#im brooding my other essay like an egg she isn't ready yet. she is really getting away from me

[theriverbeyond]

if you’re looking for stuff about necromancy as violation I always considered the cow thing to be a big example of that! Maybe it’s my inner 4-H kid, but it’s such an undignified and horrifying way to slaughter an animal IMO. It’s this drawn out, grotesque death that parallels both Mercymorn’s death and the 7ths blood cancer. It’s just such a disrespectful way to slaughter an animal, and I think you can read it as John’s first major betrayal of self, especially as it relates to his indigenous roots. Anyway. There’s just so much there.

you're RIGHT and i also think this is a case of how this is a feature, not a bug of necromancy.

death fuels necromancy, but it is specifically cruel, violent death that results in the most necromantic potential. gradual death/senescence en masse gives general ambient power (necromancy only works in areas where things have lived and died) but it is a mass of sudden violent death that flips a planet. Siphoning, in both the style of the Second and the Eighth house, lends necromantic power via an exquisitely painful process that can easily end in death. Necromancy itself eats away at the tissues, leaving all necromancers essentially physically disabled (Ianthe barely had the ability to hold her arms up to braid her own hair). Babies give off the largest burst of power when they die, and the Fourth House -- a planet that could very well be filled with only children -- specializes in suicide bombs.

and then of course you have the eugenics that is built into both the Seventh and the Eighth Houses -- and the Heptentary blood cancer specifically fascinates me because of how it is positioned as, essentially, a boon. If you get death-fuel by being in proximity to death, and you yourself are always dying, then you always have access to a very personal well of power. Until you die. "A dying woman is the perfect necromancer"..... An entire House that values short-lived necromantic potential over anything else and breeds their heirs to have this violation embedded into their blood.

and that isn't even really getting into the fact that this is just the violence that the House enacts upon it's own citizens. the majority of people on the business end of necromancy aren't House citizens at all, but non-House civilians whose death and dead bodies are hijacked to serve the Empire's purpose. but that's another essay

#(This is actually why I have a personal headcanon that 7th house adepts who suffer from the Heptentary blood cancer are the only “normal” ne #i.e. the adept who made that giant death spiral ghost ward in HtN could do it because she had access to a very personal source of thanergy) #necromancy #ask #anon #sorry this is sorta rambling i RLLY appreciate the 4H perspective #that's an angle i didn't think about before bc i have such little experience with the like #logistics and standards of practice and such of the animal slaughterhouse. much to think about #im brooding my other essay like an egg she isn't ready yet. she is really getting away from me