The following is something I intend to wikify after its seen another round of revision. I present it here for commentary / questions / requests for additions.

And yes, I plan to do the Redeemed and Perverse too.

---

I embrace my desire to
I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,
to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.
-Tool, "Lateralus"

--

The Philosophers of the Knife are unique among necromantic cults for two reasons. First, they adhere to a codified ontology and ethics called the Philosophy of the Knife. Second, they use necromancy to pursue the ancient goals of spiritual alchemy, seeking to awaken or steal divinity for humanity through the Alchemy of Flesh.

Eternal life and glory is the prize, but the cost is measured in a staggering number of innocent bodies.

--

History

The Philosophers began in violence. A monk named Johnathan Kigot transcribed a necromantic tome called "Investigations Toward an Alchemy of Flesh" in the hopes of using its heretical knowledge against necromancers. The Alchemy of Flesh, as it is usually abbreviated, was a research journal to poised that sufficiently advanced necromancy could transcend its own limits and create true life from nothingness.

The implications horrified the Temple and they sought to suppress all knowledge of the Alchemy of Flesh. All known copies of the book were burned and the readers of the text fared little better. A few people survived the purge, Kigot among them. These survivors are the first generation of Philosophers.

Kigot, always a prolific writer, continued in exile. The betrayal of the Temple radically changed his worldview and, with no little spite, he embraced necromancy. His most famous text is the Philosophy of the Knife, which is so central to the Philosophers' work that they name themselves after it. Kigot is also responsible for the survival of what few fragments of the Alchemy of Flesh still exist.

The Philosophy of the Knife was influential among necromancers and, across the past century approximately fifty broke from their cults and embraced an identity as a Philosopher; the second generation. They remained distant and antagonistic toward one another, until recently one Philosopher named Zamidren Book fulfilled a prediction in Kigot's work that one person would eventually rise to gather and lead the movement.

Under the threat of annihilation under the Necrolord Lyras, Book seized the role of the Triumphant, leader among Philosophers. Fearing that the philosophy would die out without a significant change, Book began an expansive recruiting campaign that has swollen the Philosophers' numbers. The third generation of Philosophers has begun to rise.

--

The Philosophy of the Knife

Kigot's text is an incredibly large and laborious tome that mixes ontology -- the study of being -- and philosophy in a hard to read narrative. Few third generation Philosophers have read the original text through, instead learning about the Philosophy of the Knife from oral accounts and their own idiosyncratic ethics.

Of note, Kigot's writings are notorious among Philosophers for being racist and sexist. Kigot only ever concerns himself with Humans and writes constantly in the male voice. The Philosophers of the Knife have grown beyond such narrow definitions, for the most part, but specific permutations of faith like the Elothean creation myth or the Prydaen Wheel are treated as though they don't exist.

At the heart of the Philosophy is implication of the Immortals (and, by extension, any given divinity) in the suffering inherent in the world. If the Immortals are responsible for the creation of Elanthia, then they are responsible for pain, for disease, for loss, and all the ailments of humanity. Further, if they have great power, they are morally responsible for using it to cure those ailments, yet they do not.

Not only can a human design a better world than the gods did, it is childishly easy to do so. In the final summation, Kigot wrote, it is because the gods are actively malevolent toward human life and, whatever they claim to say, their creation plainly shows they desire the suffering of human life.

Moving to the state of humanity, Kigot describes a state of "terrible freedom." The Human mind has no solidified core, instead being a constantly evolving process that has the capacity to become anything at any given time. While Humans cannot wish the world away, they can orient themselves to the world as given to them in any way they wish. In the face of any resistance, an attitude of defiance can be taken up.

Humans, by and large, do not want this level of freedom in their lives and go to great lengths to hide from it. They blame passions and accidents or even the weather for their fates, when the truth is they are responsible for themselves.

Taken together, Kigot argues for the existence of an essential dignity to humanity, what is often abstracted out to a "birthright." It deserves to be free of misery and death, free to exercise its freedom in a capacity that strips it of its terribleness. If the way to that world is necromancy, then so be it.

The ethical aspect of Kigot's philosophy is involved, but at its core can be simplified to "the ends justify the means." Kigot grants that necromancy is evil, without exception. The cost of necromancy is in lives other than the the necromancer's own, which is in most cases inexcusable. The condition by which necromancy is ethically viable is when the gods have left mankind no other choice for its glorification than necromancy. As long as the needs of the many are being sought after, the honored sacrifice of the few is permissible.

It is important, though, to note Kigot never makes the assumption that this makes necromancy "good." Necromancy, like torture, never becomes moral just because it is ethically justified in specific circumstances. It is important for the Philosopher to recognize that he gets his hands and soul dirty and to not exalt, personally benefit, or even enjoy his work. This is, of course, nearly impossible, leading Kigot to write "Between a Necromancer and a monster is the width of a knife."

--

The Great Work

Spiritual alchemists engage in a process of purification and self-reflection that they call the "magnum opus," with the intent of refining what is base into what is divine. The Philosophers' "Great Work" is inspired by this tradition, but confusing the two would lead to considerable error.

The Great Work is conceived of as a naturalistic rather than spiritual endeavor. While the stated goal is claiming divinity, "divinity" is understood as an a real force or power in the universe, not a psychological ideal. The Great Work is a machine, albeit one guided by an ethic and an ontology, which is discussed above.

At its roots, the Great Work begins with the Alchemy of Flesh. While there are no complete copies, what fragments survive and oral tradition assert that it gave convincing proof that sufficiently advanced necromancy can transcend its own limitations and create true life out of nothingness. This is almost universally taken to mean that sufficiently advanced necromancy transcends into divinity, as the act of genesis remains a divine characteristic outside even the most powerful Life magic. However, pundits among the Redeemed and Perverse have enough cause to point out that the Alchemy of Flesh never made a direct claim of granting divinity.

The primary characteristic of the Philosophers' divine transcendence is eternal life, with an emphasis on "life." Immortality is not new or even particularly novel to necromancers, but it requires taking up death and the strong possibility of soul loss. An immortal necromancer is not eternally alive, but a corpse that refuses to lay down. The Philosophers drive for something better: an immortality where they are still living, feeling, ensoulled beings.

Beyond eternal life, Philosophers argue among themselves who transcendence would look like. Some simply envision it as the self-perpetuation of life, while others imagine grand powers like those presumed to be in the possession of the Old Man. It is popular to believe that control over divine genesis will come with it the ability to reshape life itself, and so to deliver on the Philosophy of the Knife's promise of eradicating misery and death in the world.

No one knows what the method of transcendence looks like. This drives the primary work of the Great Work and how Philosophers tend to spend most of their time. "Sufficiently advanced" necromancy transcends into divinity, but the critical proofs needed to identify what that necromancy is composed of are lost. There is a definite generational gap here: many of the second generation Philosophers, who were necromancers first, developed highly idiosyncratic practices to try to breakthrough into divinity. Third generation Philosophers, who are Philosophers before they're necromancers, tend to practice and highly refine their grasp of Thanatology into deeper awareness.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>"It's actually about ethics in the perversion of the soul" needs to become a thing.

>bug
>no matter how hard i try the stab people through ur monitor ability doesn't function on teveshszat

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Love these articles, having only recently come back to DR after many many years the richness of the necromancer lore has led me to spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over potential necro concepts. I can't wait to see work done on the transcendence path although I know it's last in line. For the time being deciding how to approach the Great Work on a personal character basis is pretty compelling in and of itself, not to mention rife with potential rp opportunities.

Minor typo:
While the stated goal is claiming divinity, "divinity" is understood as an a real force or power in the universe

GMs can edit posts. This is also intended for the wiki so proofreading is of value even if it couldn't be changed here.

---

Elanthipedia - https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
Epedia Admins - https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Elanthipedia:Administrators