Rules that may have yet to have been enacted.


They could have also just sent her a letter telling her to GTFO, or sent a representative of Traven to take over and/or keep a close eye on her. The fact they sent their private police force suggests that they were not going to be friendly, and were ready to be rid of anyone whom they thought to be a necromacer. In addition, because so many members were kicked off and joined the Worms/became pretty hostile, suggests that the Mages Guild was going to remove them by force, and forced them into a situation where they literally had to fend for their lives on a daily basis. Not only from ignorant and fearful peasantry, but also from fanatical "good doers" of the guild. Plus, many regular guys also probably became disenfranchised with Traven, and I doubt the half of the council that initially left were all necromancers, but most likely high level mages who became sick of the heavy handed regulations. And because of this poor treatment of them, the guild most likely caused many more of their former members to be extremely disenfranchised and ready to follow some leader who offered them salvation against their injustice, and throw down the evil the Guild caused in the face of "justice" and "being good."

His ban was unwarranted, and I find that it was the Guild that struck first with their heavy handed approach. Heck, I'd say (until otherwise noted) the founders of the College of Whispers were probably former members of the MG who found the heavily regulated rules to be disgusting, and made a deal with Titus to officially recognize them. And in return, provide magical research that would help the newly made empire from hostile forces and bring the empire back into a well educated state.

The Knights of the Lamp...the earliest incarnation of the group that would become the Synod perhaps? Too early to tell, but it would makes for good speculation.

But considering the debate was to decide the fate of necromancy in the guild, they probably were.


Whatever action he took, attempting to arrest a necromancer does not justify attempting to destroy the Mages Guild, and it certainly pales in comparison to what the Necromancers did. Heck, membership in it is completely voluntary.

The vast majority of necromancers appear to be pretty nasty. Falcar, Caranya, Kalthar (even if he had given up necromancy), all of them were perfectly willing to murder guildmates for personal gain, at their very best. That Kalthar was able to continue in the guild shows that the guild was willing to accept necromancers that gave up the dark arts. In addition, Traven has a point, it leads most who delve it into becoming more and more depraved; look at the lich Erandur (later Erandur-Vangaril). The vast majority will kill any non-necromancer they come across. And apparently they're not unwilling to destroy the Mages Guild just because it won't associate with them.

Given necromancy's track record, I'd say it was perfectly warranted, if not controversial.

Still has a very "salem witch trials" feel to it though, doesn't it? Necromancy isn't illegal in the Empire, and the rights of people with that hobby should be guaranteed by law, and yet a group payed for partially by tax money is abusing its privileges to repress people.

I don't support all the evil stuff Mannimarco and his cronies did, but I feel like Necromancers and some Daedra followers are very unfairly treated and viewed.

You can still be a necromancer, you just don't get guild services. They don't repress necromancers, they just don't deal with them. And frankly, the vast majority of necromancers in Cyrodiil, at least those who continued their art, are more than willing to murder others for personal gain. At worst, they're pawns of Mannimarco's schemes.

You have to remember that all those you mentioned were members of the Order of the Black Worm, which seems to be a very hostile faction. There are other Necromancers like the one who wrote Corpse Preparation sounds like a rather passive one. Although it was written at a different time.

Exactly. That's the part I've never gotten about these debates (granted, I've never followed one on the Lore board before, but I've seen more than one on other boards). Okay-- I understand that there are some people who are unhappy with the way that the Mages Guild treats necromancers and who have this vision of some sort of dedicated quasi-scientist dutifully studying physical remains in order to provide some sort of benefit to the people, but that's just not the "reality." The "reality" is that every single necromancer you come across is some sort of vile scumbag surrounded by half-rotted corpses who tries to kill you on sight. I'm just not buying this whole innocents wrongly condemned by the establishment angle.

I dunno-- I can see how a necromancer actually seeking to do good is possible, but in the game world that we've been given, such a thing just flat doesn't exist.

The problem with this, is that OB stupidly shuffled all factions as either altruistically good or stupid evil. There was hardly any grey area. Hell, in DF and MW, the mages guild was definately not an altruistically good faction, ranging from [censored] face to decent. Same with most other factions.

Morrowind didn't have an abundance of non-murderous necromancers either. They were either rogue mages or Telvanni, who are just as nasty but tend to be more discreet. And even then I only seem to recall three friendly necromancers; Tymvaul (who you can convince to give it up), Dedaenc, a resident of the St. Delyn Plaza, and Sharn gra-Muzgob, in TES III.

That's certainly true, but, first-- is that a trend that you see reversing? Not to get too far off topic here, but we can be absolutely dead certain that the next game is NOT going to be MORE complex than the last one, so it's a pretty safe assumption that the presentation of necromancy isn't going to be MORE nuanced.

Beyond that-- I'm not sure what that decreasing complexity has to do with necromancy anyway. Certainly the Mages Guild was streamlined in OB, as everything was, but the basic attitude toward necromancy hasn't changed much at all in any of the games. Again, there's a more simplistic and notably official stance against it in OB, but necromancers were villains all the way back to DF at least (I haven't played Arena). And if anything (though, again, it wasn't such a fundamental aspect of the game), the attitude toward necromancy in Morrowind was MORE hostile-- it wasn't just the Mages Guild, but the entire culture that opposed it.

:shrug:

The key difference was that in Morrowind...a cigar wasn't always a cigar.

Some of the people you're sent to kill for necromancy aren't actually necromancers at all, if talked to. And one of the necromancers we meet, Sharn from Balmora, was a peaceful and resonable person if a bit grumpy.

So now we're blaming Oblivion. Is the concept of a lack of non-hostile practicing necromancers really that hard to believe?

YES! Especially since there are supposedly imperially sanctioned necromancers who study the bodies of bandits and executed criminals.

Nothing saying they're common, imperial-sanctioned (since it's technically not illegal, they can do it anyway, the corpses are more of rewards), or that any such necromancers are currently being given corpses in that manner.

Never said they were common, but the lack of any non-hostile necromancer peeves me, since they are mentioned that the imperials did allow some necromancers to operate, and even donated corpses to them. And they serve the empire, thereby they are imperially sanctioned, and are being supplied bodies, and from what the book seems to imply, pretty daily and good quality ones. Such necromancers wouldn't need to find their own, since they seem to be well supplied. Again though, we did not see them, and ALL necromancers in OB were put under the blanket of stupid evil.

Oblivion didn't help matters at all, and it only helped to confuse this further; Are all necromancers really evil crazy scumbags that behave exactly like a conjurer or bandit (Minus the spell-casting)? Or is it the Mages Guild that's wrong? We can't use Morrowind as an example as Necromancy was an affront to Dunmer beliefs and not tolerated.

There were a few Necromancer Npc's in that game, but one of them happened to help you in the MQ. Of course, there is Goris the Maggot King, who seemed rather similar to Oblivion's necromancers.

What if there were non-hostile necromancers who called themselves mages/farmers/nobles etc - how would you know?

As for bias in Ob - that seems unloreful - like someone got out of control or maybe that was what brought about or was a consequence of the way things are at the 'End of an Era'

I'm not blaming Oblivion so much as I'm praising Morrowind for its grey areas of morality.

lol - there's only one morrowind ^^