Necromancy is a school of magic involving specialized Kinesis Magic along with the production of magical artifical minds (MAM's). It is the primary use case of MAM's, and has produced the majority of its research. Public perception of necromancy is largely neutral — it is after all mostly dangerous to the caster, and only involves what minimal mind magic is necessary to control the MAM's.

Necromancy is a material magic, as it is impossible to utilize without a puppet. A puppet can be made of any magically conductive material, however bones are most often used as they are easy to acquire, easy to enchant, easy to move, and easily fit together. The majority of necromancers that utilize bone puppets ascribe to vulture necromancy. However, puppets can be composed of anything, living or nonliving.

Necromancy is performed by affixing kinesis magic to the armatures of a puppet, and then integrating a stable, simple MAM to "animate" the puppet. A major side-effect of this is that a simple mind sustained on and using magic floods the area with blank stardust, effectively wiping all existing captured stardust nearby.

The complexity of MAM's used in necromancy vary wildly based on the use. Very simple MAM's can be used to repeat simple instructions indefinitely, while more complex options allow more nuance, independence, and access. Experienced necromancers may animate puppets that can reorder themselves, or be remotely controlled—in some cases are they able to contact the necromancer given a set of conditions.

True sentience in a MAM is widely accepted to be purely theoretical. Constructing a proper feedback loop not only requires more refined techniques than are currently available, but requires a large amount of hostable material and available magic. There are no known attempts to execute such a plan, and it is thought to be a far future possibility and nothing more.

Necromantic script combines specialized kinesis words with words for MAM creation. This simplifies rearrangement and placement of kinesis frames within the puppet, along with allowing more control over the initial conditions of the MAM. The script is not meant to be used to control puppets however, as the process has been deemed impractical to execute in script due to the dynamicism required of the caster.

A lich is any creature that is animated through necromantic kinesis magic, using a living mind instead of a MAM. Often, liches are self-made, but with cooperation performing the process on another is trivial. Normally transformation into a lich is done to extend the life of an individual, though many other precautions must be made to prevent side-effects that would instead stunt life.

The first major side-effect of lichification is muscle atrophy. Because the mind's orders to move are being intercepted by the kinesis frame, after becoming a lich muscles are no longer used. This often causes young liches to appear gaunt, pale and bony, without apparent hinderance to their movement or other functions. This imbalance may compound over time, leading to decreased appetite, lethargy, migraines, depression, and nerve damage.

The second major side-effect is decomposition, especially of soft tissue and brain matter. As soft tissue decays, it can cause blindness and deafness, which often exacerbate the tendencies described below. Preventing this is as simple as constructing magical equivalents, either during the lichification process or after, and including them in the structure of the kinesis frame interface.

The deterioration of the mind-hosting brain matter causes what are known as "Mad Liches", driving compulsive violent and megalomaniac tendencies. In this time between the death of the physical body and the full decay of the mind-hosting matter, a lich becomes increasingly dangerous and violent, inhabiting lairs and building power however it can. The final degredation is marked by a sudden dramatic drop in coherence and complex thought, after which the resulting body can be considered braindead, and no more complex than a common necromanced.

Preventative measures are various, and an active field of study. Mummification is a common, reliable way to ensure the body is preserved, but extra care must be taken with the brain so as not to disrupt its physical structure and thus lose hosted mind. Mind transferrence is a risk-laden process, but allows a lich's mind to inhabit a much more permanently immortal body. At present however it unavoidably involves some mental loss in the transfer, and is therefore generally seen as an inferior option.

Using chronomancy to freeze the physical state of the brain has been theorized, but current sources do not have sufficient magical output to make even slowing the brain down a practical option. Periodic biotransmutation runs keep the body healthy for a time, but incompletely, and with the use of intensive procedures performed often; research is underway to improve both these aspects.

Healing magic used on undead will have no different effects than normal — that is, extra nutrients will be infused and processes will be accelerated. On undead specifically however, this means an acceleration of decay rather than rejuvenation of the flesh.