"It's generally agreed that an 'improper burial' increases the likelihood of a dead mortal coming back as one of the Restless Dead, but it's not generally agreed on what constitutes an 'improper burial'. Many claimed that 'Fire-less Cremation' constitutes an improper burial and this led calls to this spell being banned as maleficium, but there is a bigger reason that made this spell fall out of favor. Necromancers learned this spell and repurposed it into a devestating weapon of total warfare. This spell can rapidly increase the decomposition of a dead body, any dead body, not a just a mortal one. The spell can put many years of decomposition on a single human-sized dead body or it can apply months of decomposition to a much larger quantity of dead bodies. A slab of salted pork is the flesh of a dead body. A barrel of pickled fish is a bunch of dead bodies. If this spell is cast on meat, fish poultry, eggs or dairy product it can ruin a large amount of food very quickly. Sabotaging stores of food is a terrifying weapon of war. The spell will not affect livestock that is...alive. But it's easy enough to slaughter livestock than ruin the meat. At certain periods in history in certain nations this spell was branded as maleficium and therefore made illegal. Usually this spell was forgotten and stopped being used altogether so the maleficum rules fall off the books. Then the spell is rediscovered and the cycle repeats after outcries against it lead to to it being banned, then the spell goes back to being mostly forgotten. The spell is not completely forgotten. If you are fighting necromancers, the original purpose of denying them bodies to reanimate still works. We have the formulae for the spell in some dusty tomes if necessary."Fire-less Cremation", sometimes nicknamed "Mystic Worms" is a spell intended to artificially speed up the decomposition of dead bodies though it does not do any damage to undead entities. According to legend, this spell was created by mages from a now defunct Red Era barbarbian tribe of humans that supposedly hated undead. The idea is that this spell makes a corpse unsuitable for reanimation or at the very least it'll make sure that if a necromancer does renimate the corpse, the bones will be weaker making the undead warriors much easier to defeat.
Effect
The caster rolls Strength + Transmutation or Strength + Necromancy to acclerate the decomposition of a corpse or piece of a corpse in line of sight. The spell can be cast "narrowly" or "broadly".
If cast narrowly, each success rpolled. can mimic about ten years of decomposition on a mass of meat and bones equivalent to human sized body. Five successes could apply fifty years of decomposition to a single human body or apply ten years of composition to ten goblin bodies for instance.
If cast broadly or apply about a year of decomposition to the equivalent mass of meat and bones of five human sized bodies or say ten de-boned cured pigs.
Discovery
The spell was developed by a mage who was a Necromancer and a Transmuter but modern mages learn either the Transmutation or the Necromancy version which count as convergent spells.
Related School
Transmutation OR Necromancer
Effect Duration
Forever
Effect Casting Time
Standard A-action
Range
line of sight
Level
Second Circle
Applied Restriction
This spell has no affect on living tissue.
The spell has no affect on plant matter.
It has no affect on active or primed undead.
The spell impact on bodies with more than a few years of natural decomposition already.
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