Blue Collar Necromancy: First Steps Into a Larger World

Holy Alchemy and the Church: The skill of manipulating the material world. With it one can change everything. The bones of the gods form much of the world. The Holy Alchemists are in tune with the bodies of the gods and are able alter them to a large degree. One cannot alter living things with Alchemy. Every so often an Alchemist will get the idea to try. It always fails. You never get the result you want. Strange things happen when you try to alter the living. It takes days of ritual to build an alchemical effect, and you must have an equal exchange for the ritual to work. The sacrifice is the only area where Alchemy deals with living things. Living essence must be paid to power an alchemical ritual. The more essence you take from a living thing the more powerful the effect. The longer the thing has been alive the more essence you can harvest. This is why trees are often used to power big alchemical effects. Some of the more common, everyday, alchemy people interact with are Odiceen a fuel source far more powerful than oil or coal, Everlamps self contained lamps that never burn out, and Vascuu Gas a stable lifting gas used in Dirigibles.

The Church does not hold with anyone outside of their organization knowing how to use Holy Alchemy. To ensure their monopoly a former Grande Cleric created the Ufficio della Caccia Grande e Santo, they are generally known as Hunters. Trained in the most efficient forms of combat and tracking, they are a terror when on their mission. They hunt down and kill anyone who even claims to be an alchemist. Single minded to the point of fanaticism, these holy warriors are the transnational military in existence. They go anywhere the church has power and the church is everywhere. 

The Church represents a power base outside of the Sorcerous Lineages. The Church uses the noble houses and the noble houses use the church. The Church tolerates necromancy mostly because the necromancers are doing a task that most Priests view as beneath them. Some within the highest ranks of the church wish to eradicate necromancy. They know the history of the world and know that the church came from necromancy. They were the first to a realize the god's deaths, they may know more than the church on the nature of that sacrifice. This small group has been campaigning to discredit necromancy and make the public view it as distasteful and dirty art. This has led to an overall decrease in necromantic practitioners as the years have gone on. After the Final War this plan has been shown to be very problematic, as now there are far too few necromancers to deal with the growing threat.