Necromancer

A Necromancer is a kind of magic-user who practices necromancy. "Necromancy" comes from the Greek words nekros ("dead body") and manteia ("prophecy"), and in its strictest sense, refers to the practice of communing with the spirits of the dead to learn about the future. Over the centuries since the coining of the word, its meaning has broadened to include any kind of magic relating to death and the undead, and thus the necromancer's portfolio has also broadened. Necromancers in more modern works are known to reanimate dead bodies, summon ghosts, and drain life-force from the living to fuel their ceremonies (or themselves). Surprisingly, they aren't generally known for fortune-telling nowadays.

Because death is scary, and in many cultures and religions, tinkering with life and death is reserved for the gods, necromancers are generally perceived as evil, and necromancy sometimes inherently so. A common storyline is that a person with magical talent falls in love, said beloved dies, the magic-user dabbles with necromancy to try to bring him or her back, loses sight of the goal, and before they know it, they're turning people into zombies and hamming it up like Skeletor. Some settings are shifting to a more nuanced approach that acknowledge that necromancy, like any skill, can be used for good or evil, but the majority of necromancers are Neutral Evil.

In settings where the spectrum of this school stretches pretty far, it generally tends to be that benign necromancy-related magic is referred to as "White Necromancy", with nasty undead-raising and life draining fuckery tending to be "Black Necromancy".

Dungeons & Dragons

Necromancy has been part of Dungeons & Dragons since the beginning. In one of the foundations for CoDzilla, wizards and sorcerers have been traditionally restricted to gray and black necromancy, whilst clerics have had access to white, gray and black, plus innate class features allowing them to manipulate/control undead. D&D Next threw wizard necromancers a bone by making it easier for them to raise zombies and letting them get the coveted Control Undead class feature... but not until fucking level 14.

Needless to say, 3.5 made a lot of efforts to try and beef up the Necromancer, to varying levels of success. Aside from Prestige Classes like the "True Necromancer" (which required multiclassing as a wizard and a cleric) and the "Pale Master", the closest they probably came was with a pair of alternate classes: a Necromancer class based on the Diablo II class, in their Blizzard-sponsored D20 game "Diablo II: Diablerie", and the Dread Necromancer, a Charisma-based spontaneous caster alternate class from "Heroes of Horror".

Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 features necromancy but not to the extent of Warhammer fantasy with the like of Nagash, we see in the history of Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard on the world Barbarus, a world wreathed in poisonous fog and ruled by necromancers who practised standard fantasy necromancy, and in the pen and paper role-play game Rogue Trader in the Koronus Bestiary,the BONE CONQUEROR a shard like creature that possess the dead, al be it standard necromancy is more rare but we do a variant or something similar in the followers of Nurgle, the servants of Papa Nurgle can be like necromancers in many ways, especially when they start breaking out the Zombie Plague. Additionally, the way in which spiritseers are able to coax the souls of dead Eldar from the Infinity Circuits into wraithbone constructs technically makes them necromancers too, albeit of a different sort than the Nurglitch kind mentioned above.

Warhammer Fantasy

Warhammer Fantasy Battle's magic system features the Lore of Death as one of the eight standard schools of magic. Its practitioners tend to be a little gloomier than most, but the forces of Order are plenty willing to make use of them so long as they kill enemies. There are also regular necromancers. Long ago, in the land of Egypt Khemri, there were a bunch of mage-priests who practiced a kind of magic in their rituals to honor the dead. But a mage-priest named Nagash fucked all that up, turning their entire country into undead, and trying to take over the world. Now there are two variants of necromancy, the uncorrupted kind practiced by the Khemrian Tomb Kings, and the regular kind used by necromancers and Vampire Counts.

See Also

• Lich, what happens when a necromancer becomes one of the undead.