Updated Definition

necromancer:

  1. (archaic) In legend and story, an evil figure who makes pacts with various personifications of entropy, offering service in exchange for power. In these stories, the fundamental error of the necromancer is their belief that they hold the advantage in such dealings – perhaps not the most wise belief where beings which crave destruction without qualification are concerned.
     
  2. In modern eschatology, people, organizations, or even polities that trade with unknown information entities across the extranet, or which they have discovered in some lost but functional archive. Such entities normally offer valuable information or computation in exchange for services in the physical world, typically intended to provide them with computational power, assembler resources, or access.

    As with their legendary counterparts, the modern necromancer is prone to believe that they hold the advantage in their dealings (or can if sufficient precautions are taken), and are aware that their patron will attempt to exploit them. Likewise, they are incorrect in this belief, and the consequences from a necromancer who succumbs to the wrong patron can include finding himself the first, and by no means only, victim of a blooming perversion.

    Thus, Imperial State Security and its counterpart organizations in other polities enforce the Archive Safety Code on dealing with such entities with great vigor, deploying both regular agents and combat eschatologists accordingly.

– A Star Traveler’s Dictionary

Bring Me The Head Of… (2)

ALL SECURITY SITES // ORANGE SENSITIVE
NOCONTRACT // NOFORN
ROUTINE
RED LIST // SPECIAL // UPDATE 7129/08/09

CANCEL REQ: Istar Oricalcios Veneri a.k.a. “the Mechanic”

REASON: Subject acquired internally (7129/07/24).

NOTES:

Subject recovered from debris created in an attempt to access Secure Storage Facility CINDER NOISETTE. While subject possessed partial knowledge of CINDER NOISETTE defenses, subject was intercepted and destroyed by defenses operating under threefold ignorance protocol.


ALL SECURITY SITES // GREEN SECRET
NOCONTRACT // NOFORN
IMMEDIATE
SECURITY ACTION MESSAGE

FOR IMMEDIATE EXECUTION

Place into immediate effect all security procedures required by CASE HONEY LAUREL.

Investigation of remains recovered of the renegade fork of Istar Oricalcios Veneri (per Red List updates 7912/06/01, 7912/08/09) were limited due to destruction of over 80% of vector stack and execution of ISS mind-state security self-erasure program. However, traces were found of a contaminated metagrammar of weakly angelic complexity, sufficient to compromise the self-integrity of a disconnected fork (i.e., in the absence of coadjutor-provided Transcendent security). Such linguistic-memetic infoweapon systems are not currently documented as being within the capacity of any non-Power agency within the Worlds.

Based on these established facts and analyses current within the All-Seeing Eye, the Executive additionally requests and requires all security and counterintelligence instrumentalities to be alert for potential necromancer activity and to immediately perform comprehensive security reviews of all archives and Precursor sites within their operational areas.

Deliver confirmation and full documentation within 72 hours.

BY ORDER OF

Anming Tsurilen,
Director of Operations, Third Directorate

Undeath

Ravens.

Why are they always ravens?

I have met lots of dar-vorac in civilian life, and while they’re strange in the usual ways that uplifts are strange, dar-bandal possibly somewhat excepted, and they’re mostly cheerful, well-adjusted people. No death fixations or suchlike abound, unless you count their taste in restaurants. Oh, slevanka, please let it not be the eyeballs.

But in the Legions, if your battle goes sideways hard enough that you need to send for a necromancer – sorry, battlefield nonfunctional/deathected asset repurposing specialist – then eleven times out of twelve you’ll see a raven flying in. Accompanied by the rising, swirling, drone-spewed mist of nanites that’s going to chew its way into the plentiful corpses, biophage the spare parts, and use the resulting energy to make the rest shamble their way towards the enemy and pull the trigger from time to time before being shot to sufficient pieces. Well enough to serve as a distraction or cover your retreat, anyway.

You just have to hope the enemy finds it as creepifying as we do.

Or, at least, as nauseating.