Hey Veeky Forums
How would you create an interesting undead civilization? And by that I mean that they should have unique needs (or maybe not so unique) to the point that they could be considered just another faction/civilization in a setting.
Usually they don't need sustenance or nourishment, they also do not need to sleep, do not need (or do not care) to work in any way except fulfilling the wishes of their masters.
How would you make some undead civ with free will?
Bump
>How would you make some undead civ with free will?
Crossed
The Crossed are alive (and terribly-written), they don't count as undead.
Well, let's be clear on a few things. First of all, entirely undead or a mix of undead and living? A society entirely composed of intelligent undead is probably going to have different dynamics to one where you have living necromancers in the mix.
Necropolitan were pretty cool.
Make them guardians of something. Ancient knowledge, nature, artifacts. They develop new tools of defence as ill-willed youngling develop new tools for destruction.
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Does anyone have a link to the Vampire Byzantium setting we made?
I imagine a lot of people here will be triggered by the mere mention of Dark Souls, but what is mentioned of Londor in Dark Souls 3 is actually pretty interesting.
The idea of undead being civilized is something that isn't often explorer. While shunned everywhere else in the world, they claim their own land and view themselves as the successors to mankind
Also, they have enough knowledge of spells and subterfuge to be smart enough to craft rings that make them appear human.
Start by putting the undead into leadership positions. This isn't the hardest thing to work with, since half of the times you see someone mucking about with necromancy, it's because they want to make themselves dictator-for-unlife or something. Once that's settled, you start taking people who have performed exceptionally well in life, and using unlife to give them that job forever. This gets you a society of people who go into the bureaucracy instead of the afterlife. You just take something sort of like normal civilization from whatever era your interested in, go back a few centuries, and ask "what if all the exceptional people from this time period just never had to stop working?"
One of the campaigns I was working on had buried cities and tombs inhabited by ghosts. Occasionally heavy rains would reveal part of one of these structures or open an entrance. The ghosts were stuck in these areas and would actually pay people to clean up the cities/tombs so they weren't stuck looking at dirty floors all day. They also loved talking to new people since they have been all stuck together for the past few hundred years. Many of them have become somewhat talented bards and mages to keep themselves occupied.
I meant not psychopathic insane undead, but more like a civilization, where there is good and bad people everywhere.
I mean completely undead
Khemri doesn't work so well since skeletons are devoid of free will or even thought. They're just constructs for the liches and tomb kings and princes.
I'll look into it, never even played Dark Souls, even though I have it on Steam.
That's a pretty cool idea, a completely bureaucratic society based on the efficiency of the people, that instead of retiring get to live for ever in exchange of never stopping to work.
That's also interesting. Not exactly what I was looking for, but cool.
I want to have undead reproducing in some way. I mean, maybe not sexually, but there must be some way of doing it that doesn't involve getting living people and killing them. Maybe splitting souls or something
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The dead don't sleep, or eat, or even really need shelter like living people do. Their needs are less physical and more psychological. What drives the undead civilizations of the world is the desire for entertainment, which is why skeletons are known to be such merry pranksters.
There was a pretty good home brew on 1d4chan.
Basically an Immortal Lich that ruled a Kingdom of meritocracy and Necromancy. Living would sign their bodies as immortal undead workers to keep their families fed, or can choose to be entombed in a golden tower, (preserved for an Armageddon style kind of last defense).
Shit was cash, and I wish there was more stories around it.
Depends on two things number 1 the age of the oldest undead that can be unleashed or 2 corpse crafting.
I spent far FAR too much time working on undead civs only to run into the problem of their terrifying power should one not nerf them. After that I stopped bitching about decent undead civs in media of all forms.
As even the most basic undead have some serious advantages against the living. When you start throwing in ancient undead masters who been busy working on their studies, training, or whatever else means the undead can EASILY deploy far more powerful beings like archmagi and warriors who been obsessively training for thousands of fucking years.
What does the living got?
Whoever is still alive. The undead can recruit any dead and they do not tire.
they do not rest.
They have ALL the fucking time in the world to improve themselves. The only good thing about it is that the older ones have a bad habit of losing track of time and that is the only goddamn mercy your gonna get.
That is for the older undead civs who can deploy those old bony possibly ethereal bastards.
That isn't even getting into fucking fleshworks because those guys are already dead! So just IMAGINE all the fucked up nightmarish pieces of work they can produce with glee from tortured flesh, bone, and whatever else they decide to stick in there.
FUCK undead civs and their overwhelming might. This coming from someone who used to be a huge fan. I swear I spent more time on them then any other group with my worldbuilding and settings trying to give them balanced justice.
It ain't fucking happening i give up.
My undead civ is weird. I have no idea what the "great hunt" is, I only played part of the Witcher 3 and I never bothered to look up the mythology behind it. When I heard it I imagined a spirit-cavalcade of crazy ghosts riding through the sky killing folks and draining their life for what generic sinister reasons. So that's part of the hook of my undead race. Once every 100 years, the undead king comes out of his impenetrable tomb-stronghold with all of his men, and rides across the land harvesting souls.
But after the hunt, he's not asleep or anything like that, nor are his subjects. Besides the king, the entirety of conscious undead "society" are all musicians, artists, and entertainers. Because they're immortal, they have infinite time to practice their craft, so they're all masters of it and they pose absolutely no threat to anyone. They don't attack anyone, they aren't a "haunted carnival" or anything of the like, they're professional musicians and performers and acrobats, so they're courteous to their guests and so there's a bizarre acceptance of them most of the time.
I haven't really thought of a good justification for it yet, but I think it's pretty funny
In my setting there is a city filled with undead and they're all pretty friendly. It started out as a town of zombies raised by a necromancer who did the whole "rule a kingdom of zombies" thing, but was slain quickly. The adventurers who did it couldn't bother killing the rest of the (then mindless) zombie inhabitants so they just sealed off the valley and told no one to go there again.
The zombies became sentient eventually and decided to just fuck around. The place was filled with quite a few natural resources so everyone just started gathering resources and doing random arts and crafts projects. Since they didn't need any room for farming (and were essentially in a post scarcity economy), everyone just spent all their time becoming really really good at whatever craft they had chosen. Eventually some of those resources dried up and the occasional undead would venture out to go find some more and then come back. Everyone was pretty happy just pursuing their passions with no fear of time or death.
Eventually some of them decided it would be nice to have a few more people in the town, but they didn't want to kill anyone to do it. Instead they sent a few of the more human looking ones to skulk around towns and look for people who's "lives ended too soon." So people who commit suicide, murder victims and stillborn babies. They take them back to the valley and give them a second chance at "life."
That is just... holy shit. I'm using that.
>and stillborn babies
Is that as horrifying as it sounds?
They're undead, what do you want?
They seemed pretty harmless up until that.
Adults and children could enjoy undeath, but babies can't do anything besides be babies, and undead babies are babies forever. That's not a "second chance", its cursing a soul to spend eternity pooping dust and shrieking.
Nah the babies learn and still develop mentally. Also they have no need to poop. They're dead.