No, Elder Scrolls Lore.

lol! anyway i dunno much about necromancy so i'm probably wrong but i have never seen any good necros

From what i have seen Necromacers don't go around killing and destroying for the lulz, there is always an intent, never is it senseless, and calling it 'evil' certainly is subjective...

By the same reckoning, the Chapels could all be seen as evil. While they have nice healers and whatnot, there is also a sense of superiority towards other belief system and that "worshipping the nine divines" is the right thing to do and all other religions are heresy or the like. It can be seen as arrogance even. (I have a lot more to say on this but this is neither the place or time)

So in the end it is all a matter of opinion. From what i have gathered Traven had a personal grudge against Necromancy. What that is, we may never know. And thus by banning it as Arch-Mage, more people were inclined to agree with him. And the fact that i see the whole "Oooh he summoned a skeleton and daedra! He must be evil" annoys me because how is that really evil, i summon undead and daedra all the time and i am as good in the game as possible. And if someone is a master in Conjuration, does that mean they're evil? Even the school of Destruction can be viewed that way.

However with that said, all Necromancers in Oblivion are tools and appear to be real crazy thus not helping their case too much

In the "The Mort You Know" category, I'd like to remind everyone of what necromancy really is.

In fantasy, it has been generally accepted that "mancy" means "magic" and "mancer" means "spellcaster". So, a necromancer is a death mage. But, in truth, this is not what mancy means. Mancy means divination. Go look at your friendly local new age hippy medium: oneiromancy (premonitory dreams), coscinomancy (reading in tea leaves), cheiromancy (palm reading), astromancy (a variant of astrology), crystallomancy, gastromancy or spheromancy (crystal ball gazing), hydromancy (with oracular lakes or fountains) and so on. The list is long.

So, why necromancy? Same thing as all others: it's predicting the future. And the necro bit comes from the tools you use to predict it, in that case, you predict the future by rolling or tossing bones, and by channeling the spirits of the departed to ask them questions.

Well, to be honest, if you're writing an epic fantasy story, it's not really spectacular enough. Let's change the definition. Instead of being a quack diviner, the necromancer will kill people with death magic! And animate the corpses as undead skeletons and zombies! And he'll turn himself into a spellcasting corpse to gain an eternal unlife! Now this makes for a cool villain.

And there you go. Necromancy is evil because it has been "retconned" by fantasy writers in order to be the evil villain's evil magic. You need to go no further.

Then you can deconstruct the trope to justify it. Somebody who wants to traffic with corpses and even become one himself can't be someone who's all right in the head. We've got, especially in the west, very strong taboos about playing with corpses. Did you know that for a very long time it was strictly forbidden to study human corpses? It could net you a trial for sorcery and then you'd end up hung. (No, not burned at the stake. Contrarily to common beliefs, the stake wasn't for witches but for heretics.) This explains why medical science in the Western world was really, really bad until some time after the Renaissance. Doctors had no knowledge of anatomy! Even today, a certain social stigma remains against undertakers and forensic doctors.

I agree; it seems Necromancy often accompanies other crimes, mainly murder and grave-robbing (Not a lot of necromancers seem patient enough to acquire corpses in a legit manner). And those that seek transformation into liches are even worse. And of course, many of them pledge themeselves to Mannimarco, the most successful necromancer in Tamriel, and become his willing henchmen.

Of course, not all of them are evil. Aesliip, for example, dedicated both his life and subsequent unlife to protecting those that had cast him out. And as someone previously mentioned, the Dunmer practice necromancy to protect their ancestral tombs.

Yeah that makes sense and although I asked this question in the first place I will also say that it makes sense that they are not all evil because in oblivion it would seem that the lore of the other games wasnt followed as strictly and thus many groups were portrayed with narrowminded views and others were not mentioned at all. In Oblivion the Mages Guild questline portrays necromancy as an evil practice however before Traven it was practiced in the mages guild. I dont believe the mages guild was evil therefore being that for many years they allowed that practice to exist within their own ranks leads me to believe there must have been some merit right?

The cause of the battle between the guild mages, and necromancers was caused by an overzealous arch-mage banning their practice. So infact it was Traven who was narrow minded.

Yeah he was although until recently I had agreed that the practice was evil. Also if thats the case I view the guild as hypocritical because other guild mages use conjuration as well. They may summon ghosts, zombies or skeletons as well and if you choose conjuration as a skill you start with a summon skeleton spell! Thats all necromancy! Also members of the guild have summomed daedra to help them.

Your view is damned too simplistic.

To me Necromancy always seemed like research,kinda like todays surgeons.It seems that is what the Necros are doing I can't think they would all be evil.But I suppose you would have your Dr. Frankinstiens,but if the research was under Mages guild guidance there is quite a potential for some good to come from it.The mages should reconize this and work together.

No to mention masters of Illusions, since basically, they play with people's minds. If we're grouping the schools into good and evil, that should definatly go into the evil grouping. But, as said many times before, nothing is inheritly good or evil. Such lables are for the foolish and "extremists".

Necromancy is boring becuase you can't do it.

This is like reading a debate about abortion, only it's not real. Continue, I love reading this.

Now for my view: Mannimarco= EVIL, Necromancy= Ok in some cases.

Mannimarco is the source of all this. He uses necromancy for evil purposes, but the Tribunal use it for good. Also, liches aren't inheretly evil. If I could get eternal life to continue my studies of Classic Literature and Conjuration magics, I'd take it. Hell, in an TES fan fic book I'm writing, I have a vampire who's looking for what vamprism actually is, and discovers it to be a vitamin deficency, which can be helped with a restoration spell (absorb Vitamin G7). I also have a musical artist who dies of corpus and his friends make him a lich with the help of some necromancers that helped him with a song, so he could make more music. The lich piano star is based on Logan Whitehurst, who died of brain cancer in 2006.

In short, necromancy is often bad, but it can be used for good purposes. Not all the evil things in TES have to be evil, which is why I brought up the vampire.

Buying the corpses of executed criminals and starved paupers was common practice for doctors, back in the day. They wanted to learn about the human body and how to make it useful. What's the difference between them and necromancers?

Well, if you truly don't know that, i suggest you go visit one right now. (A doctor, that is. Not a Necromancer.)

Not true. Many doctors used bodies for what many back then called evil purposes. And read up on the Nazi doctors, and say that the doctors couldn't use them for evil purposes.

But I believe that Necromancy is largely evil in most TES provinces. Necromancy is evil when the necromancers do not have permission to raise the body, as that is disrespect for the dead and enslavement of the body. But if they do have permission from the person (when they are still alive) and their family, why is it evil?

And Mannimarco is not evil. Only Oblivion made him so. He is ambitious for sure, and hungry for knowledge. And he has commited some despicable acts to achieve his ambitions. But the wonderful thing about TES is that there is not a clear Good and Evil and many people do both, as Mannimarco was commited acts of kindness throughout his life, as well as disgusting ones.

Liches will always be dangerous and probably not nice people. These are people willing to sacrifice their humanity, their mortality, everything to achieve their ambitions. These are always dangerous people. Even "good" liches. They are the people willing to go to any extent to achieve their ends.

Not always dangerous people. Only dangerous if you anger them, but that's the same with everybody. Powerful people, obviously. I'd bet Fyr used necromancy to some extent, and he wasn't dangerous. Another example, already raised is Aesliip.

I didn't say that liches were always hostile, but that they are people that you don't want to cross. At all. Again, they are people willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their ends, so you will be fine if you don't interfere. They are like all overly ambitious people. Dangerous, because they would be willing to sacrifice you for their cause as well. Even Aesliip.

Fyr is not a lich. I was talking about liches in particular.

Yep, don't want to go near them at all really.

They're like politicians, sacrificing their humanity for more power, and stomping on anyone in their path. Some politicians ideals may be good, but that doesn't make them any less of a bastard.

True that, and it brings up the old adage of absolute power corupting absolutely. Necromancy, the Dark Side, money aren't evil in nature but they are still seductive powers and dangerous when used incorrectly to both the user and those arround them.

Machiavelli anyone?

(Don't know if someone answered this but I read someone's post, they were wondering where Yagram was. He was in another dimension at the time of the battle.)
As to the OP I can't quite remember but I think it was considered immoral.

Necromancers in Oblivion attack you on sight because they are outcasts persecuted by the Empire. They view the PC as an enemy, because of the connection you have to the Empire. IMO.

Agreed. However, The notion that 'Death magic' MUST be used for evil is challenged within the scope of the game world itself already. What I am surprised at, is why there is no vivomancy to go along with it. (reincarnation, flesh-mending, animation of inanimate objects, etc.)

The concept I picked up about magic in TES lore, is that magic in general is neither evil nor good. it is how it is employed that makes a particular spell evil or good.

Theoretically, A sadistic healer could kill somebody by healing them to death. (Imagine, magically induced cancerous tissue growth.) Does that make healing spells evil? Of course not.

Better is destruction-- A mage schooled in destruction could be employed to GREAT effect at a glassworks, for instance. The fire spells they wield allow for unnatural heat, without the need for mundane fuels, and could enable many spectacular crafts to be made (like ebony crafting, which requires magical heat.) Incidentally, the EXACT SAME MAGIC can reduce a person to smouldering ashes.

Just as destruction magick is neither evil nor good, Necromancy is intrinsically neither evil nor good.