Via Lemurae

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The Via Lemurae is one of the nine vias, or "ways", of mages in the Ars Magica - a subset of the school's formalized magical theories. The Via Lemurae is the "way of shades", and finds itself concerned with the arts of necromancy, and the study of death, undeath, and divinity. Scholarship of this via is perhaps weaker than almost any other subject in the Ars Magica school, due to laws against necromancy in both Bastonia and the Atarlie Empire. Ars Magica institutions which permit the study usually limit it to basic topics like the preservation of the dead or the disruption of the undead. The Royal Osmic Society is well known among Bastonian practitioners as possibly the best school from which to get an education in the Via Lemurae as the school does not restrict its use directly - however, the school is also famous for the extreme level of ethical oversight it opposes on its members. Abusing the privilege of study is the cause of more expelled members of that order than any other category of offense save for accepting bribes.

Especially in Bastonia, mages are best advised to keep their knowledge of this school a secret; paranoid locals have been known to take "justice" into their own hands, justified or not. Atarlie practitioners who attract too much attention to their study of this via often excuse themselves as devotees of Lysanthir Lugolor, whose special role in funeary and mourning rites as well as the ongoing worship of the atarlie ancestors actually require some base familiarity with the school.