Likzaaru
Volk Zerkur Laxus Zalia
The Undead were once-living creatures that had been animated by spiritual or supernatural forces. Some deities employed undead as divine servants; for example, the dwarven god Dumathoin used undead dwarves as divine messengers.
Undead were extremely resilient to a number of effects and substances that were extremely harmful to the living. They were immune to all mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. In addition, it was not possible to drain their life force in any manner.
“Undead. They got back up and started fighting again—this time, against the rest of us... They fell, they died, they got back up.
— Deneirrath priest of Spirit Soaring”
Origins of undeath
There were six basic ways a living creature can become undead:
Purposeful personal reanimation:
A living creature willingly underwent the transformation to undeath. In most cases, the creature possessed a disposition towards evil, but that was not always the case. More common reasons included fear of dying of old age, fear of dying from a grievous wound and a thirst for power.
Minions:
An intelligent creature created undead servants as a mean to their own ends. These mindless minions were created by malevolent spellcasters to serve as guards or otherwise carry out their bidding.
Atrocity calls to unlife:
A living creature that committed an evil and heinous act that transformed into an undead creature. The intensity and specificity of the required acts were somewhat random and not entirely uncommon.
Unfinished Business:
An intelligent creature died or was killed with an important deed left incomplete. In a similar manner to atrocities, the specifications surrounding undeath achieved in this manner were often left up to chance.
The Dark Curse:
Malign forces created undead beings seemingly at random. This had the potential to befell any creature, at any location and seemingly at any time.
Death by wounds caused by another undead:
Many forms of undead creatures inflicted their undeath upon others when striking them with a mortal wound. Perhaps most famously, this occurred in the cast of vampires and their bite.
Types of Undead:
Crawling Claw:
Crawling claws were the amputated and then reanimated hands of humanoids. They were employed by dark wizards and warlocks to provide an extra set of hands or perform guard duty.
Description:
Using their fingers as legs, crawling claws could scuttle across the ground or manoeuvre on vertical surfaces. Crawling claws were always left hands and had to be made from the hands of small-to-medium-sized creatures. They were known to form into swarms known as "applauses" with no discernible front, back, or central body.[
Behaviour:
Crawling claws were highly lacking in intelligence, and could not perform complicated tasks by themselves. They lacked most of the memories of their past selves, leaving only an array of negative spiteful emotions to guide their actions. Without orders to follow, they would attempt to recreate the murders they'd committed in life, some of the few memories they still possessed. Crawling claws had no loyalty to anyone but their original maker.
Combat:
Crawling claws were a strange mixture of undead and construct, owing to the nature of their creation. Their most curious trait was their immunity to undead turning magic, raising questions about whether they could be truly classified as undead creatures. By themselves, crawling claws could only slash and pummel their opponents into submission. They could also leap 6 feet (1.8 m) vertically into the air and were especially dangerous to those who had fallen over. Despite lacking sensory organs, they could still hear and understand commands as well as perceive the world around them. At the same time, they were immune to the effects of abilities that required actual sight. However, crawling claws were most dangerous when allowed to amass into a group of hundreds, swarming targets one by one in order to kill them.
Ecology:
Straddling the line between undead and construct, crawling claws were curiosities of magic. The rituals to create crawling claws did not require the victim to have actually died. Instead, the subjects would enter a comatose state in which the hand could knit itself back to the arm, indistinguishable from when it was removed. The souls of both the hand and victim were bound in one direction, with the death of the hand killing the murderer but not vice versa. Even if the subject had been killed beforehand and resurrected, the crawling claws would live on and spells that turned or controlled undead had no effect on the hand. On the other hand, the ritual would fail if the original murderer was already undead, or if their spirit had long since passed. Despite being relatively unintelligent constructs, it was rumoured that crawling claws possessed some method of breeding. They would hack off the hands of the recently deceased and somehow animate them with their curse.
Society:
Crawling claws were crafted by necromancers and those like them in order to fulfil certain menial tasks. They were useful compared to other undead because of their small size and relative availability in certain regions. They were sometimes employed as familiars by warlocks and wizards.
Zombie:
A zombie was an undead creature usually created by the re-animation of a corpse. Unlike animated skeletons, zombies still retained some flesh on their bodies and gave off a horrid, rank smell. They were almost mindless, but could be given simple commands, such as "kill anyone who opens the treasure chest." Virtually any solid creature could be turned into a zombie; in addition to humanoids, troglodytes, minotaurs, ogres, and even beholders could be turned into zombies.
Description:
Basically, a zombie was the corpse of a creature which had been animated by someone who could manipulate negative energy, such as a cleric. For example, a cleric would be able to use negative energy on a corpse and make it move its body, arms, legs, etc. Zombies could also arise spontaneously if an area was saturated with necromantic magic.
Variants:
Absorbing zombie:
Able to absorb damaging spells rather than taking damage from them.
Acid zombie:
Nearly pure white with glistening skin and oozing acid.
Corpse creature:
A zombie that retained knowledge and skills it possessed in life.
Beholder zombie:
Sometimes called Death tyrants; zombified beholders which possessed some of their deadly abilities.
Diseased zombie:
These were carriers of the disease known as 'filth fever'.
Juju zombie:
Free-willed, sentient zombies often created from powerful curses or other fell magics.
Ogre zombie:
Powerful zombies created from dead ogres.
Zombie dragon:
Created from dragons and retained some of their deadly abilities.
Skeleton:
Skeletons were undead animated corpses similar to zombies, but completely devoid of flesh and did not feed on the living. They could be made from virtually any solid creature, and as such their size and power varied widely. In addition to the basic humanoid skeleton, there were also skeletons created from wolves, trolls, ettins and even giants.
Description:
The undead form of skeletons was held by necromantic energy, which kept otherwise loose bones and joints together and conferred on the undead corpse a glimmer of vitality and rudimentary intellectual capabilities.
Variants:
Baneguard:
First developed by priests of Bane, these skeletons could phase in and out and hurl bolts of magical energy.
Blazing Bones:
Fiery skeletal undead created when a spellcaster's contingency spell goes wrong.
Bonecrusher skeleton:
Large skeletons able to swing a greatclub with devastating results.
Crystal skeleton:
A human or demihuman skeleton that has been magically transformed to be made from ice.
Direguard:
Baneguards improved by the Church of Cyric, these skeletons are wreathed in a shadowy field of force that functions as armour. They could also see invisible foes.
Dust skeleton:
Appeared like regular skeletons but with very dry bones, and much lighter as a result.
Fiery skeleton:
Burned with never-ending flames and it is immune to fire.
Merrow skeleton:
A skeletal undead form of the merrow.
Minotaur skeleton:
A skeleton created from the corpse of a minotaur.
Nimble skeleton:
More agile than standard skeletons and able to climb as fast as it can walk.
Skeleton warrior:
Powerful skeletons created from great warriors and who retain all of their fighting skill. Highly resistant to magic and difficult to command, skeleton warriors are rarely found in groups greater than two or three.
Skeletal dragon:
Created from a dragon and retained some of their deadly abilities.
Spike skeleton:
Tougher than regular skeletons and covered with bony thorns.
Warhorse skeleton:
A skeleton created from the corpse of a warhorse.
Ghoul:
Ghouls were undead humanoids who devoured the flesh of corpses.
Description:
A ghoul appeared as an emaciated, roughly humanoid creature with an almost-hairless mottled, decaying hide stretched tight over its bones. It had the sharp teeth of a carnivore and sunken eyes that burned as if they were hot coals.
Abilities:
Ghouls could paralyze their victims with a claw or bite wound, though elves were immune. Paralysis lasted at least a dozen seconds and up to half a minute.
The bite of a ghoul also inflicted a terrible disease, ghoul fever, deteriorating health and agility within a day. Anyone who died from the illness rose as a ghoul at midnight.
Combat:
Ghouls sought to ambush and surprise unwary victims wherever they could, usually hiding behind gravestones or in shallow graves that they could swiftly burst out of.
Activities:
Ghouls had a terrible hunger for carrion. They not only ate the dead but also preyed on the living. They lurked in graveyards and on battlefields, wherever their foul food was plentiful and the air was thick with the smell of death.
Creation:
It was believed that a living man or woman who'd tasted the flesh of people would rise again as ghouls after they died. This was not proven, but it fitted their cannibalistic behaviour. However, others believed that anyone who indulged in extreme debauchery and evil could become a ghoul after death.
Whatever the truth, it was clear that any humanoid who was bitten by a ghoul, contracted ghoul fever, and died of it would inevitably rise as a ghoul themselves the following night, at midnight.
The new-risen ghoul lost all the skills and powers it had in life. Their minds became warped, turning them feral yet cunning and hungry for living flesh, becoming in all ways like another ghoul. They were not bound to serve other ghouls, however.
A more experienced or powerful victim would instead become a ghast.
Society:
Ghouls hunted alone, in gangs of up to four, or packs of seven to twelve members.
Ghouls spoke whatever languages they'd known in life, typically Common.
Spectre:
Spectres were undead, incorporeal creatures that resembled ghosts.
Description:
A spectre appeared as a humanoid, with a mostly transparent and faintly luminous form. They looked much as they did in life, though the injuries that caused their violent deaths were visible on many specimens and could be recognized by someone who knew what the person looked like.
They were about the same size as a humanoid but weightless.
Personality:
They had a hatred for all living things but retained their minds and capability to think.
Combat:
A spectre's touch wasn't only painful; it also drained the life energy from living creatures. The life energy had an invigorating effect on spectres, and when the life energy of a creature was drained empty, the creature—only in the case of a humanoid—turned into a new spectre enslaved by its creator.
As a general rule, they attacked their prey by moving through solid objects, including walls, ceilings, or even the ground.
They were generally encountered in a number of less than a dozen.
They were powerless in natural sunlight to the point of fleeing from it.
Effect:
A spectre-haunted place and the vicinity of a spectre was cold, though in no harmful way.
Animals also refused to get into the vicinity of a spectre and suffered from uncontrollable fear when forced to go near a spectre.
Related Race:
A spectre was a type of undead that was categorized as a spectral creature. When someone tried to create a spectral creature out of a humanoid, instead of another sort of creature, the result was a spectre. Unlike humanoid spectres, other spectral creatures were capable of creating and enslaving other spectral creatures, or spectres, out of other lifeforms than humanoids.
Ghast:
Ghasts were a subtype of ghouls.
Description:
They resembled very closely their undead cousin, except perhaps being just a bit more slender and ghost-like. The stench of death and rot lingered around their undead forms.
Combat:
Ghasts were also far more deadly and cunning than ghouls, with their paralytic touch dangerously affecting their opponents, except elves.
Habitat/Society:
They often paired with others of their own kind or acted as the leaders of a group of normal ghouls.
Like ghouls, ghasts spoke whatever language they did in life.
Wight:
A wight was an undead creature given a semblance of life through sheer violence and hatred. They could drain the life energy out of victims by touch, turning them into new wights upon death. Wights appeared as weird and twisted reflections of the forms they had in life.
Variants:
Slaughter wight:
These were wights that have been especially touched by the dark gods, giving them a vicious hatred for all life that far outclasses the normal undead's.
Ghost:
A ghost was the spirit of a deceased sentient creature. This type of undead was incorporeal in nature and only vulnerable to conventional weapons on the Ethereal Plane. A Ghost Brute was a ghost of an animal, plant, or magical beast that was stuck to the material plane.
A ghost was a creature existing on two planes, the material and the Astral Plane. A ghost's connection to the material plane was severed when destroyed but, in a few days, the ghost would usually come back. Ghosts were a repetitive nuisance for those who lived in one's particular haunt.
A ghost could also be controlled by wizards, sorcerers, liches, etc. In this case, the ghost was finally put to rest when destroyed on the material plane or the master of the ghost died. This was usually uncommon, though, because to raise a ghost used a lot more magic than raising a regular undead. A ghost's weapons usually consisted of whatever weapons they carried in their mortal life, and maybe a spell or two if they were a wizard or sorcerer.
Wraith:
A wraith was an undead creature born of evil and darkness, despising light and all living things. They could drain the life from living creatures, turning them into new wraiths upon death. Wraiths were powerless in natural sunlight, appearing as a sinister, spectral figure robed in darkness. They had no visual features or appendages, except for their glowing red eyes.
Wraiths were very similar to spectres.
“ “Death,” said a shape that had assumed Brenna’s form. The thing’s haunting tones seemed at once to come from behind and in front of her. “We are death shrouded in darkness. Sweet, sweet darkness.” The thing laughed again, the sound echoing in the night until it finally receded like a tide. “Sweet death,” another of the strange creatures echoed. Then another and another took up the phrase until the words blended together and sounded like a swarm of insects.”
Atropal:
Atropals were a race of unfinished immortals modelled after the gods, who had since become undead abominations. Existing solely to spread death and destruction, atropals roamed across the planes, hunting down any prey that came their way. Others were sealed away in forgotten delves.
Description:
Atropals resembled ghouls to some extent, with pale red skin, long tongues, and razor-sharp teeth. Most of the flesh of an atropal was rotted, with swollen joints and exposed bones. Unlike ghouls, however, atropals lacked eyes, having instead empty, skin-covered sockets.
They resembled the avatars of the elder evil Atropus.
Combat:
Atropals were very durable, as well as dexterous, and when in a fight they could use this to outlast their enemies. When forced into a direct fight, however, atropals were armed with several powerful abilities. One of these was the Atropos burst ability, which allowed an atropal to sap the life force of their foe, though, being undead, they did not heal from this but rather gained additional energy, which they sometimes then used to attack a living creature with necrotizing touch, which not only injured the victim but hindered their competence as well. Atropals also had a unique ability known as shroud of death, which allowed atropals to repair other undead creatures while bringing harm to the living.
Atropal Scions:
An atropal scion was truly one of the most perverse undead creatures. A piece of godly flesh could become a "godling" itself unless destroyed. If given unlife, the "atropal scion" became an unformed monster, resembling an overgrown dead fetus, sometimes with an umbilical cord still attached. Despite its appearance, an atropal scion was actually extremely intelligent and powerful.
An aura of cold surrounded an atropal scion, so numbing that it could draw life from the living. The scion's very gaze could cause death and they were dangerous spellcasters. Once unleashed upon a world they would quietly gather power until ready to make their claim to complete domination.
Death Knight:
A death knight was a mighty undead warrior created by gods of death or other malevolent forces. They were most commonly created from evil humanoids who in life had been blackguards, fighters, rangers, barbarians, and even paladins fallen from grace.
Description:
A death knight appeared similar to how it appeared in life, but it had a decayed body with rotting flesh and pinpoints of light in place of eyes. A death knight often wore fine clothing and armour, especially capes, as a mark of importance. A death knight struck fear into the hearts of weaker creatures.
Society:
A death knight often rode a nightmare into battle and had a variety of undead servants, such as skeletons, wights, zombies. More powerful death knights had more servants.
Nightwalker:
A nightwalker was a type of nightshade, a sentient undead monster from the Plane of Shadow. It was unnatural and malicious, and it took delight in the corruption and suffering of others. It was a creature of both death and shadows and had enormous powers over darkness.
Description:
Nightwalkers were the shades of extremely strong-willed and evil mortals whose ancient and unyielding will and malice allowed them to hold their corporeal shape. A nightwalker's body looked as if it was made of shadow, with a vaguely humanoid form. They were about the size of a house but were usually no taller than 20 feet (six meters), and their bodies were smooth and hairless.
It was theorised that a Nightwalker could inhabit a more corporeal form if it had enough time to build itself a body from corpses and warp them into shape, though this was never proven to be true.
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