Annie Mancer

South Alenactian necromancers have developed diverse, powerful magics to tame and guide the undead. For disembodied spirits, they found music worked best. Thus, the Alenactians employed young women of powerful empathy and voice as "necromancers of song". 

Prehistoric Alenactians called these women Ghost-Talkers, and tasked them to protect the tribe from wayward spirits and ensure departed loved ones would find final rest.  

The early kingdoms known as "the Academics" and "the Socials" continued the Ghost-Talkers, and gave them additional purpose as binders of guardian spirits. 

The Academics became the Scarsinid Empire and made Ghost-Talkers into the Songflowers, using bound spirits to bombard battlefields and terrorize foes.

The Society of Equals in the Grave, AKA the Deathbound, inherited the ruins of the Scarsinid Empire. They combined the Social Ghost-talker tradition with the Songflowers to create the famous Speakers of the Dead. The Speakers reclaimed haunted parts of the old Empire, and interrogated the dead for knowledge and history. They also saw some presence in battle. 

After the apocalyptic Winnowing, the Republic of Southern Alenactia (ROSA) would augment the Speakers of the Dead with the Danse Macabre, an orchestral procession of necromancers and undead. The Danse greatly enhanced the Speakers, allowing them to literally control the battlefield and reach souls that died not just recently, but ages ago. The Danse Macabre proved instrumental in the Republic's survival against the undead hordes of the Winnowing. 

Modern ROSA has since demilitarized, which freed the Danse Macabre Speakers for less martial pursuits. One Speaker took the the stage name "Annie Mancer" as a musician. She became a hit with both living and undead citizens of ROSA, thereby destroying the concept of an unreceptive "dead crowd". When Annie was internationally discovered, she went platinum (in some ways literal) and has not stopped rocking out since.