What, if anything, makes skeletons and other undead so popular?

What, if anything, makes skeletons and other undead so popular?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=9u_v9H24PfY
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

they are spooky. and make for convenient murdering targets

Good necromancer threads.

They're not fatties.

You're literally fighting the concept of death. It's something inherently relatable.

Their humerus.

>skeleton puns
>they are funny looking and grotesque if put in various situation
>almost perpetual smile
Thats all I can think of, I guess they can be unsettling for some people, I find decaying body much more horryfing

There are enough fat undead.

They're cheap, plentiful, and any scrub can raise them.

"What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?"

"Perhaps the one who is the most honest and hardworking?"

"No, the one that's the cheapest. The one whose requirements are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. he had to simplify him.He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of work--everything that makes man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the robot."

"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?"

For me it's the aesthetic of the Danse Macabre paintings and such with all the skeletons cavorting and bringing people of all stations to the grave, for we are all equal in death.

Guilt-free, bloodless extermination. There's a reason they were such popular enemies in TV shows like Dungeons and Dragons and Conan the Adventurer - they're like robots, but in fantasy.

>Get bent Yang
>Nerve Stapling asshat

This. Easy villains.

Get spooked son

I just think that undead are the neatest thing. I just love them so much, and the aesthetic is great (especially concerning skeletons).

Were there ever any better 28mm plastic skeletons than the old Skeleton Army box GW did?

The later GW plastics were after they started scale creeping and comically huge weapons, and Mantics have comically evil faces.

Vaal Summon Skeletons

>all regular skellies
>no wheel skellies
>no giant skellies
ez

Wheel skellies you say?

Dumping skeletons

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

And last one for today.
Hope you guys got to hear the zombie's shriek

...

I feel this thread needs one more, for the sake of lewdness.

The skeleton of a cute female saint, who was buried in a dress with a completely open bodice to show off her skeletits.

You require quite a lot a of ''it's magic ain't gonna explain shit'' to get away with skeletons moving on their own with no muscles or tendons to speak of.

As for other undead - undeath is mostly seen as anathema for life, which is rarely a popular thing.

I think it's long overdue that D&D had an official skeleton template that any race/class can take, or at least a separate PC "race." It's honestly ridiculous that we have balanced dragons and devils in the Dragonborn and Tieflings, but no skeletons yet. The homebrew is always so unreliable.

They are very relatable. I feel like we all have a little skeleton inside us

This is a blueboard!

youtube.com/watch?v=9u_v9H24PfY

I love how with these paintings it doesn't matter is a horrific giant skeleton or monster is coming through the wall, the samurai only ever look to be mildly outraged. It's like the baka forgot to take off his shoes

unnatural yet relatable
spooky yet funny
faceless yet expressive

everyone's got one

Their mutability.

Take another classic ground-level monster, like orcs. Sure, you can have different varieties of orc, and slightly different sizes or special uses, but in the end it's still gonna be an orc.

Now take a skeleton or a zombie and things get fun. Make a skeleton with three heads and knives for hands? It's animated with magic, sure. Corpse of a giant spider with sutured-on cannons? Go for it, that flesh isn't going to raise itself. A gigantic undead supercomputer made by skeletons simulating binary? Hell yeah, Deep Rot was the best. Sometimes it's stupidly simple, just look at Wheel Skeletons. It's a skeleton on a goddamn wheel, and yet it's super recognizable and offers a ton of cool options.

They're also weirdly relateable while also being scary. Put a skeleton in a silly hat and it can be a comedic aside, while cover it in dripping gore and crawling out of a pile of flesh that it used to inhabit and suddenly its upped itself to creepy. Because of how simple and simulatenously familiar and yet spooky they are, you can put them in damn near anything and make them work.