So I'm wondering if anyone has run across any quotes, excerpts, or books to point to, that might aid in the development of a Necromancer personality.

For my part in starting off this thread:

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Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in
the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe
away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?

Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What
was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives,who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

There has never been a greater deed,and whoever is born after us, for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto!"
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners: they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have
come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering, it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars and yet they have done it themselves!" It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo . Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they
are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

- Freidrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science", Book 3, 125 - "The Madman"

<<Between faith or theology and philosophy...there is no connection, or affinity... Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith...looks for nothing but obedience and piety...Faith, therefore, allows the greatest latitude in philosophical speculation, allowing us without blame to think what we like about anything, and only condemning, as heretics and schismatics, those who teach opinions that tend to produce hatred, anger, and strife.>>

<<If, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischeivous expedient could be planned or attempted. <It is> wholey repugnant to the general freedom...when law enters the domain of speculative thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those whodefend and follow them are sacrificed not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred and cruelty. If deeds alone could be made the ground of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversy by a hard and fast line.>>

Baruch Spinoza, Tractus Theologico-Politicus. <1670s>


It's a number, it gets bigger. That's the whole DR experience right there

The Complete Guide to Necromancers. It's a Dungeon Master supplement for the AD&D system (2nd edition, if they haven't bothered to update or combine it with other books) so the info isn't totally applicable, but it's a great source for ideas and insights regarding necromancers and necroclerics (normal clerics following gods with necromantic aspects such as spreading disease, poisoning, torture/pain infliction, and so on).

DISCLAIMER: THIS POSTER IS NOT A MEMBER OF STAFF AND HIS INFORMATION IS/MIGHT BE WRONG.

The best motivation I have ever read for Necromancer characters/philosophies are the wondering Exalted: Abyssals books. 1st or 2nd edition, as well as Exalted: Underworld.