Basic Information
Undead are either the spirits of the dead or animate corpses - or both at once. In either case, undead are generally regarded as deeply unnatural - something that should have moved on to a different world (or stay in the ground), but refused to do so.
The undead may be sapient or non-sapient and may or may not possess a physical body.
Why someone is wandering about undead rather than rotting in peace varies - often by the type of undead. Some of them are unable to rest due to the nature of their death - hunger, pain, frustration or rage at the time of death may bring them back, as might a desire for revenge or the completion of unfinished work. Various Asian traditions doom those who die untimely deaths to existance as 'hungry ghosts' until they can find someone to take their place. They might also rise because of a failure of correct burial rites (possibly because of how and where they died) or the neglect or desecration of their tomb.
Alternatively, the undead may be created by unholy magic - often called necromancy - which can summon and bind the souls of the dead, forcing them back into their bodies (or preventing them from leaving at the point of death) to animate them. On occasion, evil magicians may even do this to themselves as a way of avoiding death. As an alternative to recalling the dead person's own soul, the necromancer may call up a different spirit and allow/persuade/force it to occupy and animate the body. Particularly powerful evils may even animate the dead accidentally or promiscuously, leading to an epidemic of free roaming corpses.
Undeath may also be a curse, visited on a wicked or impious person for their crimes - often desecration of holy places or cannibalism. Since it must be assumed that the 'good' deities who would normally punish such offences are unlikely to approve of undead, the actual curse can probably be assumed to consist of handing over/abandoning the offender's soul to some tormentor.
Typically undead have some fairly significant immunities (poison, disease, suffocation/drowning, heat (short of fire) and cold (short of freezing solid)) and are less vulnerable to some kinds of weapon and many kinds of magic. Against that, they will normally have various banes (think of vampires and garlic), be more vulnerable to other kinds of attack (including some kinds of magic) and repulsed or destroyed by "holy" things. Incorporeal undead (those without bodies) are typically immune to (non-magical) weapons and able to move through solid objects, making them a menace in combat.
Undead can rarely - if ever - repoduce but some are shown to "spawn", converting their victims into something like themselves.
List of Undead
- Aufhocker
- Blue Men
- Frankenstein's Monster
- Ghost
- Ghoul
- The Grim Reaper
- Lich
- Mummy
- Revenant
- Skeleton (undead)
- Tuyul
- Vampire
- Worm that Walks
- Wraith
- Zombie
See Also
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Undead work well in horror stories because they are deeply unnatural and come together with all sorts of death-related motifs.
- Good as a source of body horror as well if the PCs take casualties … and fight them later.
- For less involved stories, they make good mooks who can be hacked to pieces without the slightest qualm of conscience.
