Undead

[NickD]

I just had a character concept... but it relies heavily on the answer to my question:

Sometimes, when playing in ALFA, other characters tell my character at the time that the souls of the dead are trapped in the body of undead. I've always thought that they were basically golems, animated with negative energy and the previous occupant is now happily off in the afterlife. Which is it? (And apart from liches and maybe vampires, which undead are still their old selves?)

[hollyfant]

Undead are always soulless, although I imagine only loremasters, priests and necromancers would know that for certain. Exactly where those souls are, I'm not sure of. Liches have theirs in a jar of course. But afaik, even a Wish or a Miracle can't bring back a dead person when their body and/or spirit is currently undead. Which leads me to believe they're not actually in the "afterlife", but rather trapped somewhere en route.

[Arkan Bladesinger]

Hmm, I´m a thinking KISS answer would be if it has an intelligence it´s more or less it´s old self or at least it´s soul is somehow bound. So, skeletons and zombies would be just mindless automatons while vampires, liches etc would not. In case of many undead like ghouls, wraiths, morghs etc I recall they gotta be evil individuals to start with.

Another question entirely whether original owners of corpses would be happy in afterlife having their bodies used this way, but propably they wouldn´t even know as souls of faithful should pretty much forget their mortal lives and interests in Faerun when god/goddess takes them in.

Quite simplified answer, I know, and might conflict somewhere with some sourcebook, but this is pretty much how I see it.

[Brokenbone]

Lots have full personalities or glimmers of past personalities, maybe that's "the soul."

Lich, Baelnorn, Vampire, Ghost... all pretty high functioning. Lich may want to "cheat death" forever, wishing to avoid a crappy afterlife in the Abyss or similar. Ghosts though are "stuck" haunting someplace or other until some unfinished deed is done (and can be any alignment). Sounds like a torment they want to have resolved.

There's all kinds of other semi-mindful undead. Allips have creepy backstories about suicide & madness, and ghouls might have a spark of recognition for past colleagues (at least in the Shadow's Witness novel, some seemed to know Erevis Cale all right), but that's mostly overridden by wanting to eat everyone.

Don't know where that leaves the mindless ones, except for saying "if the body's shambling around trying to beat you up, you probably can't use it for a raise dead."

Maybe PCs / NPCs can simply have healthy arguments on the topic. They can believe their dogma etc., may differ between faiths, but what happens "enroute to the Fugue" not even an intrepid plane-shifter can find out. Need a team of sages killing folks, carefully watching the thousands of faces on the Fugue to see who pops up, whether they vanish if you get on your Wandy-Talky and have a colleague back home Animate the remains, see if they vanish... silly stuff. Anyhow, ALFA PCs and NPCs have only so many ranks in knowledge based skills, maybe a DC100 check will give a perfect answer on the topic (I guess an NPC Kelemvor could be firm on the topic though).

[Zelknolf]

Undead are always soulless, although I imagine only loremasters, priests and necromancers would know that for certain. Exactly where those souls are, I'm not sure of. Liches have theirs in a jar of course. But afaik, even a Wish or a Miracle can't bring back a dead person when their body and/or spirit is currently undead. Which leads me to believe they're not actually in the "afterlife", but rather trapped somewhere en route.

Knowledge (religion) and bardic knowledge would both qualify as basis for knowin' that (but at a suitably absurd DC -- prolly in the 25+ range, imo).

re: raise dead/resurrection/true resurrection/wish/miracle and bringing back the dead, I'd offer two examples: clone and reincarnate. The former can bring back someone turned into an undead, the latter cannot. Chew on that how ya like.

[NickD]

So that's a big "I dunno" then?

I guess with spirits it makes sense that the person is still "there". Liches, obviously, are still there. I wasn't sure about vampires... are they still the person or some kind of other spirit occupying the body Buffy-the-vampire-slayer-stylee?

I was mostly interested in the common ones... skeletons, zombies, ghouls and ghasts. I'm not that familiar with the other undead.

and ghouls might have a spark of recognition for past colleagues

How are ghouls made? Wondering if it's remnants from their brain or from their soul/self...

[Brokenbone]

If a humanoid dies of ghoul fever (inflicted by ghoul bite, as a disease), they rise the next night as ghouls. Note the "recognition" thing is just something I recall from a novel recently, "Shadows Witness"... authors are known to take liberties! By the same token, SRD says Ghouls have 13 Intelligence, though none of the skills they used to have as living beings. Living beings who had more than 4HD when they die to ghoul fever end up as ghasts. *shrugs*

[NickD]

Oooh, so ghouls are basically movie zombies then!

[Brokenbone]

Hadn't thought of it that way... but since plain D&D zombies don't multiply, and ghouls do, I guess you're right!


There's actually a lot of undead which end up creating a minion from victims. Wights and Wraiths each have a pretty fast "Create Spawn" power, come to think, check out the description (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wraith.htm):

Any humanoid slain by a wraith becomes a wraith in 1d4 rounds. Its body remains intact and inanimate, but its spirit is torn free from its corpse and transformed. Spawn are under the command of the wraith that created them and remain enslaved until its death. They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life.

Hmm. Well, I don't know what "tearing free a spirit and transforming" means, may mean something special in the case of incorporeal undead, but it may be a hint that the spirit isn't rocketing away to the Fugue.... dunno, an ugly wraith gets peeled away from an intact, sack of potatoes body? *shrugs* Wights on the other hand, are corporeal, with virtually the same "Create Spawn" power, but it doesn't mention spirit, just this:

Any humanoid slain by a wight becomes a wight in 1d4 rounds. Spawn are under the command of the wight that created them and remain enslaved until its death. They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life.

Again though, I wouldn't take sparse SRD descriptions as "perfect lore" or anything like that, again, probably just ways that clerical philosophers can debate over just how the dozens of different species of undead abomination do their thing, some mindless, some sentient, some very similar to how they were, some in obvious torment, etc. No lowbie ALFA PC is going to make knowledge checks with epic DCs to sort this out anyhow. At least with some undead, the "theme" is possession / corruption when spawning minions, as opposed to some kind of asexual reproduction that requires a dead adventurer (that's more Slaad & egg injection territory).