We know what restoration is, as well as necromancy. But the two have a lot in common, from my perspective. Therefore, I propose this list of questions for others to answer, preferably in-depth and elaborate.


How does Necromancy work?


How does Restoration work?


What are the similarities, differences?


Does Necromancy require a deal of knowledge in Restoration to work?


Is it simply a branch of Restoration, a study/field?


Or is it something entirely different, combining the schools of Restoration and Conjuration?


In a quick, short answer regarding one of the questions, "Branch of Restoration", I believe it is a field of the said school, and should be allowed to be taught and practiced not only for the utility it has, but for the possible innovations possible and breakthroughs in Restoration. It is not far-fetched to say I am stretching it, but I have thought quite a bit about this. Restoration is about healing bodies, while Necromancy is about resurrecting them sans spirit/life. But Restoration does not need a spirit or life in it's target to work, either. In fact, no school of magic does. I think it takes knowledge of restoration to properly make use of Necromancy. Granted, in the cases of spirits, ghosts, and skeletons, this is not entirely the case, as you summon/conjure spirits and ghosts, and skeletons have no meat to bind them. But that is another topic.

I consider Restoration to work as the oppisite point of Destruction magic.

When thinking necromancy, all that comes to my mind is actually raising the dead, seeking power through capturing peoples souls, as opposed to conjuring up some Deadra and/or Undead creatures.

The lore experts will be along shortly to bring up some good titles from the Imperial Library. I know there is at least one good Necromancy thread here I have seen once before.

Edit: Check out http://www.imperial-library.info/content/guide-psijic-order if you can

Read "The preparation of the corpse," volumes I-III. Best source of what necromancy really is.

There's also some good information about exactly what Bonewalkers and Bonelords are in "Legions of the Dead".

Neither of these sources goes into the full details of just what energy is used to reanimate most undead, or how that energy ties in with the established Schools of Magicka are practiced in the official manner in the Empire.

In Oblivion we learn about Black Soul Gems and how one particular cult of Necromancers has a thing for trapping sapient souls. We're never told exactly what they do with those souls. Do they use those souls to reanimate corpses? Do they draw some sort of energy from them? Is this how some Necromancers extend their lifespan and vitality? No resolution to those questions.

In "Legions of the Dead" we're told that the ability of a skeletal servant depended on his vocation and hardiness in life. Wouldn't that mean the soul of the original person was used to reanimate the skeleton? How does the Necromancer acquire these souls? Through soul trapping? Somehow summon them from the afterlife? Wouldn't summoning and binding souls or bodiless ghosts and wraiths to Mundus be a form of Conjuration?

We're also told in "Preparation of the Corpse" that special salts and other ingredients are used to preserve zombies. That would require a working knowledge of materials and their properties - a knowledge of Alchemy.

And finally there's the whole process of reviving damaged servants again and again. Could this be the part where Restoration comes in?

Or maybe Necromancers don't categorize their use of magicka in these fashions at all. It's possible that Mannimarco and his compatriots, following an older and parallel organization that's existed longer than the Mage's Guild, simply consider magic to be magic and would laugh at the curios habit of categorizing it.

"Vs." threads are not allowed.

I'd think that Restoration deals with affecting living tissue, and Necromancy deals with non-living tissue. Of course, they would probably go hand in hand: How can healers know what and how to heal bodily tissue if not for the research and dissections of Necromancers. Keep in mind, necromancers are not all evil like they were portrayed in Oblivion; in reality, they're more like Tamriel's biology + anatomy teachers.

as with all the categories of magic practice that Vanus Galeriron made up, The magic applied in the different types requires a different type of thought to channel. the types of effects that the "restoration" group of thought typically generally purge your body of things, in my opinion targeting cells. Necromancy deals with animating dead organisms with magic, and also with messing with Arkay's blessing.

Broken-scale, it is the latter part of your post which is one of the reasons I felt I needed to know others' opinions, and therefore posted. I see Necromancy as simply a branch of Restoration (albeit a category devised by Galeriron), where Necromancers use alchemy and restorative magic for their needs by reanimating bodies. The body, in the case of a zombie, etc.

That isn't to say I am even completely sold on my old idea. After all, how does restoration make a skeleton work? It is easily arguable how it would for a zombie, but there are not body parts other than bones for a skeleton. Yet something is bringing them all to life. Yes, unlife/undeath, but life nonetheless. The things you bring back are "mindless zombies" (lol), but they do have basic behaviours and functions that are not dictated by whomever resurrected them. And they do move without more magic being applied to force a body part to move. Maybe it is a lack of knowledge and understanding of magic that is bringing me to this conclusion. If real world magic, for those who are wiccan/pagan or practice witchcraft, etc, I am not without knowledge in that area. Though I do not live that life, anymore. But rather magic in the TES world.

I've read all the books relating to Necromancy. I had originally an incredibly long post, but then re-read all the books and etc, and decided to go with these questions. And I know my argument is weak, as it is contingent on only the reanimating of zombies. And Restoration, to me, deals with flesh, living or dead. Especially dead, because it attempts to "heal" the dead cells, or perhaps just damaged. There are no scabs with restoration, I could only imagine that somehow they reactivate the dead cells, making them living again. And if the wound is big, it'll heal everything, causing rapid division of cells to heal.

I don't know. I am typing when I just woke up to get a drink of water. My mouth was dry. So excuse my incoherence. Going back to sleep now.

Restoration is putting back what was once there. The ultimate goal is that the subject is the same as it originally was. The techniques that allow this can be taken beyond to fortify, and also used as a weapon.

Necromancy is about substituting, not replacing. Anything that is not part of the necromancer's purpose is discarded. There is overlap with restoration in the techniques involved - specifically health/skill/etc. transfers, but overlap between schools is seen all over the place. Repeating a change may "restore" the same state is it achieved the first time, but it's really only a restoration if that was an original, not artificial state, so reviving a zombie or skeleton is a repeat, not a restore.

None of that really answers the questions I brought up, which IMO reveal a depth to this subject that goes beyond what's Restoration and what isn't. We know next to nothing about Necromancy. What I strongly suspect is that there are forces involved which extend beyond reanimating dead flesh. There is some form of soul manipulation going on here. The presence of Black Soul Gems and the comments about skeletons' fighting abilities being tied in with their owners' abilities in life would suggest a lingering soul presence. A person's ability to fight is not determined by the condition of their skeleton. Combat is a set of skills which are learned over the course of one's life. I think there's some very complicated rituals involved in Necromancy which we have not begun to fully understand yet.

I personally don't see Necromancy as only a subdivision of Restoration. I mean, sure, Restoration is involved in what they do, but you can argue that mysticism and alteration are used, as well as alchemy and conjuration. I don't see Necromancy as a school of magic, as in you cant learn to cast "Necromancy spell #1" like the other colleges of magic. Necromancy is more a profession, like being a doctor. You don't study "doctoring" to be a doctor. You learn about all sorts of different things.

The only magical part of necromancy is reanimation of the undead. Everything else is way up in the air. Again, read "On the Preparation of the Corpse." It's a good insight into what goes into necromancy.

Heck, most of necromancy just seems to involve the acquisition of a dead body and its preparation (defleshing, strengthening of a skeleton's joints, drying out a zombie's body, wrapping it in bandages, etc). Once prepped and ready, it is reanimated. Nothing about soul gems either, which makes me think they're used more as a crutch for shoddy practitioners, or Beth was being highly cliche with necromancy = kick the puppy evil.

Also to remember, soul stealing is something any mage can dabble in, not just necromancers. Wasn't until OB that stealing a mortal's soul required a special gem, where as in MW (and maybe DF), mortal souls were often of poor quality, with the gods and high end daedra being the best. Not to mention the use of putting someone in a soulgem for good was seen in Redguard.

I think an important thing to remember is that the separate schools of magic are purely academic. It is much easier to imagine necromancy if one realizes that "schools" do not exist, and are entirely arbitrary distinctions of the magics simply based on their commonalities. Necromancy is most likely a mixture of conjuration, destruction, mysticism, and restoration schools into an amalgam of magic that works very, very well when dealing with the dead.

The mainstay of necromancy is the manipulation of souls, the parts about skeleton warriors and zombies are just practical applications of their talent. I don't think necromancers start off wanting to strap old bodies together with leather and nails, they just do it when they need to. Zombies are quicker jobs because they don't need to be strapped together.

I don't see how there's any of what I cut.

i disagree. Necromancy IS a school of magic.

Aren't necromancers (such as the Sload) well known for plagues? That sounds like the world of destruction/restoration (remember that restoration has some of its own nasty magic in it, as well) to me. Conjuration seems to go with dealing with souls and minions, but perhaps that spawns from an ignorance on necromancy (considering we only have one real book source). Restoration would also deal with creating the magical bonds that allow the body to move about, unless that involves some sort of odd alteration-like powers.

And saying necromancy is a school of magic is really a moot point. As I already mentioned, they're purely academic. The only reason necromancy ISN'T a school is because of Traven's disgusting policies and the devs not wanting to take the time to implement it.

Mysticism, I suspect, would be the primary school of the Necromancers if they went by schools.

The cult of Necromancy split off from the Psijiic order, not the Mage's Guild. The Old Ways encompassed all magic but especially Mysticism which is still the most obscure and least understood sub classification of magic on Tamriel.

Like Shades said, the primary craft of Necromancy would appear to be bending souls to one's will. Sometimes these souls take on corporeal forms like skeletons or flesh revenants but very often they don't. Binding ghosts, wraiths and other apparitions to one's will seems to be common for Necromancers. In the games, perhaps for the sake of simplification, this is classified under the Conjuration school, but since these souls would come from the Aethur and not from Oblivion I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest the process of summoning them to do one's bidding is a different although superficially related process from summoning a Scamp or Atronach from Oblivion.

Simply trapping the souls of humanoids for later use is probably much easier and more convenient, and the God Of Worms found a way around Arkay's laws to make that much simpler for his acolytes. Just because we don't actually see Black Soul Gems before Oblivion doesn't mean there was never any such thing or that there weren't other ways to take mortal souls. I suspect that the apotheosis of the God Of Worms made the act much more wide spread, though, and the death of the Altmer calling himself Mannimarco during the latter days of the Third Era probably didn't do much in the way of stopping that Worm God in the sky from placing this power into gems.

Souls come from the Dreamsleeve, not the Aetherius. Why do people keep pegging that as some kind of Heaven?

I can think of a http://www.imperial-library.info/content/blood-divines http://www.imperial-library.info/content/umaril-unfeathered.

Well, they've been associated with that, but I don't think they're manipulating germs with magic to make a plague. There's likely enough plague going around with the filth and rotting bodies. As for the Sload, they're far too typecast as a race of necromancers. They're the only sentient life form on that island, so they're just raising their friends and pets from the dead. Plague usually devastates in places where people aren't accustomed to the livestock causing the problem, so the separation of the island probably had a lot to do with it.

In some ways, but I'd want the Daedric skill to only concern itself with the daedra. I don't think undead should be summoned exactly from somewhere. You should be able to raise a zombie in fifteen game minutes perhaps with a ritual, and a skeleton warrior in an hour or two depending on how well you can put them together. Then with mark/call you teleport them to you to fight. They should probably give you a lab assistant in the game to build you some.

I'd probably go with the alteration explanation before restoration, I'd assume restoration just deals with living bodies. My theory on the necromancy would be that since it is about the manipulation of souls, making an undead servant is like enchanting the body by ritual intelligence based magic with a soul to perform the motor functions of the body, without applying their cognizant functions. So, you take the soul of the rat and put it into a bear, it's not familiar enough with the motor functions and wouldn't operate as efficiently.

I've wondered though, what is the Enchant skill if it isn't Necromancy? If you can apply a soul to a sword to make it cast fireballs, how different is it to apply that same soul to enchant a body to resume operation? I'd say for the difference enchanters shouldn't be able to use people souls, and they can only make on strike/on use/and permanent enchantments, and they can't employ soulgems. They have to apply the soul right when they get it.

To that end, enchantments should be stackable to a degree, but only the stronger ones are able to be made permanent. I'm sure they would have many balance issues with that, but enchantments in general need many more everyday uses. You should even be able to enchant your weapon with your mana pool, so it drains your mana pool on strike.

Sure. It makes it easy to talk about this way though.

That sounds pretty good, except for getting the souls from Atherius. I think their defiance of Arkay is in their prevention of letting the souls get to wherever. The dreamsleeve scrubs them clean anyway, enchantments and necromancy are ways of applying that soul's energy before it returns to the scrubber. Necromancers are going green as the first mystical recyclers.