☠ On the Origin and Nature of Undead ☠ (Innistrad + Barrowmaze = Win?) ☠

[I originally planned to write something similar to this post long ago, before the Angry GM beat me to the punch with his article about the nature of undead in his campaign. This project then fell to the back burner until now, when I felt inspired to take it up again. This post references the types of magic in my campaign setting, which you can read about in this post.]

ALSO: This post contains SOME SPOILERS for the Barromaze megadungeon. I don't think it's anything TOO ruinous - but if you're a player in a Barrowmaze game (or might be in the future), consider skipping this post.

So, have you decided whether you're going to read this or not? Okay. ONWARD!

Undead are universal in fantasy tabletop RPGs. They appear in every rules system I’ve ever played. And every rules system has its own way of explaining the origin of undead – some doing so in more detail than others. And there’s an incredible amount of variety in the different (and often oddly specific) ways of creating undead.

For example, Pathfinder’s Curse of the Crimson Throne introduced me to the “chain spirit,” which arises from the tormented soul of someone “charged, cursed, or honor-bound to guard a certain place or object, only to be slain in the course of such duty.” A mohrg rises when a mass murderer dies before atoning for their crimes. A supernatural desire for vengeance supposedly animates a revenant. And an incomplete death ritual creates a coffer corpse.

A Chain Spirit - interesting undead, but oddly specific. Image Source

For every unique, undead creature fantasy tabletop RPGs give you, they seem to provide two more subtly and inexplicably different variations alongside it.

Part of this homogeneity may stem from the fact that many details concerning necromancy, life, and death are “setting specific.” In other words, the way undeath works depends on the campaign world – particularly the deities and organization of the planes -  so the nature of undead creatures is left purposefully vague to accommodate whatever setting the campaign takes place in, from Golarion to Greyhawk.

Furthermore, the overlap between different undead creatures may arise from the nebulous origins of D&D’s menagerie. When B/X and AD&D created their cyclopedias of monsters, they pulled from a primordial soup of folk traditions and mythologies that included various assumptions. These assumptions were sometimes similar, but often contradictory.

So, this article is a thought-piece to lay out some “ground rules” for the way undeath works in my own games. I’m writing this as much for myself as for you, as this is a topic I haven’t “thought through” until now. It became highly relevant while exploring Greg Gillespie’s Barrowmaze, which features two competing cults of necromancers and enough species of undead to fill a necromantic Noah’s ark.

Without further ado: here are some ruminations about death, undeath, and necromancy. A blog post Necronomicon, if you will.

First, we must muse on the fundamentals of life and death in the campaign setting.

Living creatures have souls. When they die, their souls leave their bodies and migrate from the material plane to another plane. The specifics of this other plane will depend on the cosmology of your campaign setting. Suffice to say that, upon death, the soul leaves the body and goes someplace living creatures generally can’t visit – the underworld, the overworld, or somewhere in-between.

Next, let’s establish that there are three ways to create something “undead.”

·         The first method is with divine magic. A cleric (typically an evil one) calls on a deity with powers over life and death to animate a once-living creature. This involves taking a soul and fusing it to once-living matter. This may be the soul that originally inhabited the creature, or perhaps a different one – depending on the nature of the ritual performed.

·         The second method is with arcane magic. A magic-user imbues once-living flesh with arcane magic that animates it. To clarify, creatures animated this way are imbued with the same “life” as an animated statue or rug. The difference is that, instead of animating an inert substance, the magic-user animates a substance that was once alive. However, no soul returns to the creature. Only the power of arcane magic animates it.

·         The third way to create undeath emerges through the circumstances of a creature’s death. This method is often unintentional. However, opportunistic necromancers can cultivate situations to intentionally create undead this way - for example, by torturing victims to death so their soul is infused with pain. After leaving a body, the soul may become trapped or lost on the mortal plane, unable to migrate to the afterlife. Strong emotions and unfinished business often keep a soul “tied” to the material plane, making it unable to achieve rest in the afterlife. Alternatively, the soul may "rip" or "tear" while leaving the body, becoming partially “stuck” so that one portion of the soul leaves and another part stays tethered to the physical remains.

When thinking about the distinctions between these different types of necromancy, I think the Innistrad setting for Magic: The Gathering provides an interesting framework – especially for Barrowmaze.

The first category of undead resembles the “ghoulcallers” of Innistrad. Ghoulcallers imbue once-living flesh with soul-stuff again, giving it a semblance of life once more. The quality of this process largely depends on the quality of the necromancer. Novice or haphazard necromancers tear souls into fragments during the process, imbuing flesh with only a modicum of life. Skilled and experienced necromancers can revivify corpses, even halting or reversing the process of rot and decay.

However, the Innistrad setting is monotheistic. For most fantasy tabletop RPG campaigns, we can say these Ghoulcallers rely on a god of undeath for their power. This god of undeath is likely some insurrectionist against the god(s) of life and death – perhaps an estranged sibling, rebellious child, or stilted lover.

Besides ghoulcallers, Innistrad has “skaberen,” who create alchemically vivified constructions of flesh called “skaabs.” These skaabs resemble Frankenstein’s monster or flesh golems – animated bits of corpses stitched together. Besides cobbling together body parts, arcane necromancy requires “rune bonds,” or binding plates, of inscribed copper or brass. The skaberen then replaces the blood of the creature with “vital fluid” made of lamp oil and powdered angel blood. The last step involves performing the magic incantation over the creature and providing it with instructions to fulfill. This forms our second category of undead.

Much like with “divine” necromancy, the success of this process depends on the skill of the skaberen. Novices can perhaps stitch together a hand or small creature, while experts can create large, savage monstrosities. Creating more intelligent or discerning skaabs requires more intricate and skilled binding plates with complicated and nuanced instructions inscribed on them.

Note that your setting might have different gods that simultaneously preside over the domains of undeath (divine necromancy and arcane necromancy). Personally, I think this distinction works well for Barrowmaze’s cults of Nergal, Orcus, and Set.

Nergal was originally the god of Death. Orcus and Set, Nergal’s sons, became the gods of divine and arcane necromancy (discussed above), respectively. This distinction fits, as Acolytes of Orcus are clerics and Necromancers of Set are magic-users. When Orcus and Set overthrew Nergal, they began warring with one another to absorb his portfolio into their own.

I think the distinction above provides more nuance between these cults for your Barrowmaze players. Besides competing devotion to different gods, you now have competition between two methods of undeath. One of these days, I’ll go through the roster of undead creatures and figure out where they fit into this schema… but for now, I’ll leave it at this. Enjoy! ✌