Blue Collar Necromancy: A World on the Edge

The Final War began when Princess Brunhilde of Diutisca was assassinated by an ant-royalist group receiving funding from the Union of Cassterides. Eventually the allies of both nations came to fight in the great war. Even the armies of Columba crossed the great western sea to fight in the war. During the war horrors were unleashed upon the world, weapons never before seen. The death toll was massive.

The war lasted for over a decade. it seemed as though it would never end. As the years went on each nation became more entrenched in their positions, physically and politically. It took a disaster on a scale beyond anything ever heard of before to end the war. The spell plague tore through Aurut and then the rest of the world. It killed one in three people. Rich and poor, noble and commoner, all were equal in the eyes of the plague.The plague did more than kill. It damaged the very fabric of reality. No one knew how to deal with this new problem. No one save the necromancers.

The necromancers had been working for centuries to defend the world from just such a threat. passing down the secrets of necromancy through families and apprenticeships, eventually forming a few loose organizations. Each had its own outlook and ideas on how best to deal with the nastiness they dealt with.The war and the resulting spell plague changed everything. So many people died so quickly and so many magical weapons where used that the very world became unbalanced. The dead rose in numbers unheard of. The families were overwhelmed.

Five years after the war the heads of the various families came together to discuss this trend in the world. After much discussion they decided to join together in order to best deal with the problems of the time. This is when the first alliance of necromancers was formed. As the years went by the alliance became something more, finally the necromancers had a way to negotiate with the more powerful Sorcerous Lineages. The Sorcerous Lineages and the Church, in turn, wish to break this alliance and go back to the old ways.


Before character creation you must first create the home office. The Home office is the central hub of necromantic activity within a given city. It has aspects and faces. This is where your characters will be working out of.

Aspects
Concept: this is like a characters high conceptexcept it is for the whole home office. Is the office respected? Is it well off? Does it struggle? what is the core concept of the home office? Remember the whole world is in the midst of a masive economic depression. The death toll of the Final War was so great that everyone lost someone, probably a whole bunch of someones. How do they feel about you putting the dead back down?
Trouble: again this is like the character's trouble aspect. What is the biggest issue with your home office? Do they lack political pull? Are they destitute? Are there far too many incedents or too few necromancers? Is there a rival firm of people who think that they can do the same job without any necromancy? Is the mob demanding protection money, or a percentage of your rackets?
Focus: the focus aspect is what your office is known for. Do you have a great library of forbidden books? Do you have an experimental weapons division? Does the church back your moves, even if only surreptitiously? perhaps you have access to friendly spirits that offer advice and give aid when they can? Basically what makes your office special?

Once you, as a group, have come up with a Home Office you need to come up with some faces for the office. One for each of the player characters and the head man. The players will each come up with a face that is related to the characters in someways(maybe literally as the necromancers tend to stick with family for their business). Come up with three aspects for each one: Relation, Function, Trouble. The GM will come up with the Head Man for the office, instead of relation he will have an aspect related to leading the group.

Relation: How is this NPC related to your character? Is he blood? Is she a new recruit? Does he hate you? Does she keep showing you up? Does he have a secret crush on you? Come up with an aspect that expresses this relationship.
Function: What is this Faces function within the office? Archivist? Weaponeer? Spirit Talker? Office supply guy? Public relations(such as they are, mostly they deal with the papers)?
Trouble: this is the same as trouble for the PCs. Come up with a way for this aspect to make the story more complicated at least once every other session.

Now you have the Home office fleshed out a bit, you can make characters. You have probaby been making parts of your characters as you went through this process, so just finish them up and get ready for action. Next post I will walk you through Character creation and the skill list.