren't getting any until you either get to mass murdering or wait a generation for the old-timers to leave their corpses for you to harvest.

>>54642627
Read the premise again and stop making assumptions that don't fit in it.

Undead are powered by neutral magical energy. There should be no difference.

If there is a difference, then why is the easy magical route just as clean and neutral as the harder more difficult creation of golems? That's pretty shit from a narrative perspective. Why should magical shortcuts not involve sacrifice?

>>54642628
Say the nation started out with a group of only necromancers, why would they go through the trouble of learning a different kind of magic to make it a bit more moral.

It's not like corpses are helpful to a society. And so they made them be helpful.

Plus most wizards aren't craftsman, why go through the trouble to make a body when someone has already made one for you.

When you want a really good thing, crafting it is a good idea.

But when you need a bunch of expendable workers for dumb labor, then why go through the trouble of making a statue?

>>54642664
Just sand the tops and bottems of a plank so they're rounded, then varnish them. You don't need a ball and socket, just two balls. The magic will hold them together regardless.

Remember that you're using this as the frame for the inside of a scarecrow, so it also has the advantage of having straw as a cushion and padding for these joints.

>>54642677
>Once you get rid of the large supply of pre-finished goods rotting away in the cemetery, you aren't getting any until you either get to mass murdering or wait a generation for the old-timers to leave their corpses for you to harvest
No, no, the plague from having dead bodies walking around will be fantastic for the death rate, even though it'll help slow down mortality from overworking.

>>54642684
The sacrifice nobody seems to be noting here is that the supply of skeletons is very easy to dry up. After the supply of already-existing corpses is used up-- since this is hard labor they're doing, that'll be sooner rather than later-- you're fresh out until the next battlefield massacre. This would mean either the labor pool stays small due to the sporadic nature of war and death, or the state shifts its economy to the skeleton economy and becomes a nightmarish predator-state turning prisons and nearby countries into corpse-farms to feed their labor pool.

Compare that to the long-term benefits of using more plentiful raw materials to form your workers' bodies, and you can see where things can go wrong.

>>54642709
>Say the nation started out with a group of only necromancers, why would they go through the trouble of learning a different kind of magic to make it a bit more moral.

Because it isn't a different sort of magic by the original premise. The Animate spell works just as well on bones as it does on anything else.

If you need cheap labor, make a scarecrow. If you need an expensive war machine, make a golem. If you need one when you're in the wilderness and not in a city with the infrastructure to make those two things for you? Then yeah, using a skeleton makes sense. But if you're building a city based on animated labor, then why not use the types that are the simplest to make when you're in a city?

>>54642711
Why would you use straw?

It's just pointless, flammable and rots.

Skeletons don't light on fire, are a detriment to all societies, and if stripped clean and washed, don't rot.

There is also the issue that wood is far less stable for movement than hardened calcium. There is a reason why we switched to steel bike spokes

>>54642711
Two balls would run into issues under load. The joint wouldn't distribute the weight evenly and you'll have deformation. Straw would wear out too quickly under normal human loads. Straw also would be far more succeptible to damage as even a dagger would be able to do some significant damage. A wooden skeleton would also need to be far more bulky than bone as wood doesn't have the rigidity of bone.

>>54642743
You don't use up skeletons.

Just and more energy to repair them.

The only reason you need more bodies is to build better skeletons

>>54642814
So in this world, you can cheaply animate skeletons using magic from the negative plane that is entirely safe to use, is supported by the completely neutral gods of undeath, and you can repair anything that goes wrong with them using more magic?

>>54642769
>The joint wouldn't distribute the weight evenly and you'll have deformation.

The thing is animated and held together by magic. It'll be fine

>Straw also would be far more succeptible to damage as even a dagger would be able to do some significant damage.

We're a pacifistic nation, so these aren't designed for combat. A skeleton is about as vulnerable to a hammer, but you can't just shove in some straw and sew up a skeleton.

>A wooden skeleton would also need to be far more bulky than bone as wood doesn't have the rigidity of bone
>Straw would wear out too quickly under normal human loads.

Depends on the labor you're using them for, but since it's magic that's keeping them held together and compelling them to move in the first place, then the specific materials matter a lot less.

>>54642768
It's also a lot cheaper and more easily replaced. It also isn't capped by your population in any way. If you have a town of 1000 people, you could get 10,000 strawmen. If you want skeletons, you're going to be stuck waiting for the population to increase. You have a far lower supply that might not keep up with demand.

>>54642743
As the supply of corpses dries up human labor moves in to supplant it. This brings you back to normal feudal standards but as there isn't enough corpses for hazardous work human labor is brought in to supplant it. First in fields and eventually in quarries and mines. Hazardous work, however, means more corpses and the cycle starts anew.

However, having some of the labor done by undead means that the standard of living is higher. Higher standard of living means more children. This leads to a population boon and eventually more corpses.

>>54642837
You think this is crazy?

I could just heal people with magic, why wouldn't I be able to repair a skeleton just as easily?

>>54642840
>The thing is animated and held together by magic. It'll be fine
>A skeleton is about as vulnerable to a hammer, but you can't just shove in some straw and sew up a skeleton.

These two arguments contradict one another. Either you can hold the thing together with magic or you can't. If the former then you can repair skeletons with magic. If the later then bone is the superior material to work with.

Also, there's no reason to limit yourself to just human corpses.

>>54642855
Because a human body will typically heal over time naturally, compared to inanimate objects?

Either way, the premise already established a single source of animating magic. No reason those same repair spells wouldn't also work on any other type of construct that could be made more cheaply.

>>54642854
I'm sure that every corpse brought in from mining and ranching accidents will be in good enough shape to be used in the workforce. I mean, unless you're going to be using your negative energy to heal that too, in which case everything should be fine.

The implication you're giving me here is that it's okay to operate on the assumption that your workers are going to die horribly, so you can feel free to turn them into slaves that don't need to be paid.

>>54642893
It's the former, and you can repair both with magic, but you can also more easily repair a strawman through mundane means.

>Also, there's no reason to limit yourself to just human corpses.

There's no reason to limit yourself to corpses at all except 'muh good necromancy'

>>54642893
Magic is just the muscles of the construct, the thing in which they are acting through is important as well.

>>54642854
>>54642917
Don't forget that this setup relies on the idea that the government has free ownership of all corpses. You really think the people of the country wouldn't try to get some compensation when dad dies in the mines, and his skeleton is going to be used for an infinite amount of slave labor?

How does the government even decide where the undead work anyway? The people owning the mines would certainly rather have them over mundane workers who they have to worry about the safety of, but there's only so many. Does the government rent them out? If so, wouldn't demand naturally increase so that the government is simply stealing wages from its own people?

>>54642893
>Stab scarecrow with dagger
>it loses some straw and its containing fabric is torn
>solve through mundane stitching
>hit skeleton with hammer
>breaks bone
>need magic to fix it
>hit scarecrow with hammer
>wood is less rigid than bone
>straw cushions the blow
>if any wood breaks, fix it with magic

Seems pretty clear.

>>54642934
>Why would we limit ourselves to corpses?
Because we are a small nation. We don't need a huge workforce because we are peaceful and about 90% of us don't need food. we don't want to expand because we don't need resources and are a trade nation.

>>54643005
>we don't want to expand because we don't need resources and are a trade nation.
Increasing your economic output would be an incentive to expand, though. And since you're a trade nation, importing raw materials to turn into finished goods and ethical workers to sell out would be easy for you.

>>54642974
The government sells corpses to groups of necromancers, then those necromancers undead are rented by people who need things done.

I mean having Dad's corpse working sucks, but he chose to peacefully pass on. He could have become undead, but he chose to go to the afterlife instead.

Your body being used after your death is a small price to pay for living in the nation with the highest living conditions in the world

>>54643005
>and are a trade nation

That sounds like a very good reason to use constructs rather than undead, as various traders might have cultural outlooks on the treatment of dead that might make extensive use of them unappealing.

As a trade hub, it'd also be far easier to import wood and export wooden servants that would deteriorate over time, meaning that people have to come back for a new one.

>>54643064
>but he chose to peacefully pass on.

He died in a mineshaft

>He could have become undead, but he chose to go to the afterlife instead.

Becoming an undead is presumably rather expensive. Also, your system is flawed if everyone can just become a free-willed undead, since then nobody will want to do any labor.

>the highest living conditions in the world

You mean no living conditions, because everyone is dead?

>>54643038
>>54643067
Yea but why?

You have a bunch of wizards, you can mine infinitely in the plane of earth. You don't need to expand at all.

You don't have to trade with people who don't like what you do with corpses if you don't want to. Many planes could care less

>>54643092
>you can mine infinitely in the plane of earth

Not part of the premise. You're assuming that there's an infinite plane of earth, when we're explicitly not working with a strict D&D setting, as undead are neutral and not evil.

>You don't have to trade with people who don't like what you do with corpses if you don't want to

And they don't have to trade with you, making that other trade city nearby that doesn't use undead a more appealing option. And since more people are going there and less here, then more people with stop going here and start going there, because there are more traders.

>many planes could care less

Again, assuming that you have a world where there's unlimited planes to ply your trade in.

>>54643089
Why would we have living workers at all?

just have an overseer command skeletons to do stuff, you legitimently need one dude to do one project.

People can get funding from the government, universities, or churches to become undead, especially if they are super skilled.

If you could get it cheep enough(I mean you have entire universities researching this stuff) people could just pay out of their own pocket.

>>54642959
In which case bone is superior to wood and straw.

>>54643199
Except when it comes to production, as you'll run out of corpses before you run out of plants

>>54643142
90% of your population doesn't need life support.

You are only farming to let people have babies if they want to.

You have a tireless population, you can trade with whoever you want because you don't have to pay for travel costs, distance means little.

You don't even need a plane of earth, you could just mine under water, your workers(and overseers) don't breathe.

>>54643169
>Why would we have living workers at all?

Because what started this whole chain was pointing out that you'd be stuck with very few undead laborers since you're waiting for people to grow old and die.

If everyone is sitting around living off of government checks and expecting skeletons to do all the work before they become a sentient non-labor skeleton, then you'll run out of actual labor to use.

At a certain point, you could argue to simply have the entire nation be nothing but undead, but at that point you also don't really need necromancers to raise the dead anymore, just a way to heal your immortal skeleton bodies.

>>54643269
>90%

Any other numbers you want to pull out of your ass?

>You are only farming to let people have babies if they want to.

Which you need them to, because otherwise you run out of corpses and your population stagnates.

>you can trade with whoever you want because you don't have to pay for travel costs

Unless your marching skeleton caravan runs into anyone who doesn't like undead

>you could just mine under water

You could just not mine at all, since your country really has no need for anything if you just want to be a few liches sitting around in a shack playing cards for eternity.

>>54643283
Presumably some people want to die.

Also presumably, you could raise like monkey skeletons for labor.

>>54642991

You forgot some steps here
>Stab scarecrow with dagger
>it loses some straw and its containing fabric is torn
>Stab skeleton with a dagger
>No damage worth noting.

>Sets scarecrow on fire
>Total anihilation
>Sets skeleton on fire
>blackened parts but otherwise fine

>Scarecrow gets wet
>Scarecrow starts to rot
>Skeleton gets wet
>skeleton gets dry

>Scarecrow runs through thornbush
>Scarecrow looses most of it's close and some of it's stuffing
>Skeleton runs through thornbush
>Skeleton now smells like thornbush

>>54643312
People like doing things

You would have to mine for materials to make buildings and art out of.

>>54643322
And ultimately

>scarecrow is destroyed
>make a new one out of cheap materials

>skeleton is destroyed
>kill a man to make a new one

What if you got free healthcare and didn't have to pay taxes for life, but in exchange you pledge to have your body reanimated as a soldier for the armies of the Necromancers? Seems like a good trade to me. And maybe the default is that your soul leaves the body, but for a hefty price you can be fully reanimated although "enslaved" to the will of the Necromancers.

This could even become an interesting culture. People obsessed with living long, full lives while dreaming of the days that their bodies will serve the Necromancer Empire. It would be really interesting because people wouldn't fear death; they would fear their bodies not being found so they can "live on" to protect their children and neighbors.

>>54643226
You can repair undead with magic so attrition isn't really an issue. Your average undead will have more longevity than your average human since you don't need to worry about stuff like disease, hunger, and old age.

>>54643319
If 90% of the population is undead, then a portion of that 10% deciding that living forever is underrated compared to being a puppet for eternity still won't give you enough corpses for labor.

And again, why bother with skeletons specifically at all?

>>54643322
>>54643357
I think you guys are missing the part where you just came up with soldiers who intentionally light themselves on fire to give enemy soldiers a warm hug.
>Flaming scarecrows make for warm huggies

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>sire, the foreign workers from Borograd are complaining about the corpse contracts the Guild of Necromancers is having them sign
>>pay them no mind, dear Baldrick. Necrostania was built by the bones of its dead, and I'll be damned if we let some corpse-hating miners interrupt our grand market strategy

>sire, the Holy Empire of Loch'Loren is denouncing our use of undead in the workforce, and are threatening to halt all trade with us! And the Holy Empire's allies are threatening to do so too!
>>not to worry, Baldrick-- we still have our extraplanar trading partners. We shant allow a nation of libcuck gravediggers to scare us into changing our grand market strategy

>sire, the Guild of Necromancers is demanding that we pay them more for dimensional gate maintenance!
>>that's quite alright, Baldrick. As you know, our nation is built upon the tireless work of the necromancers and their thralls. Why, half my advisors are necromancers! Triple their dues and commission a thousand more skeletons from their volunteer pits.

>>54643357
Ah yes, cheap materials. Never mind all that labor involved in creating a wooden skeleton. Never mind the labor for creating all those clothes. Never mind the precision for wooden bone lengths needed to make the thing walking without stumbling over it's own two feet.

>>54643450
A few weeks is still shorter than several decades for someone to die

>>54643411
...okay, yeah that's pretty funny.

From this thread, the conclusion I'm getting is that a peaceful society of necromancers could exist, but it just boils down to them living like dwarves in a mountain, but not having any exits or contact with the outside surface, since they don't actually need anything from out there.

>>54643462
Of you want quality wood you might have to grow a tree for 80 years or more

People might reach 70 in our utopia.

And I know that you could make more than one scarecrow per tree, but you also have labor and stuff

>>54643507
And I you want to go full undead, have a bunch of monkeys. they grow faster than us and you can just kill them once they reach adulthood.

Just feed them a bunch of milk to make stronger bones.

But you do have to deal with upset vampires

>>54643462
Ah, but you don't need to pay anybody to die. You can afford to have a couple hundred farmers for every necromancer because farming isn't where the money is.

>>54643559
>Ah, but you don't need to pay anybody to die.
So these metropolitan trader-families are just going to... donate their bodies for the good of the necromancer mercantile guilds?

>>54643538
Meh, vampires can buy blood wholesale from the farmers. Hell, if they're land owners they can include blood as an option for rent.

>>54643580
Nah, corpses are part of the tax rate. As long as they don't buy their dead they default to the state.

Sure, the citizens might hem and haw but at the end of the day a corpse isn't going to feed anybody. Well, not until the necromancers get done with it.

>>54643649
The entire premise is relying on the idea that everyone is just going to accept the government stealing their corpses, selling them to these wizards, and then having to pay for the resulting skeleton afterwards.

This doesn't not sound like the type of deal that would be easy to convince people of. And of course, if the necomancers have to pay the government and the people for the bodies, then why not just use those more mundane materials instead of corpses?

Sure, a scarecrow will rot over time, require more maintenance, and require craftsmen and farmers to build it and get materials. But that's all a good thing for the necromancers, since they're always in constant demand, and the living laborers also have a function and a way to earn money off of the necromancer's demand.

Rather than trying to handwave yourself into a utopia, realize that the far easier route is simply introducing a helpful and non-creepy service into a normal society.

>>54643667
They get plenty of things for donating there corpses.

Like the fact that all labor is stupid cheap. Or that you are in probably the most unconquerable country on the planet.

Or the fact that you can just vampires your blood for a comfy existence.

Food and transportation would be really cheap, and your architect has been at it for 250+ years.

Who cares what happens to my corpse.

Disease wouldn't matter because ghouls would take care of that

>>54643667
>The entire premise is relying on the idea that everyone is just going to accept the government stealing their corpses, selling them to these wizards, and then having to pay for the resulting skeleton afterwards.

In exchange for the lowest tax rate on the continent because the government doesn't rely on farms for income.

> if the necomancers have to pay the government and the people for the bodies, then why not just use those more mundane materials instead of corpses?

Because more mundane materials are both A. more expensive to make a worker out of, B. generally inferior for the cost, and C. don't incite visceral terror in nations that aren't used to seeing undead.

I mean yes you've got the fire scarecrows but they're kind of a one shot deal.

>Rather than trying to handwave yourself into a utopia, realize that the far easier route is simply introducing a helpful and non-creepy service into a normal society.

And you're stuck on the idea of undead being creepy. Really, it's a more efficient use of resources for a society already hard up on resources. Feudal societies had about 4/5ths of the population making food at best. Sometimes you'd have as many as 10 farmers per non-farmer.

Doesn't anything other than that sound better?

>>54643775
>They get plenty of things for donating there corpses.

In the long term, those things you mentioned will happen. Once it's established and you have a lot of skeletons to use for labor and defense and any tradesmen can live for centuries at a time.

But, right at the start, you won't be able to sell people using that. You're asking for their corpses, for free, on the nebulous promise that there will be enough skeletons for all of them later.

These people have no guarantee that you're not just going to walk off with them at some point. It isn't like the current government they've been paying taxes to for a while in exchange for protection. They know that food goes to feeding the soldiers.

Everything you're talking about though will only come to fruition decades after the fact.

>>54643852
>C. don't incite visceral terror in nations that aren't used to seeing undead.
>I mean yes you've got the fire scarecrows but they're kind of a one shot deal.

I never brought up the fire scarecrows, since we're a pacifist nation. In which case, C is nothing but a downside that is going to result in your country being avoided at best and purged at worst.

>Because more mundane materials are both A. more expensive to make a worker out of

A person takes decades to grow, and will make 1 skeleton. A tree will take decades to grow, and can make many planks to make many wooden skeletons. They're worse, sure, but they're cheaper because of that.

All you're doing is jumping through hoops to try and justify why you can have your cheerful happy society of goody good necromancers who use superior skeletons folded 1000 times rather than those dinky scarecrows that would give you the same results but aren't as cool and don't appeal to your contrarian setup.

>>54643852
>And you're stuck on the idea of undead being creepy
>incite visceral terror in nations that aren't used to seeing undead.

You seem to agree, so it's a valid point.

>>54643775
Right, so this is a civilization with its economic backbone in trading... dirt from the elemental plane of earth?

Its economy is heavily based in necromancers using healthy, neutral energy to create perfect automatons out of human skeletons, because they're the most efficient and plentiful source of working bodies. But at the start they'll supplement the workforce with dozens of normal workers, who will all die off and volunteer their bodies to the necromancers for all eternity.

To acquire new skeletons, the necromancers have hired (also neutral) vampires and ghouls to buy blood from the farmers and eat the flesh off their bones once they die and willingly volunteer their bodies to the necro-cannibal merchant state.

After a while, almost all of the labor force is replaced with skeletons, but the ghouls will of course have a constant supply of fresh corpses to eat from the remaining mercantile middle-and-upper class, who are all dying off at a constant rate after a long healthy life of selling magic dirt and ore to their very progressive neighbors and nearby planes of existence, which are also friendly and have need for human goods.

Of course, the necromancers would NEVER think of consolidating their power and enforcing a rigid caste system of human resources down below and enlightened undead up above, because they're *ethical* necromancers, who just so happen to get a constant stream of new corpses to add to the labor supply even though the vast majority of the population is now dead and incapable of breeding.

>>54643864
Well, no. You ask for their corpses in exchange for low taxes. The primary income for the government isn't farming. Yes, there's a good amount of that but the real income is in. Most of it is in corpse rentals. So long as the rental cost for the corpses is bellow the price of paying men to do the same job the system works. The necromancer gets paid as much as it would take workers to do the same job and some extra because undead don't need to rest and therefore work faster.

>>54643992
This system sounds like it's either going to quickly stagnate, leading to OP's goal of a peaceful necromancer society (made up entirely of undead and not really accomplishing anything), or they'd be forced to expand to try and feed their need for labor, along with keeping the vampires and ghouls content, which means now you've got a typical evil army of necromancers who are proving that undead aren't neutral in spite of how neutral you try to be with them.

>>54643923
>A person takes decades to grow, and will make 1 skeleton. A tree will take decades to grow, and can make many planks to make many wooden skeletons. They're worse, sure, but they're cheaper because of that.

Trees are also in demand for everything from furniture to fire wood. Feudal lords would charge peasants for just the deadfall wood they could carry by hand. By the 16th century Europe was running out of wood.
Saying wood was cheap is misleading.

The only use for a corpse would be making undead and as such it is exceedingly cheap.

>since we're a pacifist nation

No such thing. A nation without an army will inevitably be conquered by a nation with an army.

>All you're doing is jumping through hoops to try and justify why you can have your cheerful happy society of goody good necromancers who use superior skeletons folded 1000 times rather than those dinky scarecrows that would give you the same results but aren't as cool and don't appeal to your contrarian setup.

>Of course, the necromancers would NEVER think of consolidating their power and enforcing a rigid caste system of human resources down below and enlightened undead up above, because they're *ethical* necromancers, who just so happen to get a constant stream of new corpses to add to the labor supply even though the vast majority of the population is now dead and incapable of breeding.

You appear to be seeing medieval Europe through some kind of rose tinted lenses. Almost anything would be a favorable alternative to pure feudalism.

>>54644214
>No such thing.

Rephrase it as 'peaceful' then. Either way, I'd also say that something far more effective and demoralizing than skeletons would be a proper war golem.

>You appear to be seeing medieval Europe through some kind of rose tinted lenses. Almost anything would be a favorable alternative to pure feudalism.

I could say the same for your outlook on undead, as you're quite insistent that it would somehow be magically more efficient to use constructs made of bones compared to literally anything else, or even a mix of materials.

Why can't the nation use skeletons, strawmen, and full on stone statues for defense during wartime? Because then they wouldn't be the idyllic necromancer state you're pining over with your good vampires and your good ghouls and your good necromancers that live in peace and harmony.

Considering how often magic works by the principle of sympathy, would it not stand to "reason" that it is easier to animate something that was once human than something that was built as a fascimile?

>>54644053
Overexpansion only happens if there aren't limits to the undead labour. A society like i envisioned in
>>54640588
>>54641414
would probably strictly regulate the works that Undeads are allowed for. Also no one seems to get that the undead workers only can do very simple tasks. Intelligent undeads are a complicated matter that isn't usable for mass production. I also don't see a use for accepting Vamps. Ghouls would be probably used for specialized military formations.

>>54644214
This.

Feudalism REALLY fucked the lower rungs of society. The Lords were interested in shameless self enrichment and meddled in all affairs. Just like the church.

Necromancers allow a pretty Independent self Government for the most Part and the tax rate is pretty low because the military expenditures are Really low and the Necros aren't that interested in self enrichment.

>>54643864
Maybe the whole thing started with an Event that produced a mass of dead bodies AND legitimized the Necros because they actually saved the state.

>apocalyptic war
>plague
>etc.

>>54644214
>Almost anything would be a favorable alternative to pure feudalism.
"Mercantilism but the bottom 90% have no free will and the top 10% will never be replaced" is absolutely not more ethical and good than basic feudalism.

>>54644360
>Rephrase it as 'peaceful' then. Either way, I'd also say that something far more effective and demoralizing than skeletons would be a proper war golem.
Proper war golems are made out of metal and cost a fortune even before they're enchanted.

>I could say the same for your outlook on undead, as you're quite insistent that it would somehow be magically more efficient to use constructs made of bones compared to literally anything else,

See, corpses have literally no other uses other than making undead. Everything else can be used to make something else useful.

>or even a mix of materials.

Has anybody mentioned mixed materials? I'm not against it but a pre-built skeleton solves a lot of issues. Strap some padding on one and it's borderline overpowered. Add steal armor and it's basically unkillable. One story encased entire skeletons in stone and the resulting army was impossible to kill. However, a basic framework of bones means you don't need to worry about getting the proportions right for coordinated movement.

>>54644479
See, the 90% don't have minds of their own and the top 10% is effectively all living humans.

>>54644522
And anyone who isn't lucky enough to be born into the middle/upper class (read: everyone being born, since the middle/upper class has no reason to breed with the threat of death removed) has effectively no way of earning their way into the middle class. Their labor is inherently less valuable than the zombie temp agency's, because they require more upkeep, and they can't try to cater to the tastes of those more valuable than them because the middle/upper class is HEAVILY incentivized to render themselves undead as soon as possible.

So, your average lower/lower-middle classman has a few options. Become an artist, serve the tiny minority of middle classmen who are still alive, or become a bloodbag for the vampire hierarchy.

You've basically taken the same ethical issues that plagued industrial Europe and are killing America right now, and MAGNIFIED them by making it so that people are worth substantially more to their employers dead.

I know you're a staunch utilitarian and thus think it's okay for an entire economic class to be gradually eradicated in the interest of money and QOL for the wealthy, but you have to understand that there's something wrong with automating your entire labor supply and introducing methods to close off entire markets.

I'm thinking the best place to build a think like this would be a mountain locked peninsula like Italy.


Can we talk about how scary the defense force of this place would be.
>powerful wizards
>highly trained vampires and ghouls
>endless skeleton horde
>combat golems

>>54644632
Yea but all people are of higher standing than the lower class because they can be made into artisans, wizards, scientists, or entertainers.

And they have the defense of a power group of people that require them to live(vampires)

>>54644667
And the suicidal flaming scarecrows. Can't forget about them.

Anyhow, I've been running the numbers and I think a skelleton pike block would be terrifying no matter what system it's presented in.

Other than that I'm split over making vampires lancers a la blood dragons (WFB) or spec ops.

>>54644726
Others would simply move off to greener pastures. People go where the money is after all.

>>54647951
There is the stability aspect.

You know that the nation isn't going to collapse no matter what happens.

And the public education, and the health care, and the fact that you don't have to do much work at all

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>>54635013
yes

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>>54635013
I'm using one in my game right now. Basically they're a communist utopia that actually functions, because literally nobody has to work, and in exchange for an entire lifetime of luxurious labor-free living, your body will rise as an undead servitor to serve the next generation. The city has been around in one form or another as far back as any historical records can tell, and after all these years of peace, their army dwarfs any other city-state. Their army, however, when not fighting, is devoted to slowly growing the city through construction and farming... they provide most of the food for the continent. The city has a strange side effect of slowly draining any people within its limits of their... juju/narative-signifigance/destiny/fate/mojo. After long enough in the city, you can go from a conquering barbarian king, to another happy citizen of the city who sees no reason to start needless conflicts or rock the boat. Nobody is sure who's actually controlling these undead, because the seem to have an almost prescient knowledge of what is needed of them, as they silently start building an extension on the house of a couple that's about to find out they're pregnant for example. It's an ancient order of Druidic Liches who have been secretly running this town since before recorded history. They use the drained destiny of residents to continue to power the enchantment of the city. They have found the lure of safety and comfort to be an infinitely more effective, if long-term, means of world conquest, and most of them genuinely believe that the world would be a better place if everyone just lived the lifestyle they provide... an they're not technically wrong.

I try to balance the "the creepy villain faction is actually right" vibe with equal parts of "creepy stepford wives/pleasantville" vibe.

They've actually been helpful to the PC's, because they also want to protect the status quo from world-ending threats.

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>>54644632
>no way of earning their way into the middle class.
You're assuming that a society in which infinite free labor is a thing, and that already has a human-shaped underclass that it's 100% okay to shit on because they're mindless, would require anybody to "earn" their way into the middle class. We can really only speculate about post-scarcity economics because we've never really seen it. You seem to be convinced that the upper/middle class would arbitrarily enforce scarcity on the now-obsolete lower class... and maybe they would, but as I said before, they already HAVE a human-shaped lower-class to shit on guilt-free: why shit on the human underclass, when you can shit on the skeleton underclass and nobody will consider you a bad person.

>>54635013
Can you make skeleton workers out of animal bones?
I feel this option is never explored enough.

Are your "necrotic contructs" limited by what they were in life, or can you make a giant bone spider or a bone snake from a pile of corpses? How about the other way around? Can you make "bone workers" out of cattle remains?

>>54650761
I think that's called a crypt horror.

>>54650761
I believe options were explored for a bone golem made out of dead animals' remains in ye olde 80's era, the sun clergy had no idea of what to do about it since the golems were very stable and did a lot of hard work to help people; but they were still creepy machines created using necromancy.

It was never explored in depth though.

>>54651946
Yeah, that's what i mean. Like a combine harvester made of dead animals.
It ceirtainly bypasses the dilemma of "But my/your grandma"