"Dangers he met unflinchingly. Crimes he committed unmoved. I think the climax came when he had proved his point that rational life can be restored, and had sought new worlds to conquer by experimenting on the reanimation of detached parts of bodies...Two biological points he was exceedingly anxious to settle- first, whether any amount of consciousness and rational action be possible without the brain, proceeding from the spinal cord and various nerve centres; and second, whether any ethereal, intangible relation distinct from the material cells may exist to link the surgically separated parts of what had previously been a single living organism."
-H.P.Lovecraft, Herbert West-Reanimator
The Black Art
Black Magitech started among several unrelated sources. usually it was researched in poorly organised hospitals, especially during times of great catastrophe when hospitals were swamped by the number of afflicted and there was a plethora of patients and human material and disposing of evidence was very easy. The chaos and conflict of the Usurpation cast a dark shadow under which some of the most dedicated and derranged mortificers worked, researching at a fevered pace knowing discovery would come soon. Inevitably stories of gory surgeries were circulated when uncovered by the Sidereal directed Dragon-blooded. Stories of depraved post mortem experimentation mixed with exagerrated and fictitious tales spread during the world shaking chaos. Some of the most horrific legends of the First Age are based on experiments in Black Magitech.Unfortunately the science did not die with the fall of the Soar Deliberative. Dragon-blooded potentates, freed from the overbearing presence of the Celestial Exalted uncovered a great amount of information about this forbidden art and now had the world to themselves. The increasing frequency with which warlords vied with eachother made resorting to Black Magitech an attractive option in the dwindling remains of the First Age. Operations like the relocation camps that were used to dispose of the creatures created by Solar breeding programs offered an opportunity for a new generation of mortificers, educated by the information gained by picking over what the Solars left to ply their trade and hire their services and servants to competing warlords.
The final cataclysm of the Great Contagion and the would be world destroying attack of the Fair Folk almost put an end to Black Magitech for good as most of the mortificers themselves ended up in the grave pits. However a few of them did survive to capitalise on the tide of death and almost completely unsupervised conditions. But with the appearence of the Scarlet Empress and the universal rise of the Immaculate Order they were forced to go underground or give up their research entirely.
There was however a group of individuals in a position to investigate deeply the secrets of Black Magitech without interference: the Deathlords. Some of them were almost certainly mortificers during their lives as Solars. The aptitude of Mask of Winters and his ability to make an infrastructure to support the creation of Black Magitech marks him out as an experienced expert in the field. Deathlords with a mind for Black Magitech take Abyssal Exalted into their services as apprentices and assistants. Those with no interest in pursuing it but consider it too important to ignore simply allocate resources to talented Abyssal servants and tell them to make progress on their own. Of course one more efficient way of doing that is to steal someone else's secrets...which leads to employment of other Abyssals who otherwise would have no involvement in the black art.
