Tiffany in Texas asks – can you really raise the dead?
Hagatha: Yes, but I don’t want to. It’s especially inconvenient if it happens at a funeral and he starts serenading you
Marcus: Yes, but only do it if you can capture them very close to the time they died so you can bring them back with their spirit. Otherwise, they are a soul-less creature which is quite dangerous.
Elise: I prefer to deal with the ghosts. Corpses are messy. Ghosts are nice and cool and generally clean. Sometimes they get a little cranky, but nothing I can’t handle.
Hagatha: *shudder*
Rachel Brune asks — Is it harder to raise larger creatures from the dead? Or is it harder to raise more cognitively complex creatures? Like, a bear is huge and would probably take some work, but there’s not much brainpower compared to a human … Or a dolphin. Can you even raise aquatic animals from the dead? They aren’t actually buried so you don’t have a body to work with. Hmm…
Marcus: Mass is important to consider when you are calling upon the dead. As you correctly stated, there is mass of body and mass of spirit. Size does matter, whether you are trying to raise an elephant or someone like Melanie who is small in stature but carries a massive spirit within her. Raising a spiritless behemoth that you will control would equate similarly in initial effort to raising someone small and great in spirit. Of course, after you have raised the latter, they are free to do as they please.
Elise: Sometimes it depends on what you want to do with them too. If they’re cooperative, it’s much easier.
Rachel Brune asks — Also, what do necromancers do for fun?
Hagatha: Elise and I have mock magical battles every Saturday to entertain the locals. They pop corn and sit out to watch. Have we mentioned that Neutral and Boring Colorado is a pretty strange little town? We really like it here.
Marcus : I tell Hagatha she’s wrong and watch her lose her temper.
Elise: Talk to ghosts. Play with my dogs. Watch my dogs play with ghosts. (They herd ghost sheep.)
Ted Pennella asks — Can you get demons or the dead to make things for you? Like cakes?
Hagatha : what a splendid idea! I’m out of here
Marcus : Ted, that might not have been the best question to ask Hagatha, but I suppose we’ll find out. Now I’ve got to ready a banishing spell in case my cousin was so enthusiastic she forgot to do that when she summoned that demon.
Elise: Oh dear goddess…I’m not eating that.
Jody Lynn Nye asks — Are zombies passe, or do necromancers see some attraction we non-necromancers don’t?
Hagatha : Zombies are passé! They smell horrible and they want to eat your wonderful and beautiful brains. Instead, take spirit and re-animate it to magically constructed flesh. I call them re-ans, which is short, of course, for re-animates. I have had several including: Edgar, Stevie Ray, Jimi, and a female “27 Club” singer whose name I cannot mention…
Tallon: (sings) no-no-no!
Hagatha: <sigh> Because she was extremely difficult to get rid of and for some unfathomable reason, her singing got stuck like a broken record on the chorus of just one song. It was enough to start me drinking.
Tallon: Wine?
Hagatha: Back to re-ans. Okay, they start decaying and you have to kill them, but there’s a brief shining time when they don’t stink and can offer you some bit of wisdom or beauty which makes it worth the effort.
Elise: Zombies are gross. I’m not a fan. Though I believe one of our great grandma’s was a zombie master. Gross… I much prefer ghosts.
Writer J. A. Campbell 