Undead

The Undead are a classification of monster which are characterized mostly by interruptions of the connection between the soul and the body of a creature. For a variety of reasons, undead creatures proliferate Ahren and are found all across the contient of Wisteria, though they are not so common as to guarantee that your average person will ever actually have to encounter or deal with an undead creature. For obvious reasons, they have a markedly outsized presence in folklore and concern in every culture that comes across them. The most notable universality of undead creatures is that it is the only monster group you could actually join at any time, as few (if any) creatures originate in a state of undeath. Some Ars Magica scholars posit that all undead are fundamentally Planetssimals of Stasis, though this is a minority opinion. Origin stories and folkloric interpretations of the undead vary according to specific creature type.

Corporeality

One common way of dividing the undead into more specific categories is to draw a divide between corporeal and incorporeal undead. Corporeal undead possess physical forms - often but not always the bodies they had in life - and can be countered or otherwise interacted with through ordinary physical means. Incorporeal Undead do not have traditional, physical forms, and are instead appearing in the material world via correspondances, usually either with the Bardo or the Ethereal Plane. However, this category speaks little to the origins and causes of undeath of the individual creatures; it's instead a broad way of categorizing undead, usually into those which can be fought directly (corporeal) and those which require propitiation or magical expunging (incorporeal).

Unnaturalness and Artifice

Some undead creatures are created, on or for a purpose, through the deliberate action of mortal individuals. This category, including things like Legion Wights, Zombies, and Shadow Servants, are known as "Artificial Undead". In most parts of Wisteria the creation of, and sometimes even exerting mastery over, such creatures constitutes a severe crime, seen as a violation of the autonomy of the creature who was made undead. However, it is also a major field of study for the Via Lemurae and for other formal practicioners of Necromancy as a general practice.

Except for relevant historical periods, the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of undead are what are called "unnatural undead", created by the confluence of supernatural, preternatural, or sometimes even natural forces in the world. These undead are usually of highly specific kinds that might be endemic to just one region - or even, just one cave, dungeon, or dwelling. While individual instances of unnatural undead are not grave risks to the natural order, the change in incidence over time in certain areas can create more or less of a problem.

Soul, Mind, and the Undead

As earlier stated, undeath is a state usually caused by an interruption in the connection between the soul and the body of a creature. This interruption's signature significance is the cease of biological life functions in the affected individual. Put another way, all undead are fundamentally "dead" who are, for whatever reason, remaining animate. In many cases, the distruption of the connection between body and soul is so severe that many undead are considered functionally mindless, a feature particularly of corporeal undead. (For incorporeal undead, the problem is obviously the loss of the body, not the soul).

However, many kinds of undead, both unnatural and artificial, maintain some level of mind, ranging from the relative primativism of ghouls and zombies all the way up to effectively unchanged cognition, such as that seen in Vampires. The important thing to remember is that undeath is about the soul losing the ability to sustain the life of the body, not the soul being entirely absent.

For this reason, analysis of the undead is a common regression in philosophical arguments about mind/soul dualism.

Relationship to Energy

The corruption of the soul-body connection also disrupts the connections all living things have to Vita and Stasis. Effectively, this usually reverses the relationship the Undead has to "positive" and "negative" energies. Undead creatures are often injured by positive energy while being "healed" (or at the very least, "restored in function") by negative energy.

This is not a purely magical phenomenon and actually affects all cycles of life. Undead creatures do not procreate, and usually do not heal on their own without at minimum satisfying some form of special condition. Most undead creatures do not derive sustenance of any kind from eating, though a few eat in "corrupted" ways instead. As a rule, undead bodies appear dead on close examination, though some "higher" undead may pass for living under certain conditions (or using certain abilities they obtained through skillfull means, like the use of magic). Undead do not breathe, do not need to stay hydrated (but see Vampires), and may or may not need periods of daily rest. Many kinds of undead are able to go into topor states that allow them to remain unconscious for incredibly long stretches of time.

Noteworthy Examples of Undeath

• At least one master of the Order of the Obulus created a creature known in legend as the Abominable Man; consisting of a deliberately modified and reanimated corpse of a recently-slain foe which is now bound to serve, intelligently, its new master. The specific creation technique of this creature may be lost to time but it is suspected by relevant scholars to have been extremely intensive.
• A Barrow Wight is the general term for a special kind of Revenant, the latter being a creature that has managed to reanimate its own body by means of its unnatural outrage. The Barrow Wight is called such when it has reanimated due to the violation of its resting places.
  • In Baghar and much of the Shimmering Shore it is the practice to create a Mummy. Usually certain conditions within the grave or tomb activate spells that cause the Mummy to animate.
    • Some mages have been known to exploit mummification as a path to immortality without the same risks, necessarily, as Lichdom.
    • Some mummies have associated diseases that can create undead thralls collectively known as the Mummy's "curse".
• The Hortdan is the victim of any of a number of Rising Plagues, a form of feral undead that rise to feast on the living. Such feasting does not sustain their lives but serves to spread the disease that created the Hortdan in the first place. The term comes from Baghar, though it appears to be a loanword to an older Skitari term given that most Hortdan are to be found in the Great Fen. They are known by other names in other lands when they appear; in particular where they occur among the Orcs they are known as "Bogdead" and the Bastonians use the term Ghoul to describe them.
• A Lich is a catch-all term originated in Bastonian mythology for the state of undeath created when a person, usually a powerful mage, breaks their soul out of their body and rebinds it to a physical artifact. This creates a state of affairs where it is more important to destroy the artifact than it is to destroy the actual body of the lich, as the Lich remains capable of magical feats in the latter case, including usually the ability to reconstitute their form.
• The Dwarves of the Clans of Magnus speak of an undead creature known as the Reborn. These take the form of an (often wrathful) dwarven soul which attaches itself to certain clays in the Depths and animates them.
• Servus Rigidus - In the lands of the Atarlie Empire it is known that some necromancers in service of Lycanthir Lugalor occasionally raise soulless corpses as servants and warriors controlled by written edicts which are affixed to their foreheads. This practice is seen as supremely controversial given the Atarlie culture of ancestor-worship.
• Vampirism is a form of undeath that can be passed on from host to host directly and with intention. Vampires develop intense intolerance of sunlight and a nocturnal habit and feed on the blood of sapient creatures. Vampires who don't feed risk becoming feral in the pursuit of a meal and progressively lose access to their powers, which are numerous.
• The Zombie is the victim of a ritual poisoning which expels the soul rather violently from the body, which is believed to have originated in Rokea, though the practice is now seen in other places. Zombies are capable of following only the most simple instructions and are predisposed to follow the instructions of whoever dosed them with the poison, but are not usually mindlessly violent.