Undead

Across Taelgar, in all cultures and among diverse peoples, there are myths, warnings, and lore about undead. Technically described as a transformation of a sentient creature in scholarly lore, undeath is a curse to ward off, and, much more rarely, a goal to seek.

As undeath has major implications for the fate of souls, most religions have something to say about it. Across the Mos Numena-influenced world, the undead are seen as wholly evil, and destroyed on sight, but most religious scholars make practical distinctions among types of undead. In folklore and legend, these distinctions are not always obvious, and some major outbreaks of undead violence loom large in the popular imagination.

Undeath and the Soul

From a scholarly, theological point of view, there is a major distinction between the lesser corporeal undead, the incorporeal undead, and the greater corporeal undead, having to do with the nature of souls.

All sentient beings possess a soul, made of soulstuff and gifted by the Divine Presence, whether directly or indirectly; in all known religious texts, it is understood that this soul seeks to return to the divine after death. Many religious traditions aim to ease this journey, which requires the soul to enter the Land of the Dead, and navigate through that place to reach the Divine Realms.

Lesser Corporeal Undead

The lesser corporeal undead, such as zombies and skeletons, are theologically unproblematic, as these are simply reanimated dead bodies devoid of souls. Most cultures still consider the magic required to reanimate the dead to be unsavory, if not downright evil; in some cases, such as ghouls and ghasts, the reanimation process can instill an insatiable hunger for the living. To the extent that these reanimated bodies have intelligence and will, it is, like other magical constructs, provided by the animating magic itself, not Soulstuff.

Incorporeal Undead

The incorporeal undead, on the other hand, are the sentient trapped souls of creatures that died, but were unable to reach the Land of the Dead. This can be for many reasons, both intrinsic to the dead soul (as is common, for example, with ghosts) or extrinsic (as is, for example, the case for specters created by the killing blows of some powerful evil entities); these undead are often associated with violent deaths and curses that bind souls. In all religious traditions known, the persistence of a soul on the Material Plane after death is seen as a great evil, that must be prevented.

Greater Undead

The most terrifying undead of all are those who sought their condition. Only confused rumors and conflicting myths exist of the processes that allow a sentient being to cheat death and persist as a conscious, willful entity in a dead body, but all agree this is a wholly evil act. Powerful mages who complete a ritual to bind their souls to an object on the Material Plane, such as Apollyon and Malach, are called liches and are perhaps the most feared of all the greater undead. Some rumors suggest that Umidzka, one of the Three Despairs, aids some of those who seek this path.

Folklore and Mythology

While most common folk hope to never have experience with undead themselves, folklore and stories are shaped by disasters, and often focus on the mindless, relentless, unreasoning nature of the unliving.

In Sembara, people still speak with dread of the undead uprisings during the rule of Robert I. Stories speak of the winter when graves opened, drowned things stirred, and the dead walked in scattered waves across Wisford, Dunfry, Ainwick, and many other places along the Enst and Wistel. Those who still remember those days speak of skeleton armies besieging Fellburn and Gowerborne and hamlets where the walking dead outnumbered the living. Priests still cite that season when urging proper rites for the dead.

In Dunmar and in Nardith, it is rumors of the skeleton lord Grash and his undying army that shape people’s fears. Stories come west from the deserts beyond Karawa, telling how Grash’s fallen orcs rose behind him until his war-host became a horde of corpses. The tales speak of the dwarven hero Riswynn, whose divine might, channeling the power of the Bahrazel, held the dead at bay for weeks, the only thing keeping the living from being swallowed by a horde of hungry corpses. Far from the cities that survived him, Grash is spoken of as proof of the terrible power of the undead marshaled under the banner of war.