The Dead Art: Necrocrafting

The Dead Art

Alternate Names: Anala Ivasur, Anala Ikafri, Dapomarvan, Jiburre, Necrocrafting

When the great armies of the Monolith marched on the nascent Ranathim Empire, they brought with them the secrets of Necrokinesis, a dark science gained from their deep understanding of Broken Communion and twisted psionic energy. The Ranathim stole a portion of that secret, Thanatokinesis, which resonated well with their powers of psychokinesis and psychic vampirism. Using it, one of their great mystic-technicians, Thamet Kafri, created synthetic flesh, vat-grown flesh that responded to the dark prompting of Thanatokinesis, and she mastered the art of embedding the animating force of Thanatokinesis into the synthetic flesh, or even into corpses, to create permanent half-living servitors. She also mastered the art of reshaping dead flesh, to give it a property she wanted.

This great breakthrough allowed the Ranathim to create strange, biological machinery that they crafted into war engines, monsters and soldiers that they used to defeat the Monolith. With the fall of their empire, Kafri’s art largely vanished, as much of the universe considered it and its creations abominations. Nonetheless, the ability to conquer death offers tantalizing possibilities and the relics of Kafri’s experimentations still litter the part of the Galaxy where the war was fought the fiercest, and she created one of the races of the Galaxy, the Gaunts (or the Tarvathim). It is, thus, the rarest and most controversial of the Zathare practices.

The Dead Art as Esoteric Style: 6 points

Requires Skills: Biology, Chemistry, Necrocraft, Surgery, Weird Science.

Additional Psionic Skills: Corpse Sense, Necrocontrol, Necroblast

Techniques: Animalism (Necrocontrol), Chronic (Necrocontrol), Distant Use (Necrocontrol), Electronic Disruption (Necroblast), Exclusion (Corpse Sense), Flashes of Insight (Corpse Sense), Increased Range (Corpse Sense), Independent Animation (Necrocontrol), Inspired Development, Inspired Research, Permanent Animation (Necrocontrol), Spiritual Suppression (Necroblast), Work by Touch (Surgery)

Perks: Controllable Disadvantage (Callous), Corpse Whisperer, Good with Tarvathim, Secret Technique: Permanent Animation, Technology Secret (Synthetic Flesh)

Advantages: Corpse Sense, Necroblast, Necrocontrol, Necrokinesis Talent, Quick Gadgeteer (Dead Flesh only -80%).

New Traits

Necrokinesis is found in Pyramid #3/99, in the article Necro-Psi by Christopher Rice

New Perks

Technological Secret: Synthetic Flesh: The character may use Chemistry to create “synthetic flesh,” which counts as generic “corpse” material for the purpose of Thanatokinesis, and applies a +4 to all Necrokinetic skill uses against it. This is an Amazing invention.

Necrocraft

2/level

Skill: Necrocraft (IQ/Hard)

Necrocraft allows extremely fine control of the flesh of a corpse. Instead of the gross movement of Necrocontrol, Necrocraft reshapes the dead flesh, allowing for precise “genetic engineering” as it transmutes the nature of the flesh from one sort of corpse flesh to another. This can change the genetic signature of a corpse, or even transmute a corpse (changing the corpse of a human to the corpse of a man, or changing a corpse to very closely resemble the corpse of a specific person), but it’s more commonly used to apply genetic engineering to corpses or to synthetic flesh. Treat this as the Bio-Engineering (Genetic Engineering) skill but apply a +10 to all rolls (thus the character can engage in Bio-Engineering with no tools at all, normally a -10, at base skill), and it only applies to actually changing the flesh; it doesn’t help in designing a genetic prototype, only in its creation. Each attempt takes a minimum of one minute of careful manipulation of the flesh, and requires touch. The maximum amount of flesh that the character can manipulate is determined by their level; see the table below.

Statistics: Control (Small Category, Dead Flesh; Transmutation only -50%; Necrokinesis -10%, Preparation Required, 1 minute -50%) [2/level]

Level	Flesh, in lbs
1	10
2	40
3	90
4	160
5	250
6	360
7	490
8	640
9	810
10	1000

New Techniques

Permanent Animation

Hard

Default: Necrocontrol-15

This secret technique allows the Necro-Psi to imbue the corpse with permanent unlife. The corpse gains a life of its own and is no longer controlled by the Necro-Psi (though, of course, it still counts as a corpse and may be directly controlled by the Necro-Psi via a normal use of Necro-Control). The traits gained are up to the GM (see the Gaunt race for a typical example), and can be pre-determined to some degree with the use of Necrocraft. Note that this power is not resurrection! A character re-animated in this way becomes a new character, only moderately influenced by his previous personality, and likely imprinted by events surrounding the re-animation of the body, and the re-animator himself.