Hanging Heaven Black - A story about Bards and Necromancers

ALTERNATE PREMISE - The afterlife is closed and all the dead people now plague the world. Maybe the moons are still around; we can do both. Worth thinking about.
Yeah actually, the moon stuff is gone, instead one of the Archons led a coup backed by a fanatical cult who believed that if the god of the dead is disposed of, humanity will achieve immortality. no grim reaper means nobody to come collect, as it were. however, once the ritual was complete, which meant that not only was the god of the dead summoned but destroyed, people could still die. the difference was that the afterlife was now closed. no god of the dead, no afterlife. this means that the ghosts of the dead haunt the world while their corpses decay by the roadside, if they're not shambling around. the world is now basically trapped in a slowly-but-surely building undead apocalypse.
I think the moon stuff can stay. Seven moons, one for each kind of magic, all that. necromancy is still thicc though because there's no god of death to reign it in. this also means that there's a god for the other six magics too. (that means a fire god, a water god, a metal god, an air god, an earth god and a life god). their names are all WIP.

Lets talk about these gods. Other than being a sort of representative and shepherd of their chosen sphere of magic, they are also considered symbols of different aspects of everyday life, like gods often are.

• The Life god Lifra (Lee-frah) is also the goddess of the sun, mundane healing and medicine. she is also a symbol of general good luck.
• The Water god Aegar (Ay-gahr) is also the god of marine life, storms and funeral rites. this is because of the "the afterlife is located at the bottom of the sea"-thing people believe.
• the Fire god Loga (Low-gah) is also the goddess of passion, the hearth and braving the dark. she's pretty popular these days.
• the Air god Disem (Dee-sem) is also the god of freedom, airborne creatures and travel.
• the Earth god Grund is also the god of agriculture and generally anybody working with the bounties of the natural world (like lumber, stone, all that).
• the Metal god Jorn is also the god of warfare, blacksmithing and the law. another god that's getting popular these days.

the world is basically dead because a cabal of corrupt mages corrupt mage staged a coup and disrupted the natural order by blasting the magical moons that orbit the world with necromancy. these moons used to bring balance to the world, but now instead of one moon representing death there are now like six of them. the world is basically not livable anymore, but there is still a sliver of ok-ness left. one moon representing life is still ok and unharmed, but that alone cant even out all the shit. this means that the world is really really undead, and it also means that while in the before times mages were really important and respected and valued, they are now pretty much extinct because the balance of the world is way off.
the main characters are definitely gonna be a lone hunter character "i never trusted people much and they always told me it was going to be my downfall but then the world died and now trusting is really bad so i was right", as well as a young mage who is like the last one alive and even though everyone hates mages the hunter guy understands that maybe a mage is needed to fix this shit if its even fixable.
maybe not, see further down.
food is scarce because the world has too much death in it, and undead monsters roam the landscape at all times. equally bad, the high-flying mageocracy is still technically out there with all its toys and wonders, but now they belong to peasants picking the corpses of yesterday clean. more than one new age robber baron has carved his name into history using a high fantasy knife.

so here's the moon thing:
orbiting the world of HHB are seven moons, containing and representing the seven spheres of magic (so named because moons are spheres). these seven moons bathe the world in their various magical lights, and every moon has one night of the week to itself. In order, these are:
The Day of Life - The silver moon of Life.
The Day of Fire - The red moon of Fire.
The Day of Water - The blue moon of Water.
The Day of Earth - The green moon of Earth.
The Day of Air - The white moon of Air.
The Day of Steel - The gray moon of Metal.
The Day of Death - The black moon of Death.
These moons are the reason the world has magic at all, and so they are very very important. Actually the planet has most of the magic, but the moons help. Now they don't anymore. They are also the reason why the world of HHB is fucked. Long story short, the Archons (ruling council) were overtaken in a coup by one of their own. This one Archon was of course the Black Archon, and through a ritual channeling all the power of the Archons and the Spire of Minds that they called home, the Black Archon struck every moon with necromancy (thats death magic). Actually, the archons knew this was coming for a long time, and took steps to prevent it from happening. in the end, it turns out that nothing they could have done would ever have worked, and the world is now boned. many people do believe that the black archon made it happen, but that's only half true. Every moon became a black moon, except for the silver moon of Life. Thus, the world is megafucked, and magic basically doesn't work anymore. Six nights of the week are really bad, and then one night is a little better. That one night lit by the silver moon is basically the only reason why life hasn't gone extinct.
Necromancy is now a "natural" part of everyday life. Undeath is everywhere, and things that would normally have been impossible for even the most talented necromancer are now fully possible. Hordes of shambling corpses occupy the open fields and roads, and in the darkest corners of the world, monsters unlike anything anybody has ever seen are belched forth from the bowels of this infected realm.
of course, not every person alive gifted in the ways of necromancy is evil, but most people are by now way too scared to care about that distinction. very few are using their powers for good, as much good as they can, but most necromancers are by now either dead or the centerpiece of one wasteland warband or another. whether or not the Black Archon is still alive is up for debate. nobody has been to the Spire of Minds since the ritual because the closer you get to the Spire the worse things get. not only was the Spire the centerpiece of a massive city that is now crawling with both undead monsters as well as trigger-happy survivors, the city was also a magical stronghold of significant repute, and that means that nobody can guess how many magical landmines exist in there. salvage runs to the Spire City used to be a thing, but they stopped almost immediately as the success rate was a big fat 0.

so remember how i said that feats of necromancy that used to be impossible are now very possible? lets talk about that. the amount of magic in the air used to be very different. all the seven moons contributed to an environment where the magics of the realm were in balance, and every mage could only pull so much out of the air before it just kinda ran out. what this means is one - the more mages doing magic at once in one place, the harder it gets to make magic happen. two - some things were just not possible because nobody could harness that much magic without exploding.
of course, now the magic of the world is fucked up, and necromancy is quite literally six times as powerful as it used to be. this means that not only is there more magic to harness, but the world itself is more receptive to necromancy as well. basically, raising a corpse to walk has never been easier. in fact, it is so easy that it happens spontaneously sometimes.
now lets talk about the whirls. whirls are the common name for the highly localized magical storms that plague the lands of HHB. a whirl basically exists for the same reason a hurricane would exist. magic is all out of whack and the balance is a disaster. this leads to magical energies in the air clashing instead of harmonizing, and this causes whirls to happen. now, because necromancy is so dominant, most whirls have a necromantic vibe to them, but this isn't always the case. sometimes, the silver magic of life gets its moment to shine, and very rarely the "dead magics" jerk back to life for a brief moment. everybody knows that whirls are bad news and staying away from them is the best thing to do. whirls basically just cast spells all over the area they are in, causing random magical effects to occur. because of the necromantic dominance of the world, those effects tend to be very destructive and gross. corpses raised and moving again, the wilting of plants and killing of animals, stuff like that.

now we talk about the high fantasy stuff, the stuff that USED to exist in abundance before the world exploded.
because the world is a rough place right now, let's talk about weapons first. the most modern form of weaponry is the so-called "runeshot". Runeshot is a catch-all term for bullets powered by the interaction of specially carved runes and glyphs. How this works is that the hammer of the firearm has a rune inscribed at the tip, and every bullet has a glyph inscribed at the back on the cap. When the rune (which is an "active" magical symbol) and the glyph (which is a "passive" magical symbol) connect, something happens, and this something is of course determined by the runes and glyphs involved. Most runeshot simply works in the way that the rune causes the glyph to explode, carrying the bullet forward at intense speeds. The art of carving glyphs complicated and detailed enough to make the runeshot more powerful and more reliable was a intense process and many advances were made in a relatively short period of time. At the height of it all, the wealthy were no strangers to having firearms made with custom runes and bullets with custom glyphs, so that the two could only be used together. Because it's magic, runeshot is smokeless and basically immune to misfires and other accidents. Should the glyph carved into the cap of the bullet be damaged however, it will no longer fire. Weapons loaded with runeshot are commonly referred to as "firearms" or simply "arms". Firearms used with one hand are called "pistols", two hands are "rifles", and anything bigger than that, or just big in general, is a "cannon". Sometimes a pistol can be referred to as a cannon, and when that happens it's because the pistol in question is notably big, not because its an actual cannon.
The current state of the world has not been kind to the firearms, in more ways than one. Not only are the people who can actually make them all but extinct, but the existing firearms are more likely than not to be in a damaged state, and therefore unusable. Remember, all it takes is one small nick in the rune of a pistol to make it never fire again. Naturally, functional firearms are more than worth their weight in gold, as is any suitable ammunition.
Another magical advancement that hit its stride shortly before everything died were the so-called Automata. The word automaton specifically means self-operating machine, and in this context these machines are of the walking, working robot kind. When they were first created long ago, the word "golem" was used, but as they were modernized and became less and less like their humble origins, they became known as automata instead. Some still call them golems though, as its a much folkier word. Whatever you call them, automata are enchanted constructs often resembling the basic human body plan, and they tend to be enchanted in such a way that they understand one or several tasks and how to perform them. The basic ones simply pick things up and put them down again, but the most advanced ones created just before the end could do things like hold a pen and write down what it was told in excellent handwriting, taking care to spell everything right and to space the words right on the page. These automata were designed to be tireless and exact, carrying out the hardest labor with little to no effort or danger to any living person. This did cause some friction at first as the automata supplanted human workers, and eventually it was decreed that any given workforce can't be less than 50% human. Also, workforces tended to be even more human than that because the automata were quite expensive and required a lot of work hours put in before they essentially paid for themselves. In addition, since more and more working class people came into contact with automata, many of them became interested in working on them rather than with them, and so many workers essentially reschooled themselves into automaton technicians. Luckily, you don't need to be magical to make sure a metal man doesn't fall apart, you just need to be handy.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all good. The last great wave of automata innovations included weaponized ones. Some were human-sized and essentially functioned much like a mechanical soldier, and these were met with some raised eyebrows. It was however the class of automata called "Titans" that people freaked out over. These things towered over 10 feet tall and were just pure destruction on legs. Built to wade through a battlefield, reaping lives left and right, the first showcase of a titan created the first major automata-related backlash in history. People were ok with metal men lifting boxes, but behemoths of steel with cannons for arms? Gratuitous at best and horrifying at worst. Nothing concise happened with these titans though, for this was when the end struck.
The titans are still around, and happening upon one in the wasteland is about as sure of a death sentence as you can get.
The "normal" automatons are still ok in most people's eyes though. The ones that still work can be found in various camps and settlements, doing the work they were meant for. At worst, they can always be broken down and turned into hand and foot-shaped weapons.

so the characters im thinking of are something along the lines of the following:
Reginald is probably gonna show up again as a previously blessed paladin who is now magic-less and extremely depressed about it. he kinda believes that his magic was the only good thing he had, and now he's in his own mind useless and as a result he's become fatalistic and wants to prove his usefulness by doing absolutely crazy things. paladins by the way are warriors who are also trained in some sphere of magic. depending on the magic, they are referred to by different colors ("Red Paladin", "Silver Paladin"). basically, they can beat up the bandits robbing you and then heal the wound the bandits inflicted on you. very helpful and selfless people, classically driven by just wanting to help. now reginald is and always has been a great warrior, very skilled, but he suffers from a MASSIVE case of impostor syndrome and therefore believes that his only real power is the power coming from somewhere else than him (thats the magic). "there's no way im good enough on just my own without magic", he says. "without magic im literally useless", he says.
Mallory (maybe different name) is an extremist loner who lived her earliest years alone in the woods and was always chided for it, but now she believes that she was right all along because civilization collapsed. she's chronically shit with other people, but she's nice. good with a bow and everything else that allows you to live alone in the woods.
Ludwig (name pending) is kinda young, basically a child, and he's magical. problem is, he's a necromancer and that either means youre destined to become a bandit lord OR to be crucified by angry, terrified villagers. thing is, ludwig is a genuinely nice boy who has had the idea that maybe a necromancer can undo the shit since a necromancer made the shit happen in the first place. reginald loves ludwig because the idea of saving the world is the exact thing reginald is into these days, and he's fatally, horribly down with going to the ends of the earth for ludwig and his plan. ludwig isnt sure about this idea at all, but he's honestly out of options because he cant see himself living among people and pretending there's nothing weird about him being there.
look, all the characters are fucked up and hate themselves. write what you know, and all that.

I'm thinking that everything is based around death because the world sort of ended. not sure how people survived, but it was probably a god who intervened and gave their immortality to shelter their people from the oncoming nuclear fallout (but magic). this resulted in a people that survived, sure, but everyone is kinda obsessed with death. also, the world is kinda overloaded with death right now, and because of that necromancy is sorta powerful and easier to wrangle than it used to be.
so im thinking there's basically two sorts of necromancy; spiritual and physical. physical necromancy is the "basic" version, and it's the one where you puppeteer skeletons and whatnot. it's very much a powerful, but blunt instrument. spiritual necromancy is a much harder version that calls upon a specific spirit, binding it in service. some necromancers allow the spirits to possess them, essentially gaining the knowledge and physical skill of the spirit in question. others allow the spirit to possess an effigy, which is great for people who don't like being possessed. very few necromancers are so strong that they can just make the spirit they control a physical being. basically they just put so much magic into the binding that the spirit becomes a real boy again. this is really hard and takes a lot out of even the most skilled necromancers, but they are rewarded with a very powerful pawn.
also just for posterity, necromancy or "death magic" is basically defined as the manipulation of things that are now dead. things that never lived don't count. necromancy also has ways to make the living dead, but by very direct means. sure, a fireball will kill someone and make them dead, but necromancy is like, your heart stops or your brain breaks. simple, brutal stuff that works with the living being itself.
necromancy is usually pretty spoopy but in this setting its not (was not, actually) that bad. people tend to be of one of two minds. either, necromancy is the only way to actually utilize all the death around us and making it into something useful, OR, they believe that this is the only way to connect with the things that existed before everything died. there was great knowledge and mighty heroes that were all lost at the end of the world, and necromancy is how we bring those things back.

So about the ghosts in the ocean thing. Lots of people used to believe that the afterlife was somewhere under the sea, and that our souls travel beneath the waves when we die. Nobody knows if this was actually ever true, but the ocean sure is weird nowadays. The six black moons have turned the ocean into what can only be described as a really wet ghost prison. Sailors report seeing ghostly lights on the water, and upon closer inspection, people have seen the faces of the dead stare back at them.
actually yes, the afterlife was located underneath the ocean. it was believed that every body of water that had ever claimed a life was a gateway to the lands of death. this is also why ghosts look all floaty; its because they resemble people under water. also also, this is why the god Aegar is considered a god of funeral rites. The basic idea here is like, the dead marshes from Lord of the Rings combined with the river Styx from Disney's Hercules. Basically, there are ghosts in the water and it's not good for anyone. Because of this, ocean travel is basically nonexistent now. No trade, no fishing, none of that works anymore. Rivers and the like seem to be safer, but people are reporting similar happenings in those too. in short, ghosts are collected in bodies of water, and they stir when living things approach. nobody knows why, but it might be because the blue moon of water is now a black moon of death. who can say.
vampires exist, and so do other classically undead creatures. many of these are not actually undead in the typical sense (that being an animated corpse or a stirred spirit), but are living beings suffering a necromantic curse. quick lingo, a "curse" is defined in this setting as a harmful enchantment targeting a single individual, item or small place. necromantic curses are unfortunately more commonplace these days, and vampirism is but one of these. vampirism basically just means that a person is driven to drink the blood of their own kind, or they wither away and die. in return, if they feed, they become powerful. so either you're a murderer or you're dead. that's the curse. another similar curse is that of the ghoul. a ghoul is cursed with devouring the flesh of the dead, and all other forms of nourishment is ash. in a world that is more scared of death than its ever been, digging around in graves and eating what you find isn't exactly the most chill vibe. ghouls don't even become stronger or faster like vampires, that's how sad they are. however, some ghouls do become feral and aggressive the hungrier they get, and that can give the impression of super human abilities. another common curse is what most people call being "haunted". a haunting basically means that stirring spirits are attracted to this place or person or thing. ghosts aren't the best of roommates, so this tends to be bad if the person or thing or place is also where other people are.