Birthright interest check

As I see it, if its inherently evil or not depends on how the whole "souls" part of undeath works. If mindless undead don't have souls and don't disturb the souls of the used body, then why would it be inherently evil? It might be a social taboo, but 'evil' is a cosmic force. Negative Energy in 5E isn't described as being Evil anymore either, and Good-aligned Clerics can cast Inflict Wounds which uses the exact same power source that would animate a dead body into a zombie or skeleton. (Though also speaking from my own Pathfinder experience, I'm VERY disappointed that WotC still hasn't given us any way to animate the bodies of non-humanoids. Seriously, a zombie bear or skeletal horse COULDN'T ever cause issues with souls since they don't HAVE souls, yet that option isn't there...)

So as long as you could get around that pesky morality issue (by, say, leading a Necromancer guild that has taken over a place slowly and uses their servants to actually help the populace with cheap labor), I don't see why the creation of mindless undead should be evil if you don't intentionally let them loose into a city to murder everyone.

Intelligent undead are another matter depending on if they twist/corrupt/capture the souls of the body in some way. A Lawful Neutral view could still be that forcefully turning a murderer into a Mummy to protect the city he terrorized before for a century is actually a just and proper punishment, though. Also, Necromancers tend to be especially skilled at taking over and exterminating uncontrollable intelligent undead, such as vampires.

Something about necromancy just feels evil, or wrong at least. Yet similar acts, like animating plants, animating simple objects, or even creating intelligent magic items is not generally considered evil nor do they really smell like they could be. Life, and things that were once alive, simply have a value attributed to them that is hard to quantify. Mutilating a corpse, whether human or animal, is frowned on. There is much more gray area here than you would find with something like outright murder, and certain purposes are justified for most people - dismembering an animal for fun is evil. Dismembering an animal for a feast is fine.

Animating dead itself wouldn't be evil. You would have to contend with the perception of others. Animating a corpse into a skeleton seems like it could be ok, especially if that skeleton was tasked with protecting a town against raiding goblins. You could probably convince many people in the town that what you have done is ok. What if the mother of that corpse watched you raise it? I think you'd be very hard pressed to not have her see the act as anything but horrific. Maybe you could change her mind, but you'd have to do lots of work persuading her well ahead of time, gradually working her up to the idea and somehow spinning it as an honorable act.

Maybe there is something to be said about necrotic energies. Necromantic spells almost universally deal with the destruction of life. Nearly all undead have a mindless drive to destroy life. Maybe it is these things that make it such a bad deed. In that case, wouldn't all spells dealing necrotic damage be looked on with dismay? Would people start shunning magic-users that cast spells from the Necromantic school?

tl;dr: Raising dead isn't itself evil. The vast majority of the cultures of the world view raising dead as a thing of evil and will act accordingly.

Woo inspiration... a city where their honored citizens are buried in tombs near the city walls. Necromancers call on the dead there, raising them as skeletons and zombies in times of need. Once the need has passed the dead are returned to their tombs. It could be a great honor to have a family member selected to serve in the Everlasting Guard

Progress update: I spent some time this weekend looking up 5e warfare rules. This is one of the things we'll want squared away since clashes between armies is one of the cool things we want to include in a campaign like this.

Military units will basically just be swarms. This allows us to use all the mechanics we are used to without having too many things moving around on the battlefield. We can scale up and down these swarms as necessary. Here is my first draft of the Mass Combat rules: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/S1seEK63X

We'll be using the following conversion along with the mass combat mentioned earlier:
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L4h_QHUKh2NeYhgD96A#p48

Please become familiar with as much of that document as you can.

Soon I'll set up the actual GP game and forums. In the mean time, lets get some ideas flowing. To start off, PM me your ideas on what you want to see in this campaign, what you don't want to see, and what your vision of the PC party would be. I'm intentionally leaving this open ended and vague to see where each of you want to take it.

If you have never heard of Birthright, Matt Colville recorded a stream on the setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaIKTUkjZd8

Second call - If you are still interested in joining, please PM me something about what you want to see in the game.

Birthright touches on a lot of different levels of game play. We will want to make sure everyone is on the same page with expectations to give our game the best chance of success

I sent a PM. This feels like a majorly different take on the genre and I am excited to dive into the world.