Allips, Ghosts, and Revenants are just a few of the types of undead capable of forming without need for necromancy. The main reason is strong emotions, a completely natural phenomenon. Some undead, like Wights (who can also arise independently sometimes) are also capable of reproduction.
With that in mind, can the case be made that (in some settings) undead are in fact part of nature and the druids are just being whiny?
Other urls found in this thread:
Everything is "natural" per a certain definition, druids in general are just whiny hippies.
>druids are just being whiny
Yes. Everything is natural. The only difference between the intelligent races and bugs is we are better at destroying and building.
>Allips, Ghosts, and Revenants are...undead capable of forming without need for necromancy
That's not SUPPOSED to happen. Something is wrong when it does.
>allips
ok
>ghosts
okay
>Revenant
i draw the line there. Revenants are artificially raised dead necessitating some some higher intelligence to function
>wights
>reproduce
>undead
if they can make more of themselves with each other, than they are, by definition, not undead, unless they are a disease of the spirit
>if they can make more of themselves with each other, than they are, by definition, not undead, unless they are a disease of the spirit
Based on what exactly? Vampires have children with humans and probably with each other.
>Revenants are artificially raised dead
>artificially
In what way? Revenants are created by the same unfinished business as ghosts, causing the body to raise by itself with no outside influence. Some people just say no to death because they still have stuff to.
Nature also does things that aren't supposed to happen (ant spirals, rat kings) all the time. Doesn't make them unnatural or somehow not part of the world. As presented, most are simply a consequence of extreme emotions.
lets get this out of the way
>dependsonthesetting.jpg
assuming the most generic and well known vampire type. Vampires can't make more vampires by banging other vamps or people. it is conversion of a living human into a vampire that keeps the species going
Life and death exist on a spectrum of positive/negative energy.
Fae, nature spirits, and druids focus heavily on the positive side, while undead, unholy spirits, and necromancers focus on the negative.
Vampires are special because they switch between positive and negative based on how well fed they are.
Wait, does that mean that if the gentry are having an incursion into your kingdom, the appropriate response is to raise your forefathers to lay them all low with rusty iron blades?
I feel as though there's a plot hook here waiting to be spelled out, something like the fey counts are hiring adventurers to purge the land of necromancers, because undead flesh is the most effective against them...
No, it's just that positive and negative energy accumulate around living/dead things and give rise to weird shit. My Fae are just fairies, nymphs, and dryads that appear in old forests full of life.
So, as long as tombs and crypts don't come near them, they can survive and thrive?
That could make it more a nature v. civilization type thing, depending on how threatened the Fae feel by those around them. Does that make elves minor Fae? Are there Satyrs? Are there other, less human things that able through the eldest of forests?
And what accumulates in dusty old crypts of yore, user? What horrid things appear out of naught, to scratch against the door in the middle of the night?
But back on topic, if some undead simply occur, and can make more of themselves, doesn't that mean that any organized society will have some means of organizing a hunt on undead?
Elves 'are' minor Fae, yeah. They're also the first druids. As positive energy builds up, ancient trees awaken as Treants and Fae spirits like fairies and dryads start to appear.
There's a trick, though. Humanoid Fae only appear in forests on the main continent, with a huge variety of intelligent life. Fae under the ocean or on the distant continents are aberrations.
Same is true for Undead. Negative Energy appears as a miasma near abandoned crypts, old battlefields, and decaying forests. The miasma weakens the barrier between the Ethereal Plane and the Material, allowing restless souls to manifest as Ghosts and rotting corpses to rise.
Most Undead don't rise until they're bones, so Skeletons are more common than Zombies.
A Ghost can come to inhabit their old remains if they become animated, which is how Lich form. Some nobles will have a personal tomb they are buried in, in the hopes of becoming a Lich decades later kinda like ancient Egyptian belief.
The only continent with a serious Undead infestation also has a city-state of skeleton pirates, so there's that.
It's a pretty generic thing for male vamps to be able to impregnate human females, resulting in a dhampir or something like that. Tons of series have half-vampire kiddies in them, even ones that don't delve too deep into actual vampire mythology, like Twilight or Vladimir Tod.
>Referencing Twighlight
Assuming standard D&D setting:
Even in those cases, they still don't arise naturally. They may not need a necromancer to do all the work for them, but there was still negative energy involved in the process.
>Fae, nature spirits, and druids focus heavily on the positive side
Funny, because druids and their ilk are supposed to favor neither good nor evil, and the positive energy plane is pretty specifically on the good side of things.
But you aren't wrong, and that's why it's funny. You'd think there'd be the neutral, negative energy equivalent of a druid, though.
In my setting, Druidic magic deals almost exclusively with healing and growth; traits associated with the positive side. It's moreso the Clerics that deal with the positive/negative spectrum, using both to heal or harm and manipulate the Undead.
>Referencing Twilight
>With that in mind, can the case be made that (in some settings) undead are in fact part of nature and the druids are just being whiny?
In pretty much all settings, since they're just whiny hippies. That's the point.
That said, nuclear radiation is also natural. Basically everything is.
Negative energy is a natural part of most settings. This really seems to be more a semantics question because anything that's allowed by the setting's physics and meta-physics can be considered natural.
If undead and negative energy aren't natural, neither is Druidic magic which based on positive energy.
Negative energy is natural. Undead present in the material plane are mostly synthetic.
>are mostly synthetic
A similar argument could be made for most crops and live stock. I do not see those pansy ass druids going after farmers.
Similar, but hardly the same. I don't think druids are too friendly towards aberrations, either.
Depends on the setting really, and often depends on the setting's philosophy in relation to magic. Is magic a natural force or are the acts of magic somehow unnatural. If magic is natural, than any action by magic can be seen as natural. Or not. It's like saying "Ok, have this river. I'm gonna divert the river's course. Is the new river that forms a natural or unnatural river? Because the change of course is made by men, but the actual flow of the river is naturally occuring.
So if I have a giant war or bloody battle ground and ghosts rise from it, are they natural? What about the plants that rise from the same field as a result of the fertilization that blood and bodies provide? There are both events that happen because of the battle, just different events. But both happend BECAUSE of human intervention.
A game I'm running has most everyone undead due to necromantic energies being present in nature due to plot stuff dark elves in the underworld making giant generators to retard humans and anyone else above them so after death, everyone comes back to life so long as their body is intact. The only real undead are the ones that have been dying over and over that they've gone mindless or the ones raised by necromancers.
Did you feel that bad about messing up your spoiler?
Have you ever thought of playing a fantasy setting that wasn't d&d?
In a more metal approach to world building there can be an entire nation of necromancers who don't need to fight or be evil.
We're talking about the undead that aren't synthetic, though?
Who said anything about evil?
Revenants are the *only* thing on that list I would consider not purging.
They tend to handle their business quickly, or die trying.
Really though, you don't want too many undead wandering about.
They're all sustained by connections to the Negative Energy Plane.
Too many connections to a plane and you'll start to shift towards it.
One plane falling into another is always bad, but that's one of the worst places to end up.
>more metal approach
>who don't need to fight or be evil
>more metal
???
Which is why I burn forests. We have to protect our plane from falling into the positive energy plane.
I'm pretty sure merging with the positive energy plane would be the more horrible outcome. With negative energy everyone just kind of withers away into dust. Positive energy is any number of "Death takes a holiday" stories of people in torturous agony unable to die until the day everyone fucking explodes. Doesn't help that positive energy also amplifies sensations and is so bright as to be blinding.
The only sane solution is to kill as many people as possible.
>The only sane solution is to kill as many people as possible.
Is that your final answer?
Yes, it's a matter of standards. If this were 2006 and I messed up the HTML on my MySpace page I'd go back and fix it, too.
Good on you.