Winter Wolf said:
Kezoor is described as the head of some Cenerese subfaction on the edict form Queen Evaine. So I guess that both of those examples have Cener links.
Yep. Keezor is called "the Renegade Shaman of Mogaruith"... and, as we all know, Mogaruith is the main base of the Ceners. Thus, Keezor is either a Cener, or learned his dark arts from them. Gardor Vehz is called "Chief Druid of Malis Mound", and while we have no idea what Malis Mound is, Druid implies Cener Druid... I'd say he could easily be one of the Ceners sent out from Ruel to stir up evil.
Then there's Roark - and while he seems to draw much of his power from Tagazin, he had to learn how to call the demon-lord up in the first place. I direct your attention to the map, though - Salony is RIGHT upriver from Ruel...
I never really saw "necromancy" as that common an art in Magnamund - the people most capable of it all seem to either have direct links to Naar, Ixia, or the Ceners. I certainly wouldn't consider it a PLAYABLE class... unless you're using the Cener Druid option.
Winter Wolf said:
The more interesting one from my point of view is Vonator who was clearly practicing Necromantic magic on a vast scale after his defection to the Darklords. Yet I could see nothing in "The Darklands" to support him learning his necromantic art there.
The trick with Vonotar, though, is he's not just using Right or Left-hand magic - he's studied both, and created a bastardized fusion of them together (I'll call it the Two-Hand path from now on).
I always saw the point of Vonotar being that he'd discovered the essential secret of magic everyone else in Magnamund had always missed - "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts". Like mixing sodium with water, the result is explosive.
His weakness was that the Nadziranim magic was corruptive, and he wasn't powerful enough in the magic of the Brotherhood to balance that evil. This is why he wanted the secrets of Loi-Kymar's Guildstaff (and the higher magic that went with it).
So, I'd classify Vonotar as a special case, who had access to powers no one else before or since could match directly. On the other hand, I'd also say that anyone who followed his path would gain similar power, but would eventually be torn apart by the very opposing forces they sought to tame. It might put a crimp in a player's desire for that kind of power if they know they've only got a limited time to use it before they self-destruct.