Druid girl learns necromancy [closed]
Closed by System†on Aug 24, 2018 at 12:13
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I have an interesting plot ready, although there are a few missing blocks which I cannot develop.
Story:
A girl is a daughter of a druid. Druids are humans who live in the forest protecting animals and nature. They sometimes help humans but try to stay away from them, because humans destroy nature and animals. There is another class of exceptional humans - necromancers. There are two essences in this world built-in into ours - the essence of life and the essence of death.
The idea is that the girl druid starts to understand and love the essence of death as well as the essence of life, she is unique, but no one among the druids understands her. She find a few scrolls of necromancy and starts searching for the book of necromancy to learn the arts.
Meanwhile necromancers and druids are at war with each other, and only she can return balance to the world and stop this war.
The thing that I can't develop is, how to explain her raising love for the dead while loving the living. Why this certain child is connected with both life and death and why she is to bring peace to the conflict.
I mean, I have a scene where she ventures into the forest one day and sees a dead rabbit 50% fleshless. There's no way to help it, but she is studying necromancy from some scrolls she found and learns to raise the dead. So she raises this dead rabbit. It's corpse, entirely fleshless, returns to life and she plays with it, strokes it's bones and speaks to it like to a living rabbit, the fleshless body doesn't scare her, nor does she dislike the idea. The dead rabbit joins the living ones, and they play, it then becomes her pet and she takes it with her onward.
This girl doesn't support necromancy in the way necromancers do, but she honors the dead as much as the living and in the end learns both about the essence of life and the essence of death.
If something else is important to get a good answer, feel free to ask.
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1 answer
It doesn't make sense that something can be 50% eaten AND fleshless; if all that is left is bones, it is 100% eaten.
It sounds like the girl is using the tool of necromancy to further her love of the living; she is rejecting the permanency of death, and sees a way for the rabbit to "live" again, to enjoy play and affection. Perhaps this is due to some unique trauma from her own early childhood, the death of a sibling, friend, parent, or somebody she truly loved (in a non-romantic way of course, for a child). Back then, by eavesdropping on adults, she learned that necromancy could have brought this lost person back, and never understood why that would be wrong, because she wanted them back so badly.
Her ability is unique because of who she is and the unique tragedy she suffered. First, she is an independent thinker, a bit reckless and willing to break the rules: She proved that by sneaking around and eavesdropping in the first place; foreshadowing her later sneaking around excursion that found the necromancy scrolls, foreshadowing her even later sneaking around in playing around with necromancy spells; all of which would have been punished if anybody knew of it.
Also as an independent thinker, she does not automatically believe what others tell her, she wants things to make SENSE. She is not automatically afraid of what other people fear, unless it makes SENSE to be afraid.
So she doesn't fear the dead rabbit, or anything else dead. She only feels sorrow that the rabbit's play time is over, so she breaks the rules and does something about it. If there is some downside to necromancy, she doesn't realize that, because she is not being instructed by a teacher that knows that. There probably should be some downside to necromancy, or it makes no sense for the druids to be against it.
Characters can be unique in two ways; their natural born ability, or their unique path through life. The latter is more identifiable, and IMO should always be a big part of what makes them who they are.
For your girl, my suggestion above uses both: She is born to think differently and not automatically accept dogma, religion, or what others believe, it has to make sense to her. She is born undisciplined, willing to sneak around to hear and learn what she needs to understand things that adults are trying to keep her from. And she has a "unique" or at least rare history for a little girl, the death of a playmate or someone she loves.
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