Tani, The First Necromancer

A long, long time ago, a great plague ravaged the world. A 14-year-old girl, who had been alone at sea, hiding from her rapacious uncle in small dingy, returned to her island home to find everyone she knew dead. Tani, the learned young girl that she was, knew better than to approach and bury her dead kin and neighbors, but the emotional girl that she was, her heart would not stand still while they rotted away. So she built a great funeral pyre, and wearing thick gloves and a cloth around her face, dragged the victims onto it. Unfortunately for her, the plague was magical, and transmitted by mere proximity.

When Tani realized she was dying, she began to cry. She begged the universe not to allow her to die.

Something heard her cries. Whether that entity was cruelly malevolent, or full of sorrow and trying to save her as best as it could, is not known. It asked her if she would damn the world if it would mean she would go on, and in her smallness and fear, she said yes.

Tani became the first necromancer. While there were mindless, ravening undead before her, she was the first to retain her sapience, her free will, her emotions and sensations. Ballan Sur wanted to destroy her immediately, but Beryl Di'Namic would not permit it. She swore that if Ballan Sur raised his powers against Tani, she would create an endless number of races which were ageless and regenerated from harm immediately, such that it would inevitably grind Ballan Sur's cycle to a halt. The True Judge threatened Beryl in the matter, but the Laughing God found the idea of a relatively new goddess challenging Ballan Sur's authority on a matter of emotional feels so amusing he took her side and insisted that Tani be left alone. Ballan Sur, however, felt so strongly in the matter that a compromise was necessary.

Tani was allowed to become a divinity to spare her existance, but one without power, or even awareness of her own divinity.
Left alone on an island without people, with only books and nature, Tani soon realized something was wrong. She quickly cooled to the temperature of the environment, and her pulse became so sluggish she couldn't feel it. Desperately, she sought information, but her symptoms were entirely unlike those of the plague that took her kin, for she was in fact now undead. Desperately, she scrabbled through book after book, absorbing all the information she could, forgetting to eat for interminable stretches.

Eventually, Tiranel took a bit of pity on Tani, and delivered to her a tome of arcane formula, advanced and unknown. From these, Tani developed the principles of arcane necromancy, and came to realize that she herself showed all the signs of being undead. When she looked up, her understanding of the tome complete, she realized she was now undead; unliving but with the appearance and fluidity of life. She realized then, and only then, that years had passed, and she still looked like a child.

She struck out, into the world, not realizing her place among the pantheon; adrift, wracked with confusion. But still she developed her craft; squeamishness long past her, she learned to animate the dead, to manipulate the energy of living, and through it all, Ballan Sur was angry. Tani, in Ballan Sur's belief, was becoming the doom he had wanted to destroy, but The True Judge would not permit Ballan Sur to violate the agreement that had been reached, not even if it meant destroying the cycle of rebirth itself.

The Laughing God found this all very amusing, as Tani's power grew through entirely mortal means. Unbound by age or death she learned to manipulate life-force, deathly energies, and even souls themselves; her very nature drawing her to these powers, though other magics she learned through simple and honest effort.

Tani, through it all, remained benign, even given sometimes to fright, choosing to avoid confrontation if possible. Unfortunately for the world, others who learned from her, for she taught her arts freely at that time, were frequently quite malevolent in nature.

Ballan Sur eventually agreed to allow the bindings on Tani to lapse, if only to bring her out of the mortal realm, but the True Judge would not allow the agreement to be altered. However, the True Judge agreed that if Tani achieved godhood through effort a mortal would (theoretically) be capable of, then the agreement would be null and void. Ballan Sur thus began his efforts to, far from hindering Tani, actively aiding her in her quest for knowledge.

Of course, the Laughing God found the situation of Tani, the Undead Girl Goddess who thought she was something not mortal and not god, and perhaps not without cause, to be so funny, that he began acting against Ballan Sur's efforts, resulting in a stretch of time in which a series of hilarious accidents began to happen to Tani, causing her great setbacks even as she discovered new and deeper arcane secrets.

To this day, Tani shivers whenever she sees a soapy frog. However, she persevered, her quest for knowledge unending, since she had no mortal wants beyond sex and knowledge, and had difficulty finding lovers who weren't either so young she could barely relate to them, or unhealthily interested in her apparent age.

Eventually, the First Necromancer's image, of a girl brandishing a staff topped with a skull, had become so pervasive throughout the world, and she was believed to be a goddess by so many mortals and venerated as such, and her mastery of arcane magic (not only her own school but all schools,) was so extreme, that the Judge decreed she had earned goddesshood through her own efforts, and the agreement thus became null and void.

Thus liberated from the ignorance she languished under, Tani took her place among the gods and goddesses. Her legacy is one which is mixed; while many, perhaps even a majority, of necromancers use their abilities foully, the art is not inherently evil, even if it does screw somewhat with Ballan Sur's Cycle when people start using souls to power arcane workings, or binding them to unliving bodies that the person they were may be preserved.

Tani is a steadfast ally of Beryl and Tiranel, who were her own allies long before she knew it (and the latter of whom she both adventured with and laid with many times while she wandered the world.) She is warily respectful of Ballan Sur; unable to forgive him for wanting to destroy her, as she remains the girl frightened of death at her core, but unable to turn a blind eye to Ballan Sur's aid in her quest for knowledge.

She is the one of the first deities worshiped by necromancers, even those whose worship she would rather not have. She encourages those who actually listen to her beliefs and not simply her factual teachings to be responsible necromancers, to avoid unduely perverting the cycle beyond what is reasonable and sustainable, to be respectful of death as much as of undeath, and to use their powers for non-malevolent ends. She is also venerated as a goddess of magic and knowledge, for obvious reasons.

But who the hell, or WHAT the hell, offered to preserve her in the first place? (probably The Laughing God, for giggles)