Ironsgate Accord
The Ironsgate Accord is a post-war treaty and legal framework governing the sanctioned practice of Necromancy. It was authored in NC. 101 and ratified in NC. 102, in the first years after The War of the Undying, when the surviving nations of the world were forced to answer a grim question: should necromancy be destroyed wherever it was found, or controlled before it could fester into another catastrophe?
The Accord was drafted at Ironsgate Keep, the great wartime bastion overlooking the cursed borders of the Morbog. Its authors included kings, queens, jarls, emperors, priests, military commanders, arcane scholars, and a small number of necromancers who had defected from the Awakened. Their testimony was despised, but useful. They knew how covens hid, how soul-stones were made, how corpses were trafficked, and how easily fear could turn desperate students into secret practitioners.
Many delegates wanted necromancy burned from the world. Others argued that an absolute ban would only drive the practice underground, where it would grow beyond record, inspection, and public law. The Accord was the compromise that survived.
It did not forgive necromancy. Instead, it put a collar around it.
Purpose of the Accord
The central purpose of the Ironsgate Accord is to divide, monitor, and restrain necromantic power. No single coven, kingdom, cult, noble house, academy, or priesthood is meant to gather enough corpses, souls, grimoires, laboratories, or ritual authority to repeat the horrors of the War.
The Accord does not declare necromancy good. It treats necromancy as dangerous knowledge with limited lawful uses. Speaking with the dead may solve murders. Gentle repose may preserve the fallen until they can be restored. Resurrection rites may return the recently slain to life. Forensic necromancy can name a victim, expose a killer, or uncover the truth behind a battlefield atrocity. In rare cases, sanctioned bodycraft has been used to create new bodies for those whose original forms were ruined by disease, curse, injury, or magical deformity.
These uses remain controversial. Even in lands that recognize the Accord, necromancy carries a heavy social stigma. A license may satisfy a court, but it rarely satisfies a grieving family watching a body rise.
Ratification and Reach
The Accord was signed at Ironsgate Keep by many rulers and delegations from across the Known World. It later shaped the legal traditions of several mage societies, temple courts, and military orders, including the keep’s own successors, the Gatekeepers.
It was never universal.
Several nations refused to ratify the Accord, rejected it later, or accepted only limited portions of it. Many kingdoms of the Karthan Commonwealth, the Kiteshi Empire, and the Empire of the Celestial Dragon maintain stricter laws, with some banning necromancy outright under penalty of death.
Because of this, the Accord is best understood as a shared legal standard among participating lands, not a single law that binds the whole world. A necromancer licensed in Meyland may still be arrested in a kingdom that forbids the practice. A rite permitted by one temple may be condemned by another. Local law always matters.
Sanctioned Necromancy
A sanctioned necromancer is a practitioner licensed by a recognized authority to perform limited necromantic work under supervision. Depending on the land, this authority might be a mage guild, temple court, military office, royal magistrate, civic council, or recognized ancestral priesthood.
In Meyland, the Sapphire Assembly oversees much of the state-sanctioned study of necromancy. Near the Morbog, the Gatekeepers keep their own records of dangerous practitioners, forbidden relics, undead outbreaks, and necromantic threats that might endanger the Ironsgate Walls.
The Accord distinguishes between the body and the soul. The body is treated as belonging first to the spirit that once inhabited it, at least while that spirit remains tethered. This tether, commonly called the spiritual umbilicus, may remain for days, months, or even years after death. The stronger the tether, the more harm a necromancer may cause by forcing magic through the body.
For this reason, sanctioned necromancers are discouraged from using fresh corpses unless permission has been given by the dead, their family, a recognized spiritual authority, or urgent public necessity. Older remains, donated bodies, condemned criminals, battlefield dead under lawful authority, and the willing dead are considered safer and more lawful subjects.
Cultural Exceptions
The Accord has survived because it bends around different traditions without surrendering its central protections.
The clearest example is the Tahosian Dynasty, especially the Kingdom of Ban'zol. There, ancestor reverence and spirit-magic are woven deeply into daily life. Followers of Banzala may commune with the dead, honor returning ancestors, and bind willing souls to sacred guardians, family shrines, relics, golems, or sentries.
The Accord does not forbid these practices when they are willing, witnessed, and recognized by local sacred law. It does forbid coercion, soul-theft, magical compulsion, false consent, and binding a spirit as property.
This distinction is one of the Accord’s most important compromises. To many western courts, soul-binding is inherently suspect. To Ban’zolan priests, a willing soul that remains to guard its descendants may be noble. Both views exist under the Accord, provided the soul’s will is honored.
The Nine Restrictions
The exact wording of the Accord has been revised many times, but most modern copies preserve nine central restrictions.
- Discretion Before the Living. Necromancy shall not be displayed before the public except in defense of life, lawful duty, recognized sacred rite, or open emergency. Fear of the dead is not to be provoked for vanity, spectacle, threat, or profit.
- Protection of the Dead. A sanctioned necromancer shall not harm the souls or bodies of the innocent, the young, the vulnerable, or those protected by sacred, civic, family, or ancestral burial law.
- Consent of Body and Spirit. A body still tethered to its spirit shall not be claimed, altered, animated, severed, or used without consent gained through lawful spiritual communion, prior written will, family authority, emergency need, or recognized ancestral rite.
- No Enslavement of the Soul. No soul shall be bound, caged, divided, consumed, traded, sold, or used as fuel against its will. Lawful covenantal binding is permitted only by clear consent, witnessed authority, written record, and a named path to release.
- No Ownership of the Soul. No crown, temple, guild, household, army, company, or private patron may own a soul. A lawful covenant may grant service, guardianship, counsel, or fellowship. It never grants possession.
- Limited Service of Thralls. Animated remains may be commanded only for a lawful task and only for as long as the task requires. They may not be used for ordinary profit, private convenience, hidden labor, or replacement of free workers.
- No Armies of the Unwilling Dead. No ruler, commander, company, coven, or private patron shall raise, purchase, store, or command an army of the unwilling dead. The willing dead may serve only under sacred, civic, military, or ancestral law, and never as mass property of the state.
- The Grave Is Sacrosanct. Graves, tombs, crypts, funeral boats, ossuaries, ancestral shrines, and burial grounds may not be disturbed without lawful sanction, emergency need, recognized ancestral rite, or legitimate historical purpose. Grave theft remains grave theft, even when committed by a licensed necromancer.
- Record, Witness, and Review. Every sanctioned rite must be recorded by name, place, purpose, remains or spirits affected, authority granted, witnesses present, duration, and final disposition. Unrecorded necromancy is presumed unlawful unless immediate emergency can be proven.
Consent and Covenant
The Accord’s later amendments define consent carefully. Consent must be knowing, willing, specific, and uncoerced. A soul cannot lawfully consent while magically compelled, tortured, deceived, imprisoned, held as collateral, threatened with punishment, or bound through debt.
Consent given in life must name the permitted rite, purpose, vessel, duration, and authority. Consent given after death must be witnessed through lawful spiritual communion or recognized sacred practice. A body donated for healing study is not thereby donated for animation. A body given for burial is not thereby given for experimentation.
Covenantal binding must include a release condition. A guardian spirit may remain until a shrine falls, a family line ends, a sacred duty is fulfilled, or a renewal rite is refused. A binding with no path to release is presumed unlawful unless the soul freely renews its vow.
Emergency Necromancy
The Accord recognizes that war, plague, disaster, and undead outbreaks do not always wait for permits.
Emergency necromancy may be tolerated when delay would cause death, mass harm, spread of disease, loss of vital evidence, or escape of hostile undead forces. Such rites must be reported to the nearest lawful authority as soon as danger has passed. The necromancer must record what was done, why delay was impossible, what remains or spirits were affected, and who witnessed the act.
Failure to report voids the protection of emergency necessity.
Enforcement
Violations of the Accord are usually reported to the nearest recognized mage society, religious court, civil magistrate, military authority, or Gatekeeper office. Punishments vary by region and severity.
Minor violations may result in fines, loss of materials, temporary suspension, or public censure. Serious violations may result in revocation of license, seizure of laboratories, imprisonment, exile, bounty, or execution. Crimes involving soul enslavement, undead outbreaks, grave trafficking, or deliberate creation of hostile undead are treated harshly in nearly every signatory land.
The Accord’s protections are conditional. A sanctioned necromancer who violates its terms loses the legal shield separating sanctioned practice from criminal necromancy. In some lands, that distinction is the difference between trial and immediate death.
Modern Debate
The Ironsgate Accord remains respected, hated, and argued over in equal measure.
Supporters believe it prevented another Vauldis by keeping necromancy visible, regulated, and divided among competing institutions. They point to solved murders, restored lives, anti-undead research, proper treatment of battlefield dead, and the exposure of soul-traffickers as proof that the Accord serves the living.
Opponents argue that necromancy cannot be made safe by parchment, seals, or licenses. To them, the Accord is a compromise with a poison that should have been burned from the world after the War.
A third view has grown in recent decades. Reformers argue that the Accord is necessary but outdated. They want clearer standards for spirit consent, corpse donation, military necromancy, resurrection rights, battlefield remains, ancestral pacts, and cross-border recognition of licenses.
For now, the Accord endures because no better answer has held.
It is not mercy for necromancers. It is a lock on a door the world could not afford to leave open, and could not fully close.
Player-Facing Summary
The Ironsgate Accord is the law that lets a good or neutral necromancer exist in much of the Known World without being treated as a villain by default. A sanctioned necromancer is expected to respect consent, avoid soul harm, avoid grave theft, keep records, and use necromancy to restore, protect, investigate, or fight worse undead.
A character does not need to memorize the whole document. At the table, the practical question is simple.
- Did your necromancy help the dead rest or help the living survive?
- Did you respect consent?
- Did you avoid enslaving the soul?
The Accord in Play
For most people, the Accord is too long to memorize. Even licensed necromancers usually learn a simpler field rule. If necromancy helps the dead rest, helps the living survive, respects consent, and does not enslave souls, it is probably within the Accord. If it exploits the dead for power, profit, secrecy, or control, it is probably outside it.
Practitioners often divide their work into three common categories.
- Green rites. Green rites are usually accepted where the Accord is recognized. These include preserving a body, identifying the dead, speaking with a spirit, destroying hostile undead, performing resurrection, laying a ghost to rest, or aiding a lawful investigation.
- Yellow rites. Yellow rites require care, witnesses, or permission. These include animating donated remains, binding a willing spirit, questioning the dead in sensitive cases, moving bodies from a tomb, or using necromancy during a battlefield emergency.
- Red rites. Red rites are criminal or forbidden almost everywhere. These include soul cages, forced bindings, soul-stones used as fuel, grave robbery, raising unwilling dead, hidden thralls, undead labor for profit, and experimentation on unwilling subjects.
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