Zoological Necromancy

Materials Needed:

• Body
• Soft things, like pillows and blankets
• Long, thick gloves
• Vial
• White chalk or other fine powder (for drawing)

Prep / Set-Up

The first thing you ought to do is make sure you have all the materials you will need and know how to use them. The best way to do this is read the entire guide *first* and *then* collect them.

Now that you’ve properly prepared your materials, it’s time to start setting up. You’ll need to make sure you have a large enough area cleared out. This could be floor space for large animals, like a deer, or a table if you’re reviving a cat. In this area, you need to draw the ritual circle using a fine powder that won’t easily rub away, such as white chalk. If you can’t precisely draw it in a small area, then just use a large area regardless of the animal you’re reviving. If it’s not done well, the ritual is likely to fail.

Within the circle, you can now start laying out your soft pillows and blankets. Make sure that there is enough padding for it to be comfortable and safe for the revived animal. Rest the body within the padded ritual circle and add more padding as needed.

For yourself, have ready a small vial of your own blood. The fresher, the better, but it’s easier to have it ready so that the process moves on quickly and safely. Also put on long, thick gloves before starting.

Retrieving the spirit

The next step is to retrieve the animal’s spirit. You need to cast the spell to create a gate between life and death. This is a fairly simple process if you know what you’re doing, and then you can start looking for the spirit. If you use the animal’s body as your spell focus, it will make the gate act as a sort of beacon to the spirit you need, making it much easier to find. Once you are sure you have the correct spirit, carefully grab it and pull it through the gate. Then you will guide it to the body and begin the ritual.

Merging the body and spirit

The purpose of this ritual is to help get the body working properly. If you skip the ritual, you’ll end up with just a regular zombie, and we don’t want that.

Start chanting the ritual as you guide the spirit into the body. Now is also when you make the offer of your own blood, whether that was prepped or if you decided to give a more “fresh” supply.

Begin removing the death magic that already fills the body. It needs a place to go, and that’s what you use the blood for. At the same time, you’ll take the life magic from the blood and put it into the body. It’s important to do this quickly and carefully, because this is an unnatural cycle for life and death magic and it will work to move against you.

Also be mindful: the animal is going to start thrashing. This is often dangerous for both the caster and the animal, as physical injuries are common due to this. If you prepared properly, though, you should both be safe.

You know the ritual is done once you can no longer remove any death magic from the animal, and the animal has calmed down.

Aftercare

You’ll start first by making sure that the animal is not injured, and treat what injuries might have occurred. Make sure it is warm and comfortable, because it might not be quite ready to move around yet. It’s a big change, being brought back from the dead. If it’s awake, talk to it and reassure it as you go. Otherwise, make sure you’re around when it does wake again.