Necromacy

Necromancy is the magic with allows it wieldier to interact with the dead. Is potent magic, no matter its exact working. However, that same potency and power a necromancer wields are what makes this particular magic stand out from other types of magic. But if one wants to understand the full implications of the use of necromancy, one must first understand what happens to a living creature after death.
First off, all living beings are made of at least two essential elements; their bodies and their souls. It's always the body that dies, but souls are immortal and impossible to wound. Not only that, everything with is alive one way or another, has a soul; even gods and demons have souls. The nature of souls is quite simple, yet also very interesting. Souls come from Pheranor and are born with "pre-coded" personalities, intentions, and other things. These components of souls are what guide them and their bodies once they are born into a body on the material plane, or determine their behavior and actions if they instead remain in Pheranor, becoming gods or demons. These components can also change and evolve as the soul grow in experience and maturity, just like living beings grow and mature as they age and experience life. However, no matter what becomes of them, after their life is "ended" when their bodies die, they all return to Pheranor and join what's called the "Great Beyond". What happens to souls there is completely unknown, but theories abound. Unfortunately, no soul can come out of the Great Beyond once it enters it, so there's no way to confirm any of the theories.
Second, a living being has a body, either a physical one for the living being native to the material plane or an ethereal and therefore shapeable one for the inhabits of the soul plane (gods and demons). No matter what kind of body, this is the part of a living being that is killable, and when it is extinguished, it also marks the end of the life of the individual.
These two components, body and soul are the essential components, which all living things have. However, in the case of mortal beings, those being the sentient inhabitants of the material plane, a third component is eventually born as they live their lives: their spirits. In simple terms, a mortal's spirit is the embodiment of that individual's beliefs of what's going to happen to it once it passes away, with their culture and especially their religion being the main elements determining the fate that he expects to have. Other living things do not develop spirits, for they do have a need and therefore develop a desire to think such things: once an animal or plant dies, its soul departs its deseeded body into the beyond, while its corpse decomposes and its elements recycled.
Now with this information explained, we can then understand the nature of Necromancy: a necromancer interacts first and foremost with the bodies of formerly living creatures, using their magic to animate the bodies, turning them into useful servants, familiars, and/or slaves. This kind of necromancy also called "Light or Basic" necromancy, is simple yet effective, for as long as there are dead bodies, a necromancer can animate them. A few individuals or even particular schools of necromancy develop specialized constructs which mimic corpses in their lack of life but tend to be far more effective for the task required of them since they were made specifically for it. However, although this kind of magic allows for the use and control of mighty creatures, these animated "puppets" lack all intelligence and entirely rely on their necromancer for sustenance: they tend to be easily predictable because of this, and if you take out the necromancer, these animated puppets fall with it.
It's the second and more complex kind of necromancy which is rightfully more known and in many cases, feared: "Heavy necromancy". This subtype doesn't limit to merely animating corpses or constructs to wield as useful yet dumb puppets: instead, it interacts directly with the spirits of formerly living mortals, either asking for their willing assistance or guidance or bending them to the will of the necromancer. In either case, a summoned spirit remains intelligent, which makes the "servants" far more dangerous than mindless beasts. However, spirits are not meant to remain in the living plane, so these kinds of interactions tend to be fairly brief in most cases. This can change, depending on the spirit's nature due to what the individual believed in their former life, so a few cultures/religions make it easier or harder to summon the dead to assist and/or serve the necromancer. These also tend to remain in the material plane even as the necromancer who summons them dies, which for a few spirits can bring them great suffering and despair, especially since few things can help them return to the natural state of things.
With this in mind and the inescapable fact that for most living beings, to interact with something which is meant to be dead is unsettling at the very least, makes it that many cultures have an extreme prejudice against the art of Necromancy, calling it unnatural and evil. These cultures also go to great lengths to both hunt down and kill any necromancer they might find, but also make sure their dead remain undisturbed. These cultures/religions have in common a desire for a complete separation between the currently living and the dead, which makes their spirits to be very resistant to aid and or serve a necromancy that summons them because they believe that they should remain resting and/or enjoying whatever afterlife they are experiencing. These see the dead as above the living, and worthy of the utmost care and respect.
A few are a bit more open, allowing necromancy both in the light as well as in the willing heavy types (Bright necromancy as some called it), for in the first case it's a useful art with many potential uses for a community, and a way to have the guidance and experiences of those which already passed away. These cultures/religions allow for spirits very willing to interact with the living, especially if they share a family or fraternal bond in their former lives, but also the most resilient to subjugation by "Dark Necromancers" since they also tend to be trained by other necromancers in the ways a spirit can hold it's own if someone tries to subjugate them. These view the relation between the dead and the living as equals, neither above nor below the other.
Lastly, there are those few cultures/religions which allow any kind of necromancy, without any restrictions. For they see the dead, and especially the spirits of the deceased as one of the most powerful tools a mage can wield. After all, imagine the power of a mighty warrior who has been brought back to serve and fight for their masters for eternity, slaying anyone who might threaten their rule. These kinds of cultures are the most varied in their treatment of the dead, either embracing the fate of servitude or utterly dreading it, and working with their utmost to avoid dead themselves while making sure others are there in their stead, and everything in between these two extremes. They view the dead as below and therefore subservient to the desires and wishes of the living.

Type

Metaphysical, Supernatural