Helbuar

While the great hound Garm yet watched over the gates of Hel, the dead unworthy of Valhalla and Folkvang for having lived evil lives were reborn in body to suffer for their crimes.
Heljar-hrafnar [Hel’s ravens] plucked the eyeballs out of liars and eiter-drekar [venomous dragons] melted the flesh of thieves with burning poison. The worst offenders: murderers, adulterers, and oath-breakers, were led to Nastrond [Corpse Shore], a hall woven from deathless snakes. There the guilty were forced to wade through weltering water as the snakes spat venom on them, and all the while the dread dragon Nidhogg tore at their bodies.
The Helbuar [denizens of Hel] are cunning undead who have fled from their punishments in Hel, or else did not return after warring on the Einherjar during the Final Battle. They are endlessly pursued by the Heljar-sinnar, Hel’s champions, who seek to return them to their torment, but while roving Midgard they engage in the same evils that damned them.
Helbuar are reborn in Helheim with only the goods they were buried or burned with, and given these things only when it was time to take to the field for the Final Battle. As these men and women were despised by all who knew their true nature, many have little and most have none. Some stumble out of Hekla naked or nearly so, only arming themselves when they rob and kill the living or uncover a hoard.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Even on the surface, the Helbuar are affected by the strange force that bore them. Though every wound they suffer festers and scars their death-blackened skins, their bodies recover from all damage, fatal and non, unless they are utterly obliterated, as by fire. They are never sated by food nor drink, though constantly crave them.