Kemmlerian Sponsored Magic

[Vortigern]

My question about the Kemmlerites, and like abstract ideas of sponsored magic, is how do you adjudicate the 'Agenda' of the 'Sponsor' for debt compel purposes?

Right now, to me, the scariest part of the whole Kemmlerite thing is this simple question.  If your patron is Death Itself, how do you pay back... Death?

What are you going to have to do, to make Death 'Happy' and feel like He/It/Whatever isn't getting short shrift in bargaining/sponsoring you etc?

Is this a literal personified manifestation of death?  Or is this more abstract like, say, they know they just need massive ammounts of necromantic death energy to fuel their necromancy, and debt points reflect a need to 'refuel' their necromancy by doing 'Bad Stuff'tm?  It is left a bit nebulous as to how this would function.

It begs the question how to the translate this more abstract envisionment of 'Sponsored Magic' into other types of similar traditions. ( See my Sponsored Magic: Summoner post. )

[Archmage_Cowl]

personally i would leave it up to the gm however they want to rule that.

On a specific kemmlerian necromancy idea. If you have read dead beat bob talks about how before the necromancers(which are kemmler's students) need to do some prep work like murder or little necromancy to get the bigger stuff started. I can kinda see that being a sort of "prep" pay back for debt to kemmlerian necromancy as they are, as harry puts it "... like jumping on a diving board a few times before you actually jump off."

Thats how i see it. but again i would leave that largely to the gm. But for your summoner idea i would make debt paybacks actually summonings because what better way to pay back creatures sponsoring your summoning magic than calling more into your world?

[Deadmanwalking]

I'd personally go with something similar to the 'Places of Power' rules: Kemmlerian Necromancy 'debt' isn't a debt to a force exactly, just a resulting tendency to not value life and otherwise act like a necromancer and general monster.