Worldbuilding General

Walking corpses edition

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Previous thread: Storytelling:
>Who animates undead?
>Why?
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
Specifics
>What are they called?
>What kind of force makes them work?
>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
>Are there undead societies?

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mercenary-tributary.tumblr.com/post/90695646534/1962-republic-manual-on-demonic-constructs-the).
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Damn, slow thread today.

OP asks because OP feels that "zombies" is too modern but ghouls and revenants are already statted out, and "walkers," "wights," and "draugr" already appear as pop culture undead and he doesn't want to be a ripoff.

>Who animates undead?
More of a "what"; "undead" come about in one of two ways, either contamination by the Host, or through accidents of Defiling. Intentional creation of mobile undead is not unheard of, but would be not only illegal (as is its source magic, Defiling) but would be a traceable evidence of your crime and possible method of your execution rolled into one.

>Why?
Defilers can expose matter to water sources during the act (similar to mercenary-tributary.tumblr.com/post/90695646534/1962-republic-manual-on-demonic-constructs-the). This is not often intentional, and living or dead matter already in relatively-pure water can animate in this way entirely by acident.
The Host, on the other hand, physically and psychically corrupts anything unfortunate enough to be touching it, and molds them, body and mind, into forms more adept at spreading its contagion. The Host itself is not sapient, and this is more of a pre-programmed instinct, but individual victims of the contagion may be intelligent and seek the most efficient way to spread.

>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
Horror. They are either a symptom that the great war against the Host has reached your town and you are now the front line, or they indicate a powerful or careless Defiler is nearby and is actively sucking the lifeforce out of the land. Those with any authority/ability to do so may launch investigative probes to locate and destroy the Defiler responsible, and sometimes such inquisitors may telepathically "override" the animate dead to consume their maker. Doing so would be seen as an acceptable use of controlling undead, since it spares the risk to inquisitors to weaken or capture the Defiler and provides a poetic justice of sorts if successful.

>What are they called?
Host (sigular and plural) can be identified by black mutegenic mass and tentacles (not unlike OP pic), and are universally referred to as such. Even saying that word with the right inflection could cause a panic in an unprepared township.
Corpses and animals corrupted by demons are referred to scientifically as "partial/full" "demonic constructs" (see above link), or colloquially as "demons".

>What kind of force makes them work?
The Host is what remains of a god-killer known as the Entity- the pre-sapient ooze that came from its body makes up a nearly unkillable horde of consuming horror. Biologically, the black mass doesn't exist- it seems completely inert, psionically neutral, but is capable of moving and influencing regardless. Further study has been halted as simple proximity to it is a threat.
Demons are the result of a primordial "wellspring" of life that has been siphoned into an unknown dimension via Defiling over the centuries. Created by psionic energy in some for or another, they are a hungry microbial life representing viruses at a macro scale (each demon cell is nearly the size of a human egg, or a pencil dot on paper).

>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
See above; Host are as sentient as their individual body was prior to consumption, but is entirely lashed to one superceding "will", a hivemind-like formation that makes up the totality of the Host.
Demons form in colonies of varying complexity, proportional to the amount of energy that went into the Defiling event that created them. They are free-willed by default, with a full humanoid range of thought and emotion, but have a universal vulnerability to psionic energy, and can be controlled or destroyed by anyone with psionic talent or sufficient willpower. This fact alone tends to make them guarded upon meeting other sapient life, but they are otherwise not contagious and can exist peacefully with animals or peacefully-minded humanoids until their natural degradation minutes, hours or days later (demons decompose after formation, and have not lasted long enough to develop language, let alone form societies).

>Are there undead societies?
Everyone hopes not, but who knows what exists in the black, tangled mass of what used to be the western jungle?

hm? there already is a worlbuilding general

Must have missed it because I'm a dumbass. Thanks.

>Who animates undead?
Good ol necromancers, there's two kinds of them though. Gravekeepers, who are the most common and doesn't actually deal in raising the dead rather than keeping them quiet, talking to upset spirits and answering to most general undead problems. The second one is your bog standard corpse puppeteer, raise the dead, control spirits, achieve immortality, this is the least used because necromancy has few uses and lichhood, while mostly a mystery to those but a select few is still considered the cheapest and worst immortality. They are both accepted as legetimate spellcasters, though a few too many regulations for owning a corpse exists on the latter. The puppetry that its so like means that a necromancer needs to divert attention and focus unto the puppets. This being the only hard part of necromancy, it still leaves the unfortunate side effect of the dead being dumb as bricks, skeletons having no brain to work with, are early wargames video game AI levels of stupid, given a bow and a higher position they will literally walk over the wall and plumet to their death to go smack them. Zombies are a slightly more terrifying threat, having muscle memory and the unpowered bulk of a corpse they can work simple plans and navigation. Though usually too mangled and this intelligent slowly disappearing as they rot. And ghosts,spirits and shades are like dealing with a bipolar ptsd manic veteran with full body phantom limb, they're just unreasonable.

There's also wandering bubbles of magic, the power of emotions and situational mysticism that create "natural undead". Which are generally harder to control, needs

>Why?
Considering all other practices and schools, necromancy is by far the simples of them all. In all academic circles where ones school is not hereditary of magic its usually the lazy get trough quickly school. Its usually a joked about being the hand puppets in a opera because of ridiculously easy it is to raise a corpse and how useless it really is.
As for why there's many, cheap labor, control over something, you're stuck with it because you picked it while you were young and you didn't really want to be a spellcaster but you got dat elder blood so of course you're forced too and now you're essentially a fighter with zombie meatshields.

There's two kinds of practitioners, hedge necromancers and full on death wizards. The latter is usually the one who actually learn how to truly use the powers of moving things that have no reason to move while hedge mages are the ones who learn a few spells then impatiently go out to help others/get rich. Players are all hedge mages.
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?

By law they are not banned or anything. Different classes of people think about them in each their own. They usually have a ton of legislation and paperwork to deal with when it comes to owning or peddling a corpse, either way they can live comfortably as most spellcasters can.

The religious class vary, though the worshipers of the sun spirit and the world spirit go out of their way to smack them about, mostly because the sun hates all things that move about and reproduce, but is too cucked by the earth to do anything. Instead settling on telling its worshipers to burn the living dead. The earth spirit, being the mother of monsters and lover of life, doesn't like it when these anomalies go about killing outside the natural order. Most faiths and gods barely care about them except the more demonic focused ones, as demons love to flop around in a soulless body.

The enlightened class, the scholars, the magicians and such have little thought about them, to them they're like foxes, they bother the farmers and generally are pretty harmless, though they are not disrespecting as they are the ones hiring the gravekeepers and knows the usefulness of buffer labor.

The peasant class, farmers, low tier artisans and such usually think of them like one would a wolf, pests that attack your livestock and the reason not to go out alone into the places your parents warned you about, they might either protest it entirely or be entirely grum about it. They treat a necromancer just like a man who got a tame wolf in heel, but if they learn about its uses and general tameness they usually stop fussing up. Of course they're usually bound to the religious class, so it can depend.

The merchant class absolutely hates them. They stink up your shops, wild ones disturb your caravans and your customers obviously don't want to see them amongst your fine wares. One usually finds merchants with maces or other bludgeons on hand to chase away necromancers deal with their undead.

>What kind of force makes them work?
Puppet strings, either to their raiser or the reason to their undeath, a phylactery, a shriveled up hearth, lack of faith. This is usually what a gravekeepers job is when dealing with undead who can't just be spelled away.
>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
Few are. Things like a lich, who are essentially the three parts of the body all bound together after death, usually go insane from depriving itself of sensation and emotion, the spirit is also pained by not being in a living body. Vampires and ghouls are considered the most human, though mutilated and the whole cannibalism thing they usually get by with their curses.

>Are there undead societies?
Ghouls that have regained their senses, usually by their remnant humanity band together out of necessity, living in crypts and sewers to avoid the living. Though cursed by incredible aversion to the living and bound to animalistic rage if their main source of food seems to be threatened they are pretty uninterested in the living. Though it varies by their person, just like everyone else.

I see your walking corpses and raise you walking graveyards.

I like the idea where all the undead are the ruling class and getting elevated means becoming undead.

I've been working on a sci-fi setting since my group are really into Warframe, and while I wouldn't run it with the Warframes I did like the idea of there being a war in a solar system with two or three opposing factions (and maybe more). I also really liked the idea of varied "classes" of enemies (so you'd have regular troopers but also tons of support troops like the flamethrower guy, the sniper, etc.) So I decided to make one based kinda on bioweapons and have a few classes of them:

>rippers
Slaves they fitted with metal plates and claws and mind broke into being attack zombie things, some use weapons but mostly claws
>hoplites
Regular infantry, grown in tanks
>needlers
Snipers with gauss rifles that fire poison needles
>valkyries
Only female soldiers, put in power armor and wield electricity swords. Are a deadly "solo" encounter and should be feared.
>mindrenders
Psychics who puppet enemies or confuse them into missing shots. Or have a gaze attack to drive you nuts.
>linebreakers
Or maybe just breakers, these are suicide bomber guys armed with shotguns, maybe whips as well that can cause paralyzing pain.

I think its interesting that so little information actually reveals more into what you're building.

The difference between Rippers and Hoplites implies two important things:
A. Slavery exists, and is used liberally
B. tank-grown Humans being soldiers must be more difficult to make, but more sought after for some reason.

This structure also implies a matriarchal military; the Valkyries are the only "normal" people out of all of this. They're also a solo encounter, and the only ones that don't seem expendable.

I don't know if this is what you wer going for but its pretty cool

>Who animates undead?
Magic powerful enough to animate the dead is rarely controlled by mortals. Manmade undead outside of a well stocked laboratory are difficult and impractical to animate. Undead are often naturally animated in areas affected by uncontrolled magic (most coastal and ocean regions are threatened by rogue magic in this setting).
>Why?
The rogue magic that animates the dead (as well as causes a myriad of other effects including creating many unnatural monsters) is the result of demigods refraining from controlling their powers and letting magic run loose due to their apathy regarding mortals.
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
. The largest polity in the known world has banned necromantic practices but enforcement is lax due to the rarity of the crime. Many of the scientifically advanced city states place no restrictions on necromancy save for safety precautions required for all magical experimentation.
>What are they called?
The magical community refers to undead as "necromantic entities" in formal usage. Common names for various types of undead include the various staples of fantasy nomenclature.

>Who animates undead?
Sick fucks.
>Why?
To cause wholesale slaughter
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
"what the fuck aaaaa"

>What are they called?
[terrified scream]
>What kind of force makes them work?
An occultist has caused a persons soul to haunt his body immediately upon death. Almost invariably, they react with mindless terrified violence.

It's kind of a ripoff of something else I created except it's too autistic to ever use in an RPG and if my group learned about it I would die of embrassment so this lets me use some of the ideas i had.

What was the other thing?

>if my group learned about it I would die of embrassment

Did you really think you could post something like that without demands for what that something is?

Storytime user

I'll keep it relatively short since I don't want to derail thread. When I was young (like elementary school) I'd have all these pretend battles at recess pretending pebbles were huge tanks and rocks were mountains and that sort of thing, and I had these alter-ego characters who the story focused on. I gave the warring factions pretty embarrassing names since I was a kid but since I grew up with them they are so engrained in my head that they don't seem cringeworthy to me. Anyway I continued this story for years as a kind of allegory with my own life, but it centered around a huge war on a huge planet (which I imagined things in the real world as superstructures, like the main city being a tree many miles tall with impenetrable shields). And the enemy faction were all clones with a few special classes of infantry and tons of weird biopunk creatures. Anyway I kept imagining it into my adulthood and continued to expand the world but then I killed off the main character and resurrected him out of regret and pretty much ruined the story. Which is deeply depressing.

But anyway a lot of the ideas are being stolen from that. And you can understand why I wouldn't be able to use the world as is to my group given how headcanon/fanfiction-y it is.

What were the faction names mate?

The "good guys" were the "whos" because I read Horton heard a who when I was a little kid and got inspired by the idea of microscopic people. Also saw that Arthur episode where he gets headlice and they anthropomorphize the lice. So I called the enemy faction "lice." It was one of those things I should have grown out of at some particular age but I never did. But yeah it's pretty cringe and I mostly try to keep it to myself except for sometimes posting about it on Veeky Forums sometimes.

>who animates undead?
perverts and desperate terrorists. Simple pacts can be made with lesser elementals to power automatons for similar purposes. undead are unnecessary and dangerous in the event of an outbreak

Bump

>Who animates undead?
The majority of the undead are raised by the Lich Priests of Vitario and their work with the Goblin Rebellion, though there are other instances, such as the semi-natural phenomena of Wendigos and the Sobki Returned.

>Why?
Vitario is the god of life that shares the duty of the cycle of life and death with his twin sister, Moriri. However, Vitario is petty, and resents his sister ruining his work. At the beginning of the world, he whispered his secrets to his Lich Priests. They now work in secret to spread his influence. Their latest campaign is to help the emerging Goblin rebellion to free themselves from their Elven overlords.

>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
Undead are treated as abominations and abhorred by the rest of the world.

>What kind of force makes them work?
With Vitario's help, the Lich Priests and those that they teach the arts to steal the souls of the departed and return them to the bodies of the dead before Moriri can pass them into the next realm.

>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
Most either return to rotten forms that barely function, or those that return to solid bodies are generally driven insane by the experience.

>Are there undead societies?
No. Undead are used as a means to an end by all but the Lich Priests, who follow the insane vision of their god of a world without death, no matter the quality of life.

You neglected to put /wbg/ in the title, meaning a lot of regulars might not find it in the catalog.

>OP asks because OP feels that "zombies" is too modern but ghouls and revenants are already statted out, and "walkers," "wights," and "draugr" already appear as pop culture undead and he doesn't want to be a ripoff.
OP would probably be better off if he stopped worrying about what everybody else is doing and just did his own thing.

>hm? there already is a worlbuilding general
The two are probably specific enough to coexist

Just get it down on paper, user. Unedited, to start with, just the whole mess. Then, once you have everything in front of you, you can start to work with names and editing out sillier parts to make a consistent tone. But don't let your fear of how it might be perceived cause you to dilute the creativity in the well.

Oh I did. I wrote over 500 pages about it. Didn't even cover 5% of the plot cause I'd had 16 years of imagining to cover with ti.

Cool stuff. When's the motion picture trilogy of the book coming out?

I was in the last thread. Anybody have any opinions or whatever? Also, thinking of going for the "earth gets caught up in a minor conflict pushing us onto the galactic stage" thing. Probably around 2011 so that this shit hole of a reality doesnt exist with its culture war and memes and cynicism and bullshit. Kill me. Life is not bright anymore. I have lost the will to live. Yes / No?

Earth is sort of like it is in Mass Effect, where the nations of earth are still independent and the galactic human government is more a representative organization that deals with the political, economic, and military stuff on the galactic scale in the name of its earth member nations.

pls reply so I feel validated lol

>Who animates undead?
A specific caste of blue collar management, the Nosferteurgy, who occupy a niche somewhere between undertaker, used-car salesman and local union hall. Their loose knit guild buy up the dead in bulk, animate them (with various degrees of sophistication and enhancements, depending on intended purpose) and shop them out for rent or lease as laborers. Or that explains the zombies, at least.

The Lich Senate, of course, animate their own nominees, through closely guarded rites known to no one else. In theory, any living human of sound mind, body & soul may be nominated to fill a senate seat, but in practice it is usually the sons and daughters of the aristocracy that are chosen. If confirmed by a super-majority (or by a unanimous vote of the reigning Triumvirate), the chosen is ritually murdered and then resurrected as a Junior Senator.

>pls reply so I feel validated
I mean, ok, but was there a question there? All I'm seeing is "Mass Effect was neat, huh?" which... I mean, sure. It was neat.

I guess what I'm missing is the "why?" Why are you making a setting? What are you using it for? What makes it unique? Why do you need to make an entire setting instead of just utilizing an existing one? And so on.

in my previous posts, I stated why: I just want a setting because I feel that every fiction I love has been bastardized and I'd rather make my own and just see if it goes well.

Also, question was what do you think about the 2011 alternate timeline thing?

Also, general critique comments of the stuff I posted last thread(other ideas for alien species, for example).

Sorry for not being clear. And yes, Mass Effect was neat, huh?

Making a setting to DM a tabletop game for a bunch of friends.
What do you guys all prefer to take into importance? Originality, or ability to mesh with the game system?

Well this is entirely different than the other existing Worldbuilding Thread. mite b fun.
Storytelling:
>Who animates undead?
I actually don't currently have a setting I am working that has specifically included the undead. Logically there should be some in my main setting as it is based on fairytales and folklore. I guess I haven't gotten to it.
>. . . walking corpses treated . . . How do people react?
I would imagine it would depend on a lot of factors. Most likely reactions of fears. But I doubt they would be universally evil. Just uncommon and strange.

Specifics
>What kind of force makes them work?
I'll probably pull the standard folkloric ones like curses. Magic isn't set spells, though. So the way that works is more perspective I guess. Or perhaps it would be an outsider force that is unfamiliar to most in the world.
>Are they sentient? . . . how do they deal with that?
Some would likely be, others wouldn't be. And probably just the same as anyone deals with what they are. A large helping of anxiety, fear, and a desire to fit in and be a part of something.
>Are there undead societies?
This is the sort of thing I've mostly avoided in the setting. Overly homogeneous locations and societies. There are only two explicitly stated as such, and one is due to millennia of isolationist tendencies (brought by shame) and the other is just so far out of the way that it is rare that any different folk show up. I imagine an undead society would form in the same way as most others and be a mixed bag. But I think that would require me working to establish actual rules and lists of them.

Depends first on what game system. But neither is really important in the long run. What is important is that the story/events/experiences are compelling. Make sure you have something for the game itself and fill in around it so that at least the experience is good even if the worldbuilding is frayed at the edges of the mechanics.

DnD probably (I know, it's all my players will play), and I was thinking specifically about races.
I'm just not sure which would be better, humans/elves/orcs/dwarves, just for player recognition, or make up my own thing?
It's tricky.

If you're running DnD and it is obviously DnD, if you want to mix up the races, just go hunt down a weird existing race and replace one of the core ones with it for the setting. Or do a couple. Refluff them to fit in with whatever you're doing (think of how Eberron treats Drow and Halflings) and you get the benefits of something established but with unique flavor.

I wouldn't go for Humans + 3 unique donut steel races, personally.

Dunno if this is the right place to ask this, but I might as well. I want to run a game of Call of Cthulhu set in pre-Giuliani New York City. The 80s are generally considered to be the worst decade, as in crime, urban decay, etc?

Who animates undead?

Something something technically divine power but instead necromancers use the corpse-power of a dead god to do their HERETICAL magics

>Who animates undead?
Corpse beetles infest fresh bodies left in damp cool areas and give their nervous systems a jolt.
>Why?
The bodies are filled with eggs that hatch and disperse nymphs as the corpse shambles about aimlessly. It provides food for many organisms, primarily the offspring of the beetles.
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
They are sometimes used in divination, most of the time people fear them and restrain or incapacitate them before destroying the brain.
>What are they called?
Ghouls
>What kind of force makes them work?
An unconscious nervous system
>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
They are barely capable of responding to environmental stimuli. Few ghouls can be considered conscious at the level of a lesser mammal.
>Are there undead societies?
Nope

I wanted to base my fae off of insects and small creatures that are linked to different types of magic
So far I got:
Dragonflies = Telekinesis
Bombardier Beetles = Alchemy
Butterfly / moth = illusion / Disguise
Mosquito = Blood Magic
Anyone got any ideas?

No magic in my world sorry m8

Dung beetles

without breathing the muscle system cannot produce adenosine tryphospate and therefore the nypmhs of this beetle could not possibly cause movement

>tfw don't have any actual undead, just things that are kinda close to it

>Who animates undead?
Ghost Enthrallers. They are people who, by some means, find a spirit that is willing to travel and fight alongside them. There's two ways of doing this; finding one in the wild, or fabricating one through sacrificial rites to an evil god.
>Why?
Some need another blade in their adventures. Others don't even really mean to, or even know they have a ghost with them. Among the legitimate reasons of doing this, it's a great way to interview people in the past and get accurate historic views on certain time periods.
>How are the walking corpses treated in your setting? How do people react?
People don't typically recognize spirits because they're very normal at first glance, though some gain infamy due to their prominence in the place of haunting or what they did in life. When people do recognize a phantom, it's greatly dependent on what they did in life, though generally, they are scared.

>What are they called?
Phantoms. Ghosts, Spirits, and Memories are also applicable.
>What kind of force makes them work?
The world itself has a long, great memory. Sometimes, when it loses something, it still feels there, like a man's missing arm. The end result is that the person is still in a place where they resided for a great deal of their lives, living their life as they did back then, even though they left it in their true life, and even though they may leave it a dozen times more after that. They are living, breathing people, born out of cosmic circumstance rather than a true one.
>Are they sentient? If so, how do they deal with that?
They are. People don't like being told they're "not real." Some may accept it, but to many phantoms, the entire world changed in the timespan of a walk in the woods.
>Are there undead societies?
There's one or two towns of phantoms. No one knows they're phantoms. Everyone just thinks they age well and have horrible memory.

Never. Like I said, I ruined the story.

I like the gravekeepers, those are fun. Might adopt those in my setting to a degree.
Go on.
>"what the fuck aaaaa"
Good thinking.
>An occultist has caused a persons soul to haunt his body immediately upon death. Almost invariably, they react with mindless terrified violence.
Might steal this too.
My bad.
>OP would probably be better off if he stopped worrying about what everybody else is doing and just did his own thing.
That's true. OP has self-confidence issues and should probably stop referring to himself in the third person.
Bit of both desu. But remember that if you're GMing you can remove whatever you want from the system so it fits the setting.

Why can't you go back on the resurrection?