(This is a solo-venture thread! R^2 is such a cool dude, he wants to try out two characters!)
Steiner Barnabas Melville Pembrook is a professional listener. A studied astronomer, a dabbling enchanter, a crossbow sniper, and amateur gastronome, but vocationally, he listens. And today's topic is the warding of the dead against nefarious uses. Miss Thelesia Crenwit(engaged) is lecturing with renewed fervor today, a tall and thin Tiefling woman with long and straight teal-violent hair and curled little horns poking out of her temples, wearing a sleek and angular black robe with half a human skull at the shoulder, though long-time students know that is a construct of metal as an arcane focus. They'd also have heard about the attack against Professor Crenwit last week, when she was knocked out cold and stuffed into a closet by some unknown shape-shifting as a Tiefling and stealing her identity for a brief period for... unknown but no-doubt fiendish ends! Miss Crenwit has been quite a bit jumpy since the incident, but only between lectures, as now she orates fiercely on the duty of the knowledgeable mage to safe-guard their friends, co-workers, soldiers, etc...
Walking back and forth in the well-furnished room, students and Mr. Pembrook seated comfortably along risen stone benches enchanted to feel as though filled with the pleasant warmth of the suns and stars, Miss Crenwit speaks with bold confidence, except for when she doesn't. "All those precious to you, when they're gone, they are gone, but that same flesh can be turned into a weapon by the sort to have no.. no moral standing, no trust-worthy bone in their body! In fact, th.. there seems to be a necromantic
trend spreading as of late, from that ridiculous half-baked cult that sprang up over night! The Raven Queen indeed!" She dashes a bit of chalk against a board, underlining a fierce array of runes in cantrip that will preserve a corpse against rotting for a day, and maintain it's purity amidst locations of... supernatural evil. It will also cover the scent of rotting, to stop scavenging wild-life.
This is just one of the many dozens or so of useful bits of information one might hear in Practical Necromancy, which has been stripped of it's stereotypical bad men in sinister guise raising zombies and skeletons for evil ends, but rather into a sort of faux-White Healing Magic, with an emphasis on medical study. Academy mandates seem to be that Necromancy is useful, but the higher end of summoning is not worth the bite-you-in-the-ass two-fer of public opinion and managing your charges and their endless/tireless needs.
Thelesia eventually concludes her lesson and bids farewell to students, who seem to be divided between a few with actual interest and then the two halves of "have to take it for general credit" and "need an easy floater credit", both of these two groups departing in record time. The loyalists join Thelesia at her desk and everybody begins discussing the day's lesson. Miss Crenwit seems very thankful for the company, looking calm and very attentive and interested. A typical bit of magical clique... you're rather certain, Mr. Pembrook, that the following exchange literally happens:
Student: "Hey, what's your favorite spell?!"
Student: "Ohh, mine is..."
Thelesia: "I love spells that I like!"
... Well, not literally, but you've heard it all before, Mr. Pembrook. It may seem a bit lacking from mages that don't routinely see combat, but you've lived a rather comfortable life and avoided much of that yourself with your chosen profession. Speaking of which, it's time to gather today's notes for Necromantic Theory, so you'd best bring yourself into the conversation!