Building a Magic System: No-Eyes’ Necromancy

Recently, I started work on a new short story that deals with necromancy. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve had to flesh out the details of a magic system, and I wanted to share the thought process that went into it.

Narrative & Inspirations

First, I want to talk about the story, since for me, worldbuilding (especially magic systems) should be strongly connected to the overarching themes of the world and the story itself. 

Narrative

The protagonist of the story is Ryna, a duelist and martial artist who has been forced into paying her debt to a noble house by working as a bodyguard for the necromancer Sozu (a pseudonym of No-Eyes, who’s a recurring character in my stories). Ryna is empathetic, compassionate, and comes from a culture where ghosts are treated with respect, while No-Eyes is callous, selfish, and cruel, and captures ghosts so he can sell them to be eternal slaves to the living. 

The main conflict of the story is whether Ryna chooses to retain her ideals (empathy, compassion, and respect for others) or compromise them by working with No-Eyes. 

I wanted No-Eyes’ necromancy to exacerbate this conflict by being something abominable and antithetical to Ryna’s beliefs. I also wanted it to reflect No-Eyes’ key traits: his cruelty, his penchant for manipulating others, and his use of cunning instead of brawn to get what he wants.

Inspirations

No-Eyes’ usual modus operandi boils down to one key idea: manipulating people is much more effective than overpowering them, and all he needs to do is find the right leverage. I imagined that No-Eyes wouldn’t capture ghosts by fighting them with a sword or fireballs—he would find the ghost’s deepest, most painful weakness and exploit it to capture them. 

From this, two concepts came to mind from very different places:

The first was Philip K. Dick’s quote: “There exists, for everyone, a sentence—a series of words—that has the power to destroy you.” 

To me, this quote evokes the idea that there are destructive truths about a person that they refuse to acknowledge, because if those truths were articulated, they would threaten their self-image or sense of identity. 

The second was the work of Julia Kristeva on the topic of “the abject”, which has been described as:

…“that which does not ‘respect borders, positions, rules’ and ‘disturbs identity, system, order’…For Kristeva, abjection is rooted in our sense of identity. She writes that ‘the abject has only one quality of the object and that is being opposed to I’.”

I imagined that, for No-Eyes, fighting and capturing a ghost would involve delving into that ghost’s very being and finding the one thing that would threaten to unravel their sense of self.

Another inspiration came from the AT Fields in Neon Genesis Evangelion, which serve as a kind of protective barrier for EVAs and the Angels but are later revealed to be something more profound: the AT Field marks the boundary of the soul, or the self.

Before an EVA can destroy an Angel, it has to break down the Angel’s AT field. This is accomplished in part by using physical violence (gunfire, knives, spears, etc), so each battle necessarily involves violently ripping apart the protective barrier around the enemy’s self. When the Angels do the same to the EVA pilots, the result is a mental breakdown and the degradation of their ego.

The idea of breaking down a protective barrier around the soul of a ghost meshed nicely with the idea of the abject, so I decided to run with it.

Worldbuilding

But what is a ghost? What is a soul? And what is magic? This is where having a wider, conceptual framework for worldbuilding is helpful.  

Magic & the Soul

In my world, casting a spell is a symbolic act in which a person expresses the will to change something in the world. A person’s physical body and mind may participate in casting a spell (by speaking a word with the vocal cords or thinking through a series of words mentally, etc), but those are just the bridge between the world and the core of a person’s being: the soul.

In this world, the soul is the source of a person’s ability to perform magic. Each person’s soul has an almost unlimited capability to change the world, so every person has the potential to achieve god-like power. However, because the soul is clothed in flesh and mediated by the mind, its ability to exert this power is limited.

At the same time, a person’s body and mind serve as bulwarks of the soul: they protect others from manipulating or harming the soul with magic. The strengths of these defenses can be cultivated through meditation, exercise, and other practices, but they can also be harmed and degraded by disease, grief, and other forces.

The Many Facets of Magic

One of the books that shaped how I approach magic in my world is a book called Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It’s a monster of a read, but a key idea is that the mathematics of Godel, the artwork of M.C. Escher, and the music of J.S. Bach can all be seen as different expressions of the same thing.

Similarly, magic in my world can be performed in many different ways, but all methods are different modes or expressions of the same, underlying thing. The main methods are:

• Audiomancy (casting spells using music or sounds)
• Kinetomancy (casting spells using movement and dance)
• Graphomancy (casting spells using drawn or written symbols).

Within each of these, there’s even more room for unique expression—for example, kinetomancy might take the form of a dance or a martial arts kata, while audiomancy might be performed with one’s voice or a musical instrument.

Though the main methods above are the most popular and robust, I imagine that there would be hundreds or thousands of other strange or niche methods, like the ritualistic killing of animals or the weaving of tapestries.

Likewise, I imagine that necromancers can operate in vastly different ways. One might try to lull a ghost to sleep with audiomancy spells, another might try to use kinetomancy to try to take control of a ghost like a puppet, while a third might try to lure a ghost to step into a graphomantic ritual circle so it can be bound.

Ghosts

Once a person dies, their soul leaves their body. One would expect this to lead to a kind of apotheosis, as the god-like soul is finally freed from its restraints, but something else happens: death shatters the mind, but doesn’t dispel it. It clings to the soul, binding it to the shards of memories and personality that remain. 

This causes the apotheosis to become tainted, leaving most ghosts as warped but powerful beings with only pieces of their old personality left. Because their soul is no longer constrained by flesh, a ghost’s ability to perform magic becomes much more potent, making a fight with a ghost very dangerous.

The form of the ghost becomes a manifestation of its shattered mind, usually reflecting the traumas, passions, desires, or fears that shaped the person in life. This form is a kind of mental projection, but because of the ghost’s latent magic, it takes on physical properties, too, like the ability to interact with physical objects or bleed when cut. This phantasmal body straddles the line between corporeal and non-corporeal.

A ghost’s soul is only protected by the remnants of their shattered mind, and once those defenses have been breached, a mage (especially a necromancer) gains the ability to perceive and manipulate portions of the ghost’s soul.

The Magic System

Now that we’ve talked about the story, the inspirations, and the broader worldbuilding, we can talk about the specifics of No-Eyes’ form of necromancy.

To reiterate, I wanted No-Eyes’ method to reflect his background and personality, including:

• His familiarity with anatomy and surgery
• His tendency to exploit psychological weaknesses to manipulate people
• His cruelty and callousness

With these in mind, I decided that No-Eyes’ necromancy would be a kind of spiritual vivisection, in which he:

1. Overwhelms a ghost’s mental defenses with a wave of anguished or painful memories
2. Cuts them open to inspect their soul and find a memory or thought that he can use to evoke the abject (the one thing they can’t stand to face)
3. Confront the ghost with the abject and torture them with it until they agree to be bound in his grimoire.

Graphomancy & Magical Tools

Graphomancy is the most common form of magic in my world, although it’s also the most inflexible and time-consuming, since it involves hand-writing very intricate, mandala-like patterns called ‘sigils’ made of thousands of symbols. However, graphomancy is also the most ‘durable’ or ‘portable’ kind of magic, since inscribing a sigil on something allows it to be evoked later, even repeatedly.

I imagined that No-Eyes would have a pair of gloves inscribed (ie, “enchanted”) with graphomancy sigils that allow him to perform magic. However, because he wouldn’t be able to change the sigils, he would have to choose them carefully.

At this point, I decided to give No-Eyes another tool: a grimoire. In this world, a “grimoire” is a generic term for a book used in spellcraft. It’s usually filled with graphomantic spells, but I decided that No-Eyes’ grimoire would be multi-purpose: not only would it store his graphomancy spells, it would store the ghosts he captured.

Throwing Memories

At first, I imagined that No-Eyes would use his enchanted gloves to draw painful memories out of his mind and sling them at a ghost in order to overwhelm their mental defenses. However, a question arose: what exactly did a ghost experience when a memory was ‘thrown’ at it? Did it relive the memory from the point of view of No-Eyes? I didn’t think that No-Eyes would like that, since he would be revealing things about himself, like moments of fear, guilt, or pain. 

I decided that when No-Eyes throws a memory at a ghost, they don’t live out that memory—instead, that memory strikes a chord within the ghost and causes them to relive a similar painful memory of their own. For example, if No-Eyes throws a memory of intense loss, such as the death of a child, it would evoke memories of loss within the ghost, such as being separated from a lover or watching a parent die. If a ghost didn’t have strong, painful memories associated with the thrown memory, the effect wouldn’t be as powerful.

Since No-Eyes wouldn’t always have strong, painful memories that were relevant to every ghost, I decided that No-Eyes’ grimoire would serve a third purpose: in addition to being a repository for spells and ghosts, it would be a repository for memories drawn from other people’s minds. I imagined that No-Eyes would pay people to draw painful memories from them and store those memories in his book for later use.

Binding & Vivisection

Once a memory has been thrown at a ghost, I imagined that it would start to thrash, scream, and writhe, as if it were being physically tortured. For No-Eyes to perform his ‘vivisection’, he’d need the ghost to be still. To accomplish this, I decided that No-Eyes would cast a kinetomancy spell (by moving his hand in a relatively simple eight-pointed star pattern), which would create a binding circle that would allow him to manipulate the body of the ghost and force it to lie down with limbs outstretched.

From there, No-Eyes would use the enchantment on his second glove to begin the vivisection, which would involve peeling back the layers of the ghost’s personality, memories, and emotions to peer into their soul and find something that he could use to unravel the ghost’s sense of self.

When I tried to imagine what this process would be like, I initially imagined No-Eyes being forced to relive some of the ghost’s memories, but that was a) difficult to describe in an interesting way from an external perspective and b) too similar to other depictions of entering people’s souls/minds. 

Instead, I decided that No-Eyes would begin physically taking things out of the ghost’s chest cavity, like a wedding ring or a favorite childhood toy. These phantasmal objects would be analogous to a ‘complex’ in psychology or psychoanalysis—a cluster of emotions, thoughts, and memories bound around a central event or thing. I imagined that Yute would be able to sense intuitively if they had the power to unravel the ghost.

Once No-Eyes found an object that was powerful enough to threaten the ghost with, he would hold it in his hand and gain insight into what emotions, memories, or thoughts were associated with it, then use that knowledge to confront the ghost.

Confronting the Ghost

The final step is No-Eyes using the knowledge gained from one of the objects to provoke a breakdown in the ghost. I imagined this would take the form of No-Eyes exposing a deep-seated flaw in the person’s personality, or accusing them of doing or thinking something deeply shameful, selfish, or hateful. 

To me, this echoes a common subconscious fear: that someday, somehow, someone will see how disgusting or worthless we really are and say it out loud, or our worst secrets will be revealed in front of our peers, causing them to reject us.

Neon Genesis Evangelion has an example of this kind of scene:

In the clip above, the cast of characters take turns acting as a kind of interrogator, relentlessly questioning Shinji and denying his excuses until he breaks down and screams for someone to help him.

This is the kind of breakdown I imagined No-Eyes inducing in a ghost—accusing and terrorizing them until they are unable to take it anymore, at which point No-Eyes offers to stop if they allow themselves to be sealed in his grimoire.

Conclusion

One thing I thought about while working on No-Eyes’ necromancy was how No-Eyes is essentially acting as a rogue, magical psychoanalyst for ghosts. He has the capability of helping these ghosts to work through the things that may be tormenting them—guilt, shame, fear, hatred, and so on, but instead he weaponizes and exploits them. He couldn’t do what he does without the insights granted by empathy, but he doesn’t feel compassion for the people he manipulates. 

For me, this contradiction is part of what makes No-Eyes a truly horrific villain, but also an interesting character to write.

I think the best pieces of worldbuilding work on multiple levels (you can see my two-part analysis of Bloodborne to see an example of what that looks like), and I think No-Eyes’ necromancy works on at least three:

1. It furthers the central conflict of the story in which it appears.
2. It reveals more about the character using it.
3. It says something thought-provoking about the human condition (the way the truth can threaten our sense of selves).

In addition, I wanted this magic system to be relatively intuitive and simple, so it would be easy for a first-time reader to follow and understand. Making the magic more tangible (by interacting with the ghost’s body and using the metaphor of surgery) helped accomplish that, I think.

There’s an ongoing discourse about soft and hard magic systems in fantasy, but I’m an advocate for not making magic analogous to science (as I wrote about in this essay for Clarkesworld). No-Eyes’ necromancy has rules and a logic behind it, but ultimately, it intersects with something immeasurable: the breaking point of a human soul.