To Discern Death
13th of March 2007 A.D.
With a grimace at once genuine and meant to hide the truth Harry cannot allow out you explain into the dead air of the meeting room: "We were following a spirit long in Kemmler's company. It is gone at least. Could we have done the same to the one we found there in the depths?" You give a shrug heavy with frustration. "I don't know, but it might by his own words have called worse things from the depths. Given a choice to react with violence on one hand and mercy on the other, both equally uncertain the latter seemed... best."
Two pairs of eyes scrutinize your reaction, wiser and more piercing than either alone could be, but not for nothing did the old wizard call you 'Carpenter', he knows whose daughter you are and surely he knows how a knight would have chosen at that crossroad. The only piece of the puzzle absent, the only lie of omission, is that you could have simply left Aakebushu there, by the lightless waters. It's not hard to imagine how he something so dreadful might have been as hostile as the mortwrights... and imagine it thus does Jospeh Listend to the Wind.
Molly and Lydia lose 1 Essence (Excelencies)
The only reason you do not breathe a sigh of relief is that it would have given the game away and you imagine the same is true of Tiffany to your left and Lydia to your right, Harry being lucky enough to be behind the pair and thus not under their scruteny for his own part in the secret.
"Kemmler... of course it would be the old bone gnawer. There's a part of me that still... ah, never you mind, won't help us now. More important things to talk about now." He turns to Harry. "Ever wonder why it's so easy to raise the dead? Relatively of course, but it's easier to get a skeleton to start moving around and mauling people than it is to do the same with a pile of rocks."
"Regrets, people clinging to life..."
"Dinosaurs too?" Listens to the Wind asks, the faintest shadow of a smile tilting at the corners of his mouth. "What would a beast know about regret after its laid down its head to die? That's a Christian thing, no offense meant Ms Carpenter, blaming the bad on the fallen nature of man, man has a lot to attone for, but it's not all us, its older than us, other worlds that came before this one and died, now lying unresting at the root of the world, wanting, needing to die, but not able to."
"What, like undead
planets? Hells bells..." It is rare to see Harry in a crunch without a quip, but this manages to shake him.
Alas for him the older wizard just shakes his head. "No, no, nothing so small, older natures, older elements, things you and I will never see alive but which are still remembered, vast amalgamations out of time that pull on flesh and bone and spirit. They can't come back, but in their dreaming death, they can force other things to be, wrong, twisted that is the heart of what some call 'the black art of necromancy'. 'Art''s a foolish word for it, it implies something with purpose and meaning, but I couldn't tell you what wiser heads call it because the trully wise don't call it anything at all."
"Is there a point to this?" Tiffany asks, a little brosquely.
"Not everyone whose ever served on the White Council was wise. There's spellbooks locked away behind iron, silver and salt that do not perform raise any corpses no, but they still do necromancy in the older way."
"As divination," Lydia cuts in. "You can find the places were the darkness is stronger or... will be stronger?"
"Fates that are burning black," Listens to the Wind agrees with a sigh that seems to come from the very depths of his being. "They were meant to find necromancers before they could run rampant and for a long,
long time they did their job well."
Regained 2 Essence (Urge of the Forbidden)
"Until Kemmler," you guess.
A nod grave as... you would say death, but perhaps more than that given the subject at hand. "They might be able to find these shards let loose." What's spoken is clear enough and so is what is not: This seeking, this 'older necromancy' is looking into the powers of death. One who learns that much could easily learn more.
"The Council discontinued the practice when it failed to track Kemmler or was it used against his heirs?" you guess, the old wizard confirms you guess aright. Given the risks of starting into the face of death-beyond-death and the fact that is had failed once before it was deemed too great a risk to use. Yet wizards will be wizards, the spells were not struck from record, final the spellbook was not burned, but kept back against some other more urgent need... which is what you are being offered now in recompense for all you had done for the White Council, not a decision lightly made.
Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 10/18
Molly Willpower 7/9
What do you say?
[] Use the spells of finding
-[] Listens to the Wind does it as the most senior wizard available in time
-[] Harry does it, maybe Awakened Essence will shield him
-[] In another life you might have been a wizard and you have been gaining more and more skill with magic of late, if only in the breaking. You will try
[] There is another way
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: All that goodwill Molly and Co got with the Council isn't just for show. Wizards know things, it is their nature, wthether you would call that wise necesarily depends on who you ask. 
