Stigmatic Healing

What is Stigmatic Healing?

Healing via wound transfer is one of the more sacred necromantic arts. Stigmatic healers take on some of the wounds that they heal. Generally, the stigmatic healer is more superficially wounded than the person they are healing, though in time stigmatic wounds risk becoming persistent and slow-healing, as they are proper necromantic decay injuries.

Is all necromantic healing stigmatic?

As all necromantic spellcasting invites necromantic decay, it is arguably true that all necromantic healing spells are stigmatic, and all necromantic healers start out as stigmatic healers. However, the best necromantic healers typically consider stigmatic wounds to be a form of unduly exalted novitiate work. Safeguarding the necromantic core and "healing with decay" are considered the true essentials to mastering the art of healing with necromancy. With these attitudes, many of the best healers are stigmatic healers only while they are in training, and their graduation is marked by moving on from stigmatic healing.

Healing spells cast by undead necromancers are almost never stigmatic. Necromancers who do not learn in life to cast non-stigmatic healing spells cannot continue healing after their demises, and stigmatic healers who suffer death due to necromantic decay are most notably among the necromancers who quest among the land gods for resurrection, to continue their sacred art.

What are the advantages of persisting with stigmatic healing?

While elite necromancers may deride stigmatic healing, the land gods and the general public both look on it with favor. Stigmatic healers who become renowned for their self-sacrificing and very pain-tolerant dedication to healing others develop an unusually strong capacity of healing from necromantic exertions... at least as long as those necromantic exertions fall within the sphere of the sacred (or positive) necromancies.

Among the necromantic arts, it stands out as particularly unusual to die of stigmatic healing. Only torturously awesome feats of stigmatic healing have ever been recorded to kill a necromancer. In this way a dedicated stigmatic healer who risks their life can sometimes outperform an elite (non-stigmatic) necromantic healer. Accumulated superficial wounds may make life miserable, but the geomantic interface of stigmatic healers eventually develops resilient channels for healing.

Are there any disadvantages of stigmatic healing besides the pain?

Many of the best necromancers treasure their unpredictability before Fate. While novice stigmatic healers are still surprising the land gods, persisting with this art eventually becomes predictable to the land gods. When the geomantic interface under the repeated assault of stigmatic healing develops resilient channels for healing, that is the point at which the stigmatic healer becomes Fated to continue healing other people in this painful way.