I'm curious about the how/why Necrotic Reconstruction works on what it works on.
The spell description (emphasis mine):
>>A staple tool of apprentice and master reanimators alike, Necrotic Reconstruction provides instantaneous mending to a servant that has not yet outgrown its usefulness. The false healing operates by bolstering the Unlife within forms, which in turn flares to defy any mundane wounds present. Curiously, the spell does affect non-undead creations of Animation magic, albeit with less potency.
The spell is (obviously) designed first and foremost to heal zombies. That said, you CAN cast it on dead critters that have not been reanimated, as long as you preserve it first:
>cast giant
You poke the corpse of a mountain giant.
The spell fizzles because this corpse has not been preserved by you.
>perf preserve on giant
You bend over the giant's corpse to make one long, continuous cut with your ritual knife that just barely pierces into it. Unseen energies seep into the creature's fluids, suspending the corpse in unnatural stasis for a time.
Roundtime: 4 sec.
>cast giant
You poke the corpse of a mountain giant.
Your bloodied hand dries up within moments of lacing the reconstructive pattern, leaving behind a refined black dust.
The detrita from the destroyed parts of the mountain giant's body collectively secrete maggoty ribbons of slime, pulsating a little. This prompts the dead skin, flesh and bone that make up the creature to pull apart, be displaced, then knit back together beneath the atrous catalyst.
So, questions:
1) Is it intentional that you can cast it on a dead (preserved) corpse that has never been animated?
2) If so, how does that square with the concept of "false healing"? NR is a prerequisite for SRE, which makes this whole thing all the more interesting to the lore side of my brain. To my knowledge, this spell is the only mention of this term.
3) Any chance NR could be castable on PC corpses? (And, theoretically, if it did work would it cause any sort of issues with resurrection or subsequent Empathic healing?)
- I
