34 KiB
Necromancy Help [xpost from r/magicbuilding]
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Author: u/shivux *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3as7by/necromancy_help_xpost_from_rmagicbuilding/
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Score: 12
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Created: 2015-06-23T02:15:20
Post:
I'm trying to come up with a system for necromancy in a fantasy setting I'm working on. It's going to be the boring kind that just lets you communicate with the dead, not resurrect them or animate their corpses. There won't be any afterlife in this world (at least, none that has been proven to exist, magically or otherwise), so rather than contacting the spirits of the deceased, necromancy is essentially a magical means of creating a simulation or "ghost" of them. So far, I've come up with two different ways this could work, and I’m planning on using both in my world.
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The first method involves magically "scanning" the deceased's nervous-system to create a model that behaves (more or less) as they would have in life. This obviously requires the corpse to be relatively fresh and with the nervous-system intact. The magic is sometimes able to compensate for brain-damage, to an extent, either by "re-routing" its simulated neural pathways and coopting other parts of the brain to perform the tasks of damaged areas (an enhanced, accelerated version of how living brains can compensate for damage), or by running "generic" simulations of the damaged areas, and inferring what they would have been like in the living brain, based on the effects they seem to have had on the rest of the nervous-system. (So let's say, hypothetically, a part of the brain regulating emotion has been damaged, but some of the memories are still intact... the magic could infer, from the emotional content of those memories, how the emotion-regulating portion of this person's brain worked.) In modern times, this type of necromancy has greatly accelerated scientific understanding of the nervous-system, enabling development of advanced, cyberpunk-style, brain-computer interfaces, and "neural prostheses" to help victims of brain-damage. Whole-brain emulation by non-magical means is still a long way off though.
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The second method involves creating simulacra of dead people based on the memories of those who knew them in life. It doesn't require an intact body, or any remains at all, merely the presence of people who knew and remember the deceased. As long as they are observing the apparition, it will behave as they expect it to based on their memories. The more people observing the apparition, the more memories the simulation will have to draw from, and the more accurate it will be. The "ghosts" created by this method are typically "smoother". They are always fully aware that they are dead, and may be angry or sad about this, but never shocked or surprised. Witnesses report that they are "more like themselves" and never "off" due to brain-damage. This method has serious limitations of course... the "ghost" cannot know anything not known to at least one of the people observing it, nor can it behave in ways unfamiliar to those people… but it still has some uses. Observers can't withhold memories from being accessed by simulacra, so if, for example, the only witness to a dying person's last words lied to everyone about what they heard, a ghost created in the presence of the liar would be able to expose them. As you can imagine, this is extremely useful in situations like murder trials. In fact, even in cases where the victim didn’t see their murderer before dying, their “ghost” is often able to identify them (if present), because they consist (in part) of the murder’s memories, not the victim’s.
Now, I’m hitting some snags, especially with the second method. Since the behaviour of the ghost depends on the memories and expectations of everyone observing it, I need to decide exactly what constitutes "observation". Intuitively, I'd think people just hearing about the apparition after the fact wouldn't count as "observers", while anyone able to see and hear it in real-time, would... even if, for example, they were watching from some distance through a telescope. But what about someone watching a live feed of the ghost in real-time? Are they observing it? If not, why should it make a difference if the information reaches them via wires and radio waves instead of light, sound, and action-potentials? On the other hand, if they do count as observers, what would happen if they were separated by a great enough distance that information reached them noticeably later than everyone else? (If they were watching a live feed from the moon, for example, it would take about 1.3 seconds, and if they were watching it from Mars it would take just over 3 minutes at the closest approach.) Should the apparition somehow anticipate their observation and behave accordingly even before they "begin" observing it? Should it start to behave according to their memories (responding faster than light) the instant they begin observing it (even though the observer wouldn't see this immediately)? Or should there be a delay (in the observer's effect on the ghost's behaviour) of as much time as it takes information to travel both directions (to the distant observer and back)? And what about someone blind and deaf, but nevertheless present, having the ghost's words and actions described to them in tactile signs by an interpreter, do they count as an observer, or just their interpreter?
I'd appreciate any feedback on either technique, and I'm more than happy to provide more details of what I had in mind for each of them... but I'd especially like some help with the observer issue.
Comments:
u/Igigigif [+5] IT Foxgirl (37 minutes later)
Ideally, there's an answer in the "fluff" of your magic system. is it based on intentions? Natural phenomena? Quantum?
More to the point, is there any difference in the extent of the influence of observers from various distances? Can the spell be preformed without the consent of the observers?
u/shivux [+2] (17 hours later)
The second type of necromancy doesn't require the consent of observers. People will be able to see and hear the ghost whether they want to or not. The ghost will be confined to a certain area though... probably tied or a flame of some kind. I'm not sure how the distance of an observer would effect the spell. I don't think it would make much of a difference aside form the time-delay problem I mentioned before. I'm thinking that, even if an observer is too far away to hear the ghost, it will probably still say the sorts of things they'd expect it to, as long as they were watching it.
u/Igigigif [+2] IT Foxgirl (17 hours later)
So if all nearby observers (lets say 3) expect the ghost to behave fairly normally, but an additional observer is looking at the ghost through a telescope. He expects the ghost to run in place and communicate only in mono-syllabic grunts. If the distant observer cannot observe the ghosts mouth or otherwise know what the ghost is saying, how will the ghost act?
what if 2 more people (with the same beliefs) join the watcher?
u/shivux [+1] (19 hours later)
The most "accurate" expectation wins out over the others.
In-world, they've actually done experiments to demonstrate this. An animal was trained to do one thing (let's say, pressing a white button) in response to a stimulus, and was observed behaving this way by one group of people... then it was re-trained to respond to the stimulus differently (pressing a black button), and observed behaving in this way by a different group of people. The animal was then killed and a ghost of it created using type II necromancy. When observed by the first group of people, the ghost respond to the stimulus in the way they had witnessed (pressing the white button), and when observed by the second group of people it responded in the way they had witnessed (pressing the black button). When both groups of people observed the ghost together, it responded to the stimulus in the way it was most recently trained to (pressing the black button) even if only one person in a large group of observers had seen the animal doing this while alive. The observers don't need to be in the same room, or even aware of each other... as long as they are both observing the same ghost, it will behave according to the most "accurate" expectation.
So, to answer your question, if the dead person habitually ran in place and communicated through monosyllabic grunts towards the end of their life, and the observer with the telescope had witnessed this but the nearby observers had not, then that's how the ghost would behave. Even if the dead person had just sincerely told the telescope observer that they would behave this way, if their ghost was ever created through necromancy... the ghost would behave that way as long as that person was observing them. However, if the dead person lied to the telescope observer about this, then the expectations of the other observers, even if they were completely unaware of the lie, would win out, and the ghost would behave normally. On the other had, if the observer the dead person lied to was the only one watching, the ghost would behave as they expected.
There was once an old theoretical magician who wondered what would happen if all of the observers' expectations were equally incorrect. He put some notes in a safe, with instructions that it only be opened after his death in the presence of his ghost (created through type II necromancy), and a group of younger friends he was sure would survive him. He then told each of them lies about what the note would say, and requested that they never mention it to anyone else, until the day the safe would be opened, when they should ask his ghost what would be inside.
When the magician died, and the safe was about to be opened, his younger friends all asked his ghost what was inside. First, each observing the ghost alone... and then all together. Alone with each of his friends, the magician's ghost would repeat the lie he told them before he died, but with all observing it together, the ghost was unable to answer the question straightforwardly... telling them it might easily be any of the possibilities he mentioned in life... or all... or none... until the safe was opened and the notes, revealing the nature of the magician's experiment, were read.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (7 hours later)
The first one is ethically dubious unless you can sustain the person's relict long term, otherwise you're basically bringing them back to life only to kill them again. It's too much like the first chapter of Greg Egan's novel Distress, which creeped me out so much I can't read it again.
u/None [+4] (18 hours later)
It's not ethically dubious to extend someone's life, even if it's only for a few minutes, even if you know in advance that they're only getting those few minutes. It would be unethical without their consent, though.
I imagine a small subset of the population would walk around with Do Not Necromance bracelets on.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (19 hours later)
I don't think you can call it "extending their life", really. They've already gone through dying, once, you're bringing them back to face that again, knowing they will know they're going to die, again, forever, after a short period of time.
I'd say you'd need affirmative consent ahead of time. If that's become the cultural norm, and it's something people expect, maybe.
Read the first chapter of Distress.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (3 days later)
really. They've already gone through dying, once, you're bringing them back to face that again, knowing they will know they're going to die, again,
Just like resuscitating a terminally ill person.
forever, after a short period of time.
This depends on how long necromancy lasts. Also I assume (or at least hope) that necromantic type 1 ghost simulacra don't feel pain and don't share the disabilities they had in life. So dying is no different than sudden and temporary unconsciousness coupled with amnesia. If a person would forget every memory they formed over the last day each time they go to sleep would you consider it unethical to ever let them wake up again? What if their last consistent memory (the one they wake up with each morning) is a painful accident coupled with the knowledge that they will in fact not be able to retain any new memories for more than a day?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 days later)
Read the first chapter of Distress.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (3 days later)
Can I do that for free? I'm not sure I want to buy a book just to read the first chapter as part of an internet discussion. Not with my current budget.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 days later)
u/shivux [+1] (12 hours later)
Most of the time the ghosts created by the first method don't last very long. The copies of their nervous-system are tied to an object (usually a candle, or something else portable) that must be burnt as the ghost is summoned. They can be “stored” indefinitely until the object is burnt, in an inert form that is (fortunately) non-conscious, and the object can be extinguished and relit multiple times. From the ghost's perspective, no time would pass in between their candle being extinguished and relit, they would seem to instantly jump into the future.
Of course, exactly how long the ghost lasts depends on what they're tied to. A ghost tied to an entire coal seam or natural gas deposit, for example, could last a very long time... though the magic rituals are difficult to adapt to such large objects, so attempts to do things like this are unreliable. It has nevertheless been attempted, and a few times even succeeded.
It certainly would be morally dubious to do this to people against their will, but in the cultures where this type of magic is traditionally practiced, it's something that's generally expected to happen, and is used, by the ghosts to "set their affairs in order", share last words with loved ones, witness their children's first steps... that kind of thing.
In modern times, there are also people who volunteer to pilot space-probes as ghosts, since they could be relit in as many years as it would take to reach their destination, and basically all they'd need is a supply of oxygen ... though they generally spend a bit of time on Earth beforehand.
This magic certainly can be abused. Dead enemy soldiers might be brought back and interrogated, for example, but this kind of thing has always been generally disapproved of... and in modern times there are probably all kinds of international treaties to prevent it.
I've never read Distress (or anything by Greg Eagan, actually). Is it any good?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (12 hours later)
Distress is good, pretty much anything by Greg Egan is good, but I would recommend starting with Permutation City or Diaspora.
Orphanogenesis, the first chapter of Diaspora, is available on his website... along with a bunch of other amazing stuff. I would allocate a day just to browsing it.
u/shivux [+1] (17 hours later)
cool thanks!
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (3 days later)
Woah. In this case I would find it very unethical to ever completely spend a candle. Or even spend part of it if not for very serious reasons or because the ghostified person in question made specific demands. All candle stumps should be stored until such time as someone develops a method to copy over ghost states from one burnable medium to another.
u/shivux [+1] (3 days later)
Yeah I can understand how some people might feel this way. In cultures where this kind of necromancy is practiced, it was always generally understood that the process will not extend your life indefinitely, just give you more time. Most people want their candles to be spent in the presence of their friends and family, often at significant occasions. I see no reason why multiple copies couldn't be made from the same nervous system before it degrades, but they would only share memories up to the time of death. Burning only one in the presence of family etc., while saving the other, would deny that copy these experiences. It would also abandon the copy to a completely unknown fate. There is no way of knowing if or when a method to copy ghosts from one medium to another will be developed, nor any way of knowing for sure that the candle won't be burned for some other reason, or simply destroyed, at some point in the future... So most people prefer to have their candles burnt within a few years, sometimes decades, after their death, and have some control over their final moments of consciousness.
Of course, I could definitely see some people preferring to have their candle stumps saved until, like you said, they figure out a way for ghosts to be transferred. In modern times though, I think they'd prefer to have their brains preserved cryogenically, since there's a better chance of creating transferrable copies with technology than magic, and in the mean time, as many new ghosts could be made from the frozen brain as they like.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (3 days later)
since there's a better chance of creating transferrable copies with technology than magic,
I wouldn't see why. We have no technology whatsoever that can manipulate or copy brainstates. Magic on the other hand is already capable of doing that. Applying science to find out how magic works out fundamentally and what binds a ghost to a burnable medium seems no less promising than applying it to biology and resuscitation of frozen brains.
and in the mean time, as many new ghosts could be made from the frozen brain as they like.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (3 days later)
How is it different from a doctor resuscitating someone who won't have a long time to live afterwards despite treatment? So far I know if you don't sign a "do not resuscitate" they will try to revive you even if your heart stops at the very date the doctors gave you when they estimated how long you still have to live after you were diagnosed with a terminal illness.
u/mycroftxxx42 [+3] (8 hours later)
What other kinds of magic are there? If most other magic involves linking the minds of the casters to an outside intelligence and using the combination to do work (elementals, translation magics, enchantments, etc.) then the second type of necromancy makes more sense and "fits" better.
However, if you have things like D&D clerical healing and the like, then the first type of necromancy is a better match. Either method requires massive amounts of computation/cognition to be performed by your source of magic.
u/shivux [+2] (17 hours later)
I think you misunderstand me, I'm planning on using both types of necromancy in my world, not trying to choose which one works better.
u/None [+3] (18 hours later)
With the second method - no need to have it happen FTL. Just have the signal broadcast at light speed, and the memories that affect the ghost also moving at c, with a semantic confirmation required to broadcast a reply signal. Sure, that would mean that a ghost observed by someone on Mars could act in a way unexpected by the person on Mars, but is that such a big deal?
u/shivux [+1] (19 hours later)
Yeah, if I understand you correctly, I think this is the most reasonable solution.
u/TimTravel [+3] (a day later)
Idea: seance-based necromancy. Requires the corpse of the deceased, ideally fresh and not brain-damaged. To produce the brain of the summoned ghost, damage in the brain of the corpse is corrected to match the memories of the people performing the seance. People who know more about the person will be able to produce a more accurate ghost, but anybody can produce an accurate ghost of someone very recently dead with an intact brain. You could even do it without the corpse if your co-necromancers know the deceased very well, but the ghost won't be able to give you any new information.
This has the added benefit that you can correct somewhat for brain damage of the corpse and you can also retrieve information that the dead person knew but told no one in life. You would still have to convince the ghost to tell you the information. The ghost would not immediately know that it is dead, but it could probably deduce that from its memories of dying and its knowledge of necromancy.
This solves the observation problem: corrections to brain damage are based only on the memories of the people who are "participating" in the necromantic seance. Even someone who is blind and deaf might participate in the seance. Maybe you could even allow bootstrapping: a ghost participates in the seance of another ghost.
Combined with memory alteration magic, you could intentionally distort the ghost to answer your questions even if it's someone who would refuse: brainwash several people into believing that the ghost would be willing to answer any questions you ask but have no other beliefs about the dead person, then have them participate in the seance.
If you really get down to it you have to define what counts as "damage" and what counts as knowledge of the deceased but it should be well-defined enough for fiction.
u/shivux [+2] (a day later)
This is a very good idea, thank you.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
You're welcome. It sounds interesting.
u/wendigo_days [+2] (24 minutes later)
What's the story?
u/shivux [+2] (12 hours later)
Just world building for now, but I'm thinking of setting a few different stories here, at various time periods. One would be a sort of pseudo-medieval detective story involving two necromancers (each using a different type) solving the apparent murder of some important political figure (like a lord or something).
u/ulyssessword [+2] (2 hours later)
It depends on what you want to do with the story, but for the first method, maybe use the caster's brain to fill in missing/damaged parts instead of a "generic" one. This would remove one magical element (what is a "generic" brain?) and add another set of munchkinable rules (How will the corpse respond to the neurotypical caster? The autistic one? The psychopath?)
I need to decide exactly what constitutes "observation".
I have a physically grounded system that I came up with for a superpower idea that should work for this. Basically, you need to simulate a universe where the ghost does something different than in the real world, wait one second, then compare universes. Anything that is different was observing it. This also answers whether video links work (yes, if low latency) or observing from the moon (no, >1s reaction time), as well as negating the need for time travel with the observations, just have a 1s delay on everything, whether it's in the room or 0.49 light-seconds away.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (7 hours later)
You can use a plot token that lets you observe alternate states of the ghost's wave function, or that calculates the degree of entanglement between the observer and the ghost.
You can also have the ghost borrowing nearby neurons to run its simulation, so rather than "observing" it's a matter of being "near enough".
u/Seeworthy121 [+2] (8 hours later)
What do these ghosts that aren't reanimated zombies interact with our world? Are they hosted on some tech? A weird shimmer in the air with a voice out of nowhere? What other laws [natural and gov.] are they subjected to/exempt from?
The 2nd method is an interesting problem. How DO ghosts know they are being observed. Have you looked into time delays on quantum states? I was under the impression that such states collapsed once any information reached an observer. Schroedender's cat is both alive and dead until information about either state reaches an observer. I would think the ghost then acts like the first person to observe it would expect it to act. At least, until that person stops observing it, then it would be the next person.
And now that I think about it, if the ghosts were visible [in addition to being corporeal] that could be an amazing game. Trying to work with your ghost pair to disrupt observation of others, slowly capturing all other ghosts. There would be stealth and violence and so much clever.
u/shivux [+1] (18 hours later)
I'm thinking the ghosts created by both types of necromancy will be tied somehow to a flame.
In the first type, the immaterial copy of the dead person's nervous system is actually tied to an object, usually some kind of candle, and "played back" as it burns. They can be stored indefinitely (in an inert, non-conscious state) until the candle is burnt, and the candle can be extinguished and relit multiple times. (From the ghost's perspective, no time would pass in between their candle being extinguished and relit, they would seem to instantly jump into the future.)
In the second type, the memory-based simulation is tied to the flame itself, rather than the burning object, and can't be stored (since the simulation is really just a continuous illusion dependant on observers, without any actual "content" of its own).
I haven't given too much thought as to how either would interact with the physical world yet... perhaps they'd be able to control any air heated by the flame, making it vibrate in order to speak, and creating currents of it to move things? Maybe light from the flame and light passing through the air is "bent" or scattered somehow, in order to create an image?
Ghosts created by the first method would probably have all the legal rights of a person... a person with a very short lifespan... sort of. Extinguishing them against their will wouldn't be a big deal, since their candles can easily be relit and the ghost suffers no ill effects from this. On the other hand, not extinguishing them when they wish to be extinguished (or making the object burn faster by introducing higher concentrations of oxygen) would probably be a serious crime, since it would mean forcing them to waste the precious little time they have left on something they don't want to. (This might not be a problem though, if they can control the air around the flame enough to extinguish themselves... like I said, I haven't worked out all the details of this yet.)
Ghosts created by the second method wouldn't have any rights at all, since they're not sentient themselves... just illusions created from the memories and expectations of people watching them. Their "testimony" however, is admissible in court, under certain circumstances. I mentioned before that this type of necromancy would be useful in murder trials, but there are potential problems with it that must be overcome. For one thing, a ghost may accuse an observer of their murder simply because that person knew they always hated them in life, and therefore expects the ghost to frame them. To avoid this, the circumstances of the ghost's death are not revealed to any of the observers, and upon an accusation, the ghost is questioned in detail about the crime scene and exactly how they were murdered. If the accusation is true, the ghost would "know" these details, because they really are being observed by the murderer (who would know these details as well). It is also necessary, therefore, to summon the ghost in front of each suspect individually, with a new necromancer and stenographer (also unaware of the details of the crime scene) each time... and in a controlled environment which ensures the ghost cannot be observed (and therefore influenced) by any outside party. (So... a locked, windowless, soundproof room, swept for bugs, basically.)
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
Ooh, cool.
I honestly don't think it matters overmuch if someone is looking through a telescope. Makes sense to me to just have a well-established range limit (a mile, say) and have it use all memories inside that area to construct the illusion.
(Incidentally, you could produce major historical figures with this, right? How about people who aren't dead, or who the observers don't know are dead? How about people the audience knows to be fictional?)
It's not entirely clear how flexible this system is (are these different "schools" of necromancy natural phenomena, or just the main necromancy-like applications of a modular spellcasting system?) Still, I'm really intrigued by the idea of "resurrecting" a damaged portion of someone's brain inside an implant, which is then connected to the still-living remainder of the brain to simulate normal function.
... actually, now that I think about it, this does allow for "zombies" of a sort, doesn't it? Plugging a resurrected consciousness into a pre-existing (hopefully braindead or condemned) human nervous system is a great way to create what are effectively brain emulations/robots in this system without needing the requisite tech level.
u/shivux [+2] (2 days later)
A range limit would certainly be helpful, but I feel like it would be defined too arbitrarily.
I'm thinking that most of the time, neither type of necromancy will work on living people. With the first type, the brain can't be alive while it's being magically "scanned" because living brains are constantly active. They don't "sit still" long enough for the magic to work. With the second type, it might be impossible to create simulacra of people the participants know to be alive, because the magic relies on some unique quality of memories of the dead... or at least, memories of people you know you will never see alive again. However, it may be possible to create simulacra of living people from the memories of someone who thinks they died.
In fact, I was thinking of using this as a plot point in a detective-style story where a someone fakes their death. A necromancer is called to create a simulacra in front of the deceased's family and the murder suspects (this was in the days before controlled conditions were required by a formal legal system) and, no matter what he tries, it doesn't work. The necromancer says he must simply be performing the ritual wrong (this was also in the days before this type of necromancy's means of operation was common knowledge), and later has a simulacra created in front of each person individually, in order to find the one person who knows the death was faked.
In a similar vein, I don't think you could use type II necromancy to create ghosts of historical figures or fictional characters. It has to be someone the observers actually knew in life. I suppose though, you could create a ghost based on someone's memories of a ghost based on someone else's memories... and continue this chain indefinitely. But eventually, the ghost might be nothing at all like the person it was based on. I mean, how accurate can a memory of a memory of a memory be?
There are no natural necromantic phenomena. The magic required for necromancy isn’t an "ambient" or natural aspect of the setting, it’s more like a special way of doing something unnatural that was given or shown to mortals by a god (who may have to be channeled, invoked, or given offerings during the process), and passed down from generation to generation.
There are lots of different types of magic that were given to mortals this way, each governed by its own specific principles and capable only of specific things. Sometimes each type of magic is thought of as a "spell"... and some people (wizards) devote themselves to learning and documenting different "spells" from around the world, becoming competent at using many different types of magic. However no single, comprehensive system of magic exists. There is no set of universal principles within which new "spells" can be invented or old ones modified... at least, none that has been found yet. Some people (theoretical magicians) are looking, but haven't had much luck.
Some types of magic are more flexible than others though. For example, type I necromancy can be used to simulate any system that processes information and "responds" to "stimulus" as long as the behaviour of that system can be inferred from its structure... It's not just limited to human or animal nervous systems. If your laptop's battery died, you could use type I necromancy to create a "ghost" of your laptop that would process information in the same way. I don't know if it could access the internet, and you definitely wouldn't be able to save files created on the ghost to your physical laptop, but you could use ghost to retrieve any information previously saved.
And yeah, well... it is possible to create machines designed to be piloted by ghosts, but I don't think they have direct "ghost-machine interfaces" like they have for living brains... probably for the same reason ghost laptops can't access the internet. These still come in really useful though. There are some people, for example, who volunteer to have their ghosts pilot space-probes after they die. As I explained in other comments, brain-emulation ghosts are stored within objects (usually candles) and "played back" as those objects are burnt. So they can be sent into space and awoken by a mechanism that lights the candle once the probe reaches its location, then all they'd really need is a supply of oxygen. The same technique used in the laptop example could also be used to give probes more computing power than they could otherwise carry into space... though it would still only be useable as long as the candle burns, and couldn't store any information once the candle was gone for good.