#i wrote this in ome sitting without editing so you're getting the head-on stream of thoughts here

[mystery-salad]

I am having thoughts about how magic works but I'm running out of things to think about so I'm outsourcing: How do you treat necromancy? What specifically can be reanimated?

Ouh good question! And my short answer is: everything, depending on the skill and knowledge.

Medium answer: so long as you have the knowledge, skill, and power source to do so, you can theoretically reanimate anything if you put the work in. A necromancer could have a fuck-off huge minion-mount for example, either made from random flesh or just a whole undead animal.

Very long answer (take with the fact that I did not highly research this in the "grab every tiny piece of factual lore" method because I think it's more fun to take what is naturally explained to me in game and play with that):

Necromancy is something where in most games and media its inherently evil, or at least considered "dark magic" that requires rituals or sacrifices that can limit how far you take it and it'll come with a "price". In gw2 though necromancy is just another form of magic like any other, and not even considered to be the untrustworthy option of the magical skills. Because it's so commonplace, the methods to use it are too. A fiend or minion can be summoned on the spot and siphoning someone's life just takes an outstretched hand.

The other side of having the magic so easy to use though is that we don't have books and deeper explanations of how this works. But we do have Zhaitan and Joko and wraiths. Fiends and minions are all well and good, but they're standard necromancy fare in this game considering any player character can access them. They're mounds of flesh and bone twisted into a functional shape, based on forms we see in the world, that will attack whatever you tell them to. I've seen other players headcanon these to have the mentality ranging from that of a pet to a recovered soul or demon's spirit. Which leaves me personally in a space of "fiends and minions are empty vessels that can house any functional intent that is placed within them."

By this specific metric, any pile of flesh could be reanimated to keep a spirit or demon close, though it isn't revivification so much as a temporary home for the spirit that'll last until you drop the magic holding it together. By basic necromancy skills, nothing gets truly revived but anything organic can be reanimated with the right anatomical knowledge and an intent to put within the form.

But then there's the experts. Then we have wraiths and liches, who create the risen and awakened. The former of which is debatably aware, the latter of which has their old soul returned to the exact same body.

The risen house a will in a shambling and decaying body. They rasp out words with barely-existing vocal chords echoing the will put into their reanimation. Rather than creating new forms to reanimated, Zhaitan took those that already existed and made essentially minions of them. The only seeming difference between risen and minions is one was molded from pieces and the other was simply taken off a shelf and used. If you can't make your minions from scratch, store-bought is fine!

Wraiths are the next step up from this, sort of the other end really. A soul with clear intent but no physical body. Their presence seems to fit in line with another form necromancy is capable of, a shadow fiend. Made of the same darkness that a necromancer's shroud can cloak them in. Dead or not, it's unclear what Wraiths truly are and their permanent shroud keeps their floating form hidden. They too seem to carry death and reanimation with them, able to summing the risen to their call. Expert necromancers who bow to Zhaitan and are thus able to channel his own powerful form of undeath and create and control the risen. It's like if you bass-boosted a necromancer so hard they lost their physical form and started controlling others' forms instead.

And then we have the awakened don't we. These ones, this part of the world, makes me think. Because this isn't necromancy in the form that we have knowledge of from Tyria. This is something else. The awakened know who they were, they have their memories and personalities. It's walled off to an extent behind the control of a powerful lich (and we will get to Joko himself in a moment oh boy we will!) who bends the awakened to his every whim. A will that seems to be tied to the "revival" process by intent. They're not perfectly alive again though, they still walk around in a form that is mummified. Preserved, presumably to keep it from decaying and eventually falling to pieces like the risen seem to be. This version of a soul in a vessel is made to last. It is a new and different LIFE for the people who once died. There's no smoke and mirrors to it, Joko dying doesn't even break the bond. The souls are truly in the world and in their bodies again. This right here, this is where necromancy gets real interesting for me. Because this isn't reanimation entirely, though it does use the same method as risen in that a whole body is returning to life. This pulls the souls of the dead back from the mists to bind into their old forms. It's not truly revival, not with a body that's in a mummified stasis that would fundamentally change how you live your life. But it shows how far reanimation can truly go with a proper soul and tether to the living world.

Joko, for his part, plays a role outside his importance in awakening too. Cause this ancient bastard shouldn't still be alive should he. He's seemingly in the same sort of position as awakened, but with the caveat that he's done this to himself and so likely never died in the first place. He figured out how to tether souls back into bodies, and laid that tether in himself before he even had a chance to keel over a single time.then he could have the freedom to preserve and reinforce his own body without fear of death. Has he ever truly died? No. But he may as well have in the processes that lead to his eternal life. I think this tether, this ancient magic Joko found, is what Aurene inherited from him. The only physical difference being that her body as an elder dragon is made to last and can heal well enough that mummification is an unnecessary step. Congrats aurene you're a necromancer, of a sort!

And you'd think that'd cover it all, that I could lay out what this means for my understanding right there, but we haven't covered it all have we? Because there's one more level of necromancy we haven't touched yet. The Commander. Every Commander.

Not just those assigned necro at birth, but once they take a trip through the desert and get ambushed by a god. Once the Commander dies definitively, and comes back. This right here makes me go fucking ballistic. And it's why Cinnuit exists narratively as he does now despite not being a commander.

The Commander dies. Canonically fully dies, presumably with hardly a body to return to. What body would survive a magical flaming sword as long as you are tall cutting you through several times while you fight desperately within a ring of magical fire? They wake up in the Domain of the Lost, a space between the living world and the mists for those who died to traumatically that their soul shattered and splintered into so many pieces they have no idea who they are. Thankfully all those pieces end up in the same place, the Commander can become who they once were, it's just in death now instead. Which is a problem when you're gunning to save the world isn't it? Just won't do, you'll need a return ticket immediately please. Something that up until now has been unheard of in modern gw2. You're seeking to return to your old body as if the death never happened. (And yes I know this is because anet can't anger everyone by making your characters look awakened after this story step with no way to get your old look back, but that caution sets a narrative implication that has me fucking feral with delight!) You're given a method, and it turns out the big difference between what a necromancer can do, to what Joko and Zhaitan can do, to this? It's the power source. It's how much energy you have at your disposal. Which makes sense! Necromancy doesn't have the price of rituals here, but it still works off the conservation of energy we understand. Don't have enough power, you can't accomplish some things. More power behind the magic means more options for how you can use it effectively. And returning to life to tether yourself back into a body that you've healed and given full functionality back to? That takes an incalculable power source. That takes hundreds, thousands, untold millions of sacrificed souls that had been collected for an unknown amount of time. This necromancy does require sacrifice, if your power source has to outweigh the nature of death at a fundamental level.

So to sum it up! How do I treat necromancy? I treat it like any magic. Skill and methodology play important roles, with those you could reanimate theoretically anything. You could even pop a soul back in with a tether that can pilot the reanimated form if you're feeling fancy. But revival, that takes power and long-forgotten skills. It's possible, but you will reap the costs and you'd better hope you haven't gotten anything wrong as you play with the logistics of life in a way reanimation never does.