Greetings, my ghouls and goblins.
Hope your Sprinq Equinox was as eventful as mine! I'll have a full rundown of that next week, including photos from my new friend Mandrake.
This week's post does have a Spring theme, because I'm talking about plantings and cuttings, about new starters and pruning the elders. It's time to talk about flesh gardens!
Yes, it's a sticky subject (pun intended), but flesh gardens are growing ( o,.,o ) in popularity, and there are a lot of you with a lot of very great questions.
Mandrake has a lot of in-depth guides over here, including a very awesome beginner's guide. I just want to touch on the topic, maybe show you that they're not intimidating and anyone can do it.
You might be surprised to know that most necromancers in the Dark Ages kept flesh gardens, just as their witch counterparts kept herb gardens. No ingredients better than fresh ones, tended by your own hands.
Most of us lack the room to grow a full garden with multiple corpses, and it's some kind of social no-no to gather bodies and replant them in your backyard. So those of us reviving this old tradition have learned a few space-saving methods that simplify the process.
First, you need embryonic fluid. What water is to houseplant cuttings, EF is to your flesh cuttings. Instead of keeping an entire corpse around, you can raise individual pieces on whatever flat surfaces you have around your lair. My mantle is a swarm of fingers and toes, delightful to look at and practical to have.
Second, keep it simple. Be honest about the spells you're casting, and grow only the ingredients you use a lot of. Bind more spirits than revive corpses? An entire body take up a lot of room, when all you need are a few dozen toes, which grow so nicely in a few spare jars.
Third, and it's a part of the above point, trade your spare flesh with other necromancers. one or two bodies can fill multiple gardens when divided up into constituent parts. Swap amongst each other. Make gifts of trimmings as your garden keeps growing. I've got a liver that I've divided a dozen times, and it's bigger and redder than a fresh one.
Fourth, they don't need much tending. Keep the jars out of the light, change your embryonic fluid if it gets chunky, but, otherwise, let them do their own thing. Lids prevent maggots or other pests, unless you need them, so you can even stack your garden jars on top of each other in a spare closet.
Hopefully I've take a little of the mystique out of keeping a flesh garden. If you need more info, definitely hit up Mandrake's site. He can talk about this subject all night, and has more information than you even knew existed.
If you enjoyed what you learned and want to start your own garden, leave me a comment with #starterflesh, and two lucky readers will get a cutting from my liver, Old Man Jones.
Darkness and mists to you all. See you next week!
