As they say… and now for something completely different.
Before You Skip the Long, Rambling Introduction…
I’m changing it up a little. Because the Long, Rambling Introduction is particularly long this time, but it also provides some very important for what you’re going to find below. So, if you want to skip the Long, Rambling Introduction, you just need to know that the meat of this article is actually an example of a writeup of lore and monster building guidelines that I mostly follow in my homebrew games. Basically, it’s a description of what undead are, how they work, and how they’re designed in The Angryverse. Or rather, how they will be designed going forward. Because the design has evolved. The Long, Rambling Introduction actually provides a lot more context and a glimpse into an upcoming article on why s$&% like this is important and useful from a game design and game mastery perspective.
With that out of the way, you can feel free to skip down to the meat of the article which starts with the heading “The Lore of the Angryverse: Undead” or you can read…
The Actual Long, Rambling Introduction…
In my last article, the one about monster building, I mentioned that there are certain “rules” I follow when I create monsters. And that piqued more than a few people’s interest. And that’s not the first time I’ve piqued people’s interest with the idea of “rules.” In the past, I’ve frequently made references to something called “The Angryverse.” And every time I mention the Angryverse, people ask me when the hell they are going to get the Angryverse Campaign Guide.
Never. Sorry. I will never publish an Angryverse Campaign Guide for D&D. But, someday, I will publish my own RPG and it will be set in something very similar to The Angryverse.
The Angryverse is something I’ve been asked about a lot. And, quite frankly, it’s something that’s worth writing an article about. Not The Angryverse itself. But the idea of a Campaign Bible. Which is different from a Campaign Guide. And way better and more useful. So, consider that article on the docket for some future date: Campaign Bibles and the concept of Campaign Cohesion. This also means I don’t have to explain WHY what I’m sharing today is a good idea. I just get to share it.
What I’m sharing, by the way, is a cohesive bit of lore from the Angryverse which serves as an example of what a Campaign Bible might look like and how it informs mechanical design. Except I won’t be explaining any of that crap. I’m just giving you a glimpse into The Angryverse lore that I wrote as part of a larger project I suddenly decided to move forward on. But that’s also neither here nor there. Anyway, The Angryverse…
The Angryverse isn’t really a campaign setting. That’s why it doesn’t have a name. I mean, most of the campaigns I run are – broadly speaking – “set” in the Angryverse. But when I say that, it implies that there’s a map and locations and a history and all that s$&%. I mean, there is that s$&%. Some of it. There’s no real map, but there’s a bunch of regions and there’s a vague timeline of major historical events. And there are a few specific cities and countries and locations and things. But I tend to invent those details for specific campaigns. Like, I might decide to start a new campaign, so I’ll invent a specific kingdom that is part of the Western Kingdoms and set it there. And I know somewhere beyond the borders of that kingdom are other Western Kingdoms that have existed in prior campaigns and somewhere is Central Zethinia and Alqaad and The Sunderlands and the Free Cities of the Jagged Coast and so on. And the campaign might take place during the Age of Heroes or during the Age of Empires or during the Age of Darkness or whatever. But historical and geographical details aren’t REALLY what the Angryverse is about.
What the Angryverse is really about is how the cosmos works in the games I run. For example, in the Angryverse – and I know this fact pisses a lot of people off and it kind of scares me that it does – in the Angryverse, necromancy is evil. Inherently. Animating the dead is absolutely an evil act. The gods hate it. Good people hate it. It’s absolutely awful. And there are reasons for that. They have to do with how undead work in the world. What undead are. All undead. And, look, that’s not just fluffy stuff either. It ain’t just story details. It also helps me design adventures and run games. Because I know what undead are and how they work, it’s a lot easier for me to create a new undead creature for my world. Or recreate an existing one to fit my world. And because I know what undead are and how they work, I can also deal with weird questions that arise sometimes like “what happens if I use this obscure magic item or spell that affects the ‘soul’ on a vampire?” And it even saves a lot of referencing books. I mean, I know the soul cage spell explicitly specifies that it only works on humanoids so as to avoid tricky questions like that, but that sort of specificity is what leads to so much of the bloat in the D&D rules and what creates so much of the need to have spell cards and magic item cards or to stop the whole game to look s$&% up in the book because who the hell can actually remember what creature types a paladin’s divine sense or whatever the f$&% it’s called actually works on. In the Angryverse, soul cage works on more than just humanoids. And I can figure out in a moment whether it will work on a specific creature because I know what a soul is and what creatures have them. I don’t need to look up the specific list of “things this specific spell works or does not work on.” And because the world follows these cohesive and consistent rules, players can use that knowledge – or do research – to come up with clever plans.
So, the Angryverse is basically an understanding of the universe in which my D&D games take place. And the current incarnation of the Angryverse has been building for eleven years because 4th Edition D&D had some absolutely fantastic underlying lore and was built on a framework of cohesive, cosmic order that was richly detailed but also streamlined to actually be useful. And we’ll add that to the list of good and useful things that 4E did that the designers of D&D utterly failed to learn from. 5E has basically NO world-building beyond a kitchen-sink, grab-bag approach of “and this is how THIS thing works and this is how THIS thing is and this is the lore for THIS thing and it doesn’t matter how they all fit together in the same universe.” Which is why no one even understands what magic actually is, where it comes from, or how it works anymore.
Now, the Lore of the Angryverse is constantly evolving. Mostly because it’s practical worldbuilding. It’s not something that has ever been written down in one place. Instead, it exists smeared out across the backstories of hundreds of adventures and dozens of campaigns and one-shot adventures. It exists in countless judgment calls and interpretations and rulings. It exists in custom magic items and new spells and class options. And it especially exists across vast numbers of monster designs and monster redesigns. Which is why when I said I have “rules” for monster building and specific monster types and stuff, I was only “sort of” telling the truth. See, I have an inherent understanding of what undead ARE and how they work in the Angryverse. And every time I design a new undead creature, I strive to express that somehow. And every expression also evolves that understanding a little.
Which leads me to this current thing that I’m about to share. Because this Long, Rambling Introduction is FINALLY drawing to a close. After fiddling with zombies and some other undead monster designs in the last article and after being asked about my rules for monster design in general and undead in particular, I wondered what it would like if I actually did try to write down some coherent rules – or guidelines, really – for monster design and to write down the matching lore from the Angryverse that explains it all. And since I’ve been working with undead, that’s what I decided to focus on.
So that’s what you get to read. A few pages from what an Angryverse Monster Design Bible would look like if I ever got it out of my head and wrote it down. And meanwhile, because it did end up changing my rules for undead design – AGAIN – I’ve got to go redesign all my custom undead monsters. Which is fine. I love doing redesigning monsters to actually, you know, make them good.
The Lore of the Angryverse: Undead
Undead are abominable creatures that are born of the disruption of the natural and divine cycles of life and death. Because of their nature, their behaviors, and the methods by which they are created, undead are always evil. As is their creation. Undead are viewed as abominations by both the servants of the gods and by those who worship the spirits of the natural world, and they are despised and feared by most mortals because of the danger they pose to all living things. Those who would use undead as tools to accomplish some end, however noble, are similarly viewed as dangerous and abominable.
The Nature of the Undead
Broadly speaking, there are three types of undead. To understand the different types of undead, their nature, how they arise, and why they are such a blight on the natural world, you must understand the nature of life and death in the natural world.
Beasts and the Natural World
The natural world that all mortals and beasts inhabit came to exist at the boundary between the divine realms of the gods and the chaotic realms of the primordials. Because it exists as a mix of order and chaos, creation and destruction, material and divine, the natural world is sometimes called the world of balance.
The natural world is suffused with a magic of its own that arises from the interplay of the forces and cycles that rule over it. It is this magic that arcane spellcasters manipulate. It is the matter of both magic and spirit. And it is from this magic that the first spirits arose. In order to avoid confusion, natural philosophers refer to these spirits as anima (singular: animus) because the word “spirit” has come to have many meanings.
Anima are essentially just will, instinct, drive, and base emotion. The will to survive, the drive to eat, to rear young, to protect territory, to migrate, to exist. Anima are amorphous and fluid by nature. In some sense, all spirits are part of each other. But particularly strong spirits can exist separately as well. This is why druids and other worshipers of the natural world identify the spirits of particular places or particular types of creatures, such as the spirit of the Red Hills or the wolf spirit. The anima are a bit like the sea. All water comes from the sea and it will eventually return to the sea. But you can take a bowl full of water from the sea and carry it away. And it becomes separate from the sea but it never stops being water and if you tip the bowl, it will someday rejoin the sea. The anima of the world are like bowls of water and lakes and rivers. They are separate from the sea, they have their own nature, their own shape, and they exist at a particular place, but eventually, they will find their way back to the sea.
The natural world was initially a chaotic place, roiling and seething and constantly subject to cataclysms. That is because, initially, the gods had no interest in it and left it to the primordials. But the constant destruction was anathema to the anima who ebbed and flowed in the natural world. And they suffered greatly. The gods heard their suffering and noticed them for the first time. Every god has its own nature, of course. Some were moved to help the suffering spirits. Others were fascinated by the strange beings. Still, others saw them as fodder or as a source of power. Regardless, the gods went to war with the primordials and drove them back into the realm of chaos.
The gods then began to order the world to allow the anima to flourish, but the anima could not tolerate the rigid, unchanging order the gods imposed. Anima require both order and chaos, both stability and change. In the end, the gods established the natural cycles of the world. They established day and night and the seasons, and they allowed the world to evolve and change within those cycles. And that is when the first plants and beasts appeared.
Beasts and plants are natural creatures wherein an animus – a bit of spirit and will – inhabits a physical body. By their nature, all natural creatures are born, live, and eventually die. When they die, their body is consumed by the natural world and becomes part of it once more and their animus is absorbed into the rest of the anima of the world, carrying its instincts and memories back to the greater spirits. Thus, the anima started to differentiate themselves. It is impossible to catalog or comprehend the sheer number of spirits or comprehend them as separate entities. There are many wolves in the world. And there are many wolf spirits from whom wolves are born. Are those spirits themselves expressions of one greater wolf spirit? Who can say?
But beasts and plants are simple. They are creatures of instinct, of base emotions, and of will. They provide the will to survive and to flourish, and they possess the cunning of the natural world, but they are nothing more than, well, beasts.
Mortals and Souls
The gods saw this cycle happening and – for as many different reasons as there are gods – they decided to create their own living children. The gods took pieces of their own divine essence and imbued them into living things of the natural world and they created the first mortals. The divine spark imbued the new creations with something that no beast or plant has. The ability to reason and to choose. To rise above animal instincts and raw, base emotions. Which, of course, gave them the capacity to act for good and evil.
A mortal is a living being with a material body, an animus that provides the basic will to live, and a soul that allows them to reason, to choose, and to understand the higher ideals of the cosmos, for better or worse. A mortal can understand and seek justice, for example, but can also seek revenge.
Some mortal beings were created simply by imbuing existing creatures with divine souls, though, in some cases, the creature was transformed irrevocably by the process. For example, metallic dragons were born when bestial chromatic dragons were imbued with souls. And worgs were born when a dark god imbued wolves with a mortal soul. And gnolls were born when hyenas were given souls. Other mortal beings were shaped in the image of the gods more directly. For example, the humanoid races were all created in the image of the gods and then imbued with souls.
A mortal is a temporary steward of the soul with which they’ve been imbued. On their death, their body is consumed by the world, their animus rejoins the anima of the world, and their soul departs. And it is what happens to the soul that is essential in creating an undead. Though not for the reasons you might think.
The Plane of Long Shadows
Click the Goblin’s Jar to Leave a Tip
When a mortal being dies, its soul is compelled to return to the divine realms. Not every soul is worthy of returning to the divine realms though. And most souls are prevented from returning directly to the divine realm anyway.
See, souls are marked by the mortal’s experiences in life. And not just in the sense that a soul can gradually be turned to good or evil by the choices of the person caring for it. Souls also absorb emotions, memories, experiences, and instincts from the animus it shares a body with. Especially negative emotions and memories. You can imagine the soul as being coated with all of this muck and grime gradually throughout the life of the mortal.
When a mortal dies, its soul is weighed down by the negative emotions and animal instincts it has picked up from its mortal existence. And so, it remains in the natural world for a time. But not in the world we can see. Instead, it sort of “falls through the veil” and passes into the Plane of Long Shadows, a dark, twisted reflection of the natural world. Now, likely, the Plane of Long Shadows wasn’t always dark and twisted. But thanks to the ages of mortal souls passing through it, it has become that.
After a soul passes through the veil into the Plane of Long Shadows, it begins a journey across the plane, seeking the Gates of Judgment. And, as it travels, it sheds its negative emotions and animal instincts and guilty memories. It leaves the baggage of the mortal world behind. But all of that dark energy coagulates and pools. It takes on a life of its own. Thus, the Plane of Long Shadows is full of shades made of dark memories, vile emotions, guilt, fear, pain, and suffering. Sometimes, those shades torment the souls of others, which is why we pray to the gods of death to guide souls swiftly to the Gates of Judgment.
But the shades are ever seeking a way into our world, the natural world, where they can visit suffering on the living. And that is the origin of undead. An undead is a dead mortal – or rarely, a beast – who has become a vessel for the dark shades from the Plane of the Long Shadows. Whose body or spirit or both cannot return to the natural world because a dark shade is sustaining them in place of a soul. Or in the worst cases, holding the soul hostage.
Types of Undead
There are three basic types of undead, though there and many variations and occasional overlaps. Corporeal undead are the remains of a mortal body – and sometimes an animus – that is being sustained by the negative energies of the Plane of Long Shadows. They include such creatures as zombies, revenants, and ghouls. Spectral undead are the result of an animus being corrupted and sustained by negative energy without being bound to a material body. They include ghosts and banshees.
It is important to note that some types or corporeal or spectral undead might appear intelligent or even sentient, but this is not the case. Their souls have departed. They are, at best, a collection of instincts and emotions corrupted and sustained by shades composed of negative emotions and dark psychic energies. A ghost, for example, might be driven to avenge itself on the person who killed the mortal it was born from, but this is simply because the anger and desire for revenge in the animus of the victim is being sustained by a dark, twisted, hateful spirit. And it might seem that you are allowing the ghost to rest in peace by helping it get its revenge, but in truth, you are just helping to disperse the negative emotions anchoring the shade to the animus. Once the animus loses the will to exist, the shade can’t hold it together anymore.
Undead are at worst bestial and, at best, emotional beings. At least corporeal and spectral undead.
True undead are rare, thankfully, but they are truly abominable. They are undead beings sustained with a body and an animus sustained by dark energy, as with other types of undead, but through some powerful magic, their soul also remains anchored to the mortal world. Either trapped in an object, as is the case with a lich, or trapped in the body itself, as with a vampire. Apart from the sheer abominable nature of keeping a soul from returning to the diving realm, true undead are horrible because the soul simply cannot exist in that state. The soul gradually becomes rotted, twisted, corrupted, and profane. It never quite rots away completely, but it becomes such a mangled, tortured thing that it might as well. It is as tortured an existence for the undead as it is a terrible crime against the natural world and against the divine order.
True undead, because they retain their souls in some capacity, can reason. They can think. They might even retain their memories and sense of self. But that does not make them any less evil or dangerous. Because, inside, their soul is rotting away while their life is being sustained by dark, negative psychic energy. And that twists them against everything they might care about. Over time, they become consumed by their emotions and animal natures, even if they can hide it beneath a mask of reason. In fact, true undead are perhaps most dangerous because they can play the part of a mortal so effectively.
How Undead Arise
All undead arise due to an infusion of negative, dark energy from the Plane of Long Shadows, usually in the form of a shade. Shades are essentially just miasma of negative emotions left behind by souls on their passage to the Gates of Judgment. The negative energy halts the natural processes that allow the material body to be consumed by the world and the animus to return to the anima of the world. It twists the animal instincts and emotions of what remains of the animus.
Undead can arise accidentally whenever a mortal dies. As the soul falls through the veil and passes into the Plane of Long Shadows, it creates a sort of thinness in the veil. And a shade can seep through into the vacated body, either immediately or over time. This is how most corporeal undead arise spontaneously.
The events of a mortal’s death or a particular strongly willed, driven animus can also exist without a body if a shade seeps into it quickly enough. And shades are drawn by negative emotions. An individual who dies in a particularly terrible way or who dies in the throes of strong, negative emotion can draw a shade into themselves as they die. This is one way in which spectral undead are formed. Spectral undead can also arise if the physical remains of an individual are destroyed after a shade has seeped into the remains. This is one of the reasons why the remains of mortal creatures must be destroyed carefully or, preferably, allowed to return to the natural world on their own.
Because the passage of a soul into the Plane of Long Shadows creates a thinness in the veil, places where many creatures have died can be particularly likely to give rise to undead and sites where many have died, especially in the throws of powerful emotions or animal instincts, can remain dangerous for many years as the veil remains thin. Fortunately, the thinness in the veil is connected, somehow, to the remains themselves. Unless those remains are destroyed. That is why some types of spectral undead are bound closely to their remains. Or to the place where they died and where their bodies were disposed of. Though this is not always the case.
Unscrupulous wizards and priests can also create undead simply by purposely opening a place in the veil and allowing shades to slip into the remains of mortals. In fact, they don’t even need to use the remains of mortals. While it is almost impossible for a beast to spontaneously arise as undead unless their death was tied to that of a mortal, the remains of a beast can house a shade as easily as any mortal. It is just that the death of a beast doesn’t create a thinness in the veil through which a shade can slip.
It should be noted again that the creation of undead in any form is an evil act by its very nature. It is an offense to the divine order, an offense to the natural world, and it allows a shade into our world that is composed entirely of emotions like hate, suffering, gluttony, or guilt.
True undead can only arise through powerful magic. Liches, for example, are powerful spellcasters who anchor their souls to the world so as to gain immortality. Greater vampires are the result of terrible curses, pacts with dark powers, or profane magics. Lesser vampires are spawned by greater vampires, their souls becoming trapped in their bodies as they die.
Caring for the Dead
Because of the danger of shades seeping into our world through the remains of deceased mortals, the gods have taught us how to properly care for the dead. To allow their material and spiritual remains to return to the world safely. While there are many different rites and rituals practiced across the world, they all achieve the same basic ends. They quell the powerful emotions that accompanied death so as not to draw shades. They provide a ward against shades. They help the veil recover from the thinness created by the passage of a soul. They allow the body and animus to gradually return to the world. And, when all of that fails, they prevent most undead from being able to escape in the world by leaving them trapped inside a sarcophagus or tomb.
In addition to protecting the world from the undead, the gods also teach us to care for our dead for other reasons. Obviously, there is the comfort and closure it provides the survivors of the deceased, especially in such a dark age as we live in, where we often have to say goodbye to our loved ones far too soon. But the gods have also taught us that properly caring for the remains of the dead helps the soul of the dead. You see, until the body and animus have completely returned to the natural world and until the soul has passed beyond the Gates of Judgment, there remains a tenuous spiritual connection between the two. A conduit. And as that soul makes the journey across the Plane of Long Shadows, possibly tormented by its own demons and the shadows of those who have passed before it, our memories, thoughts, and prayers can bolster the soul on its journey, conducted by the connection between material remains and the soul.
We remember the dead so their souls do not get lost. Or do not fade away before they reach the Gates of Judgment. And we tend to their remains so as to maintain the conduit to their soul for as long as possible. That is why we pray over the graves of the dead and light candles in their memory.
In so many ways, the remains of a person are an extension of that person’s soul. If we mistreat one, we mistreat the other. And if we wish to protect one, we must protect the other. And that is why it is egregious to leave the dead unburied or uncared for. Or to disturb them in their graves. All danger of the undead aside.
Creating Undead Monsters
All undead creatures are the dead remains of mortal creatures or – rarely – beasts whose body or spirit or both are animated by necromantic energy. As such, they are anathema to the living and they are relentless in their desire to destroy. Because they are no longer living things, undead can’t be killed; they must be destroyed. And it is much easier to kill than destroy.
Type and Tags
Obviously, all undead are of the undead type. And all undead have one of three tags: corporeal, spectral, or true undead. Corporeal undead are animated physical remains which may or may not have been transformed when they became undead and which may or may not show various signs of decay or damage. Spectral undead are animated spirits. They lack physical bodies. True undead always have a physical body and may appear similar to corporeal undead, except that they generally retain much of their appearance in life.
Alignment
Because they are animated by dark emotions and animal instincts and because they jealously hate the living, all undead are evil. Most undead are neutral evil or chaotic evil. Lawful evil undead are rare except in the case of true undead.
Speed
Spectral undead have a speed of 0 feet, a fly speed, and the ability to hover.
Ability Scores
Undead of all types generally have a good Constitution score. The necromantic energies that animate the undead greatly slow the process of decay and also negate the need for biological processes. Consequently, their bodies lack the delicacy of living bodies.
Corporeal and spectral undead tend to have lower than average Intelligence scores because, lacking souls, they are driven by corrupted animal instincts and raw emotions. Many also have lower than average Wisdom.
Spectral undead tend to have better than average Charisma scores, all else being equal, because the mortal being must possess a strong personality for their animus to manifest on its own.
True undead tend to have good mental ability scores all around as a result of the wisdom and knowledge gained through their many lifetimes of experience. Assuming they have been around for that long.
Saving Throws
While most undead have average or lower Wisdom scores, they tend to be willful and resistant to various effects that target their wisdom. All undead are thus proficient with Wisdom saving throws. This is especially important so undead are not overly vulnerable to the clerical ability to turn undead.
Because of their strong personalities, powerful spectral undead will sometimes be proficient with Charisma saving throws. Because of their hardy bodies and insensibility, powerful corporeal undead will sometimes be proficient with Constitution saving throws.
Vulnerabilities, Resistances, and Immunities
Because they are essentially anathema to the divine, all undead are vulnerable to radiant damage. All undead are immune necrotic damage and to poison damage and to the poisoned condition. Undead are also immune to exhaustion.
Most corporeal undead tend to quite flammable and are vulnerable to fire damage. Spectral undead are always vulnerable to force damage as the raw magical power that disrupts their incorporeal form.
Spectral undead are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks and are immune to the grappled, paralyzed, petrified, prone, and restrained conditions.
Senses
Most undead have darkvision in addition to whatever other senses their form might suggest. But all undead also have an ability to sense the living that amounts to blindsight, generally to a radius of 30 feet or 60 feet.
Languages
Most corporeal undead cannot speak. Whether this is because they lose the ability at death or because they don’t breathe doesn’t matter. Corporeal undead may be able to understand the languages they spoke in life, but it hardly matters. Spectral undead and true undead speak and understand the languages they spoke in life.
Traits
In addition to being immune to necrotic damage, all undead possess the following trait:
Sustained by Necrotic Energy. When the creature takes necrotic damage, it is not only immune to the damage, it regains a number of hit points equal to the damage it would have suffered.
Spectral undead possess the following trait:
Incorporeal Movement. The creature can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. If it ends its turn inside an object, it takes 5 (1d10) force damage.
Many undead have traits that allow them to regenerate or otherwise make them difficult to kill permanently as a result of their nature. They might even reform or regenerate after a set period of time if not killed in the proper way or if certain conditions aren’t met. Especially spectral and true undead. Ghosts should keep coming back unless whatever negative emotion is anchoring their animus is dealt with. True undead like vampires and liches should have complex requirements for destruction around which entire arcs or adventures can be built.
All undead should also have a trait that makes them less effective in sunlight if they are not harmed outright by it. If no other trait is appropriate, use the following:
Sunlight Sensitivity. While in sunlight, the creature has disadvantage on attack rolls, as well as on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Other Statistics
Undead should be able to take a pounding. They should feel hard to destroy because they just absorb the damage without really feeling it. Defensively, undead should have poor armor classes and lots of hit points. Even well-armored or agile undead should only have average armor classes to create the sense that what makes it hard to kill undead is that they just absorb the damage. Players shouldn’t have trouble hitting the undead, but they should wonder just how much more they have to hit it before it stops moving. And this should be emphasized with abilities that make the undead resistant to destruction.
Undead Creatures and Creature Groups
The following are the most common types of undead creatures found across the land.
Corporeal Undead
- Ghast
- Ghoul
- Mummy
- Revenant (Various Types)
- Wight
- Zombie (Common, Mangled, Putrid, Greater, Bestial, Monstrous)
Spectral Undead
- Banshee
- Ghost
- Haunt
- Poltergeist
- Shadow (Common, Greater)
- Wraith
True Undead
- Death Knight
- Dracolich
- Lich
- Vampire (Lesser, Greater)
I applaud this. It’s important for GMs to have some idea of ‘the economy of souls’ in their campaign.
They probably won’t need to reveal much of it to the players, but it can act as a handy reference for awkard questions.
For instance: the party might ask *why* the townsfolk keep burying their beloved dead in a graveyard where necromancers can get at them, instead of e.g. burning them.
The out-of-game reason is that graveyards are cool. We GMs *need* there to be graveyards – so that we can use them as venues for the party to fight necromancers and newly-zombified townsfolk.
But if the party press us for an *in-game* reason for all the gravestones and marble memorials then we can have a wise cleric of Pharasma say something like:
“We remember the dead so their souls do not get lost, nor fade away before they reach the Gates of Judgment. “
I liked that last bit in the lore, because it explains very simply why necromancy is always evil.
Toying with the body of the dead can literally hamper or prevent a soul from reaching the end of its journey. And the sooner after death it is done, the worst the impact would be.
And think of the emotions of someone forced to fight the zombie of a loved one, they would be hesitant to do more damage.
Also that sounds like a neat quest for an adventure to find a way to undo the necromancer’s spell in order to help a loved one’s body and put it back where it belongs.
Though I did have my own rule about undead. It isn’t possible for necromancers to raise undead if the body recieved the appropriate rites or if the individual died under certain circumstances, like a heroic sacrifice that wasn’t in vain for example. But poor people can’t always afford the appropriate rites and not all heroes die heroically.
That’s a pretty good idea at the end there too. I’d probably make it more significant than just the correct rites, maybe only if the body is actually blessed by a cleric (something like gentle repose) which grants an amnesty period?
And maybe the hero who died a heroic death doesn’t even drop into the Shadow plane, they just enter the divine realm directly.
The way undead can rise and the bodies of the dead have to be taken care of to send souls on their way, reminds me of final fantasy x and the sending ceremony the summoners perform.
I realize its a bit of a stretch but still, make sure the dead are taken care of and their souls’ emotions taken care of or monsters show up? I like the comparison, even though the details are so very different ^_^
This is the type of information that honestly should’ve been present in the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master Guide for 5E.
The MM is too specific with its information for monster types and too broad with its information for specific monsters.
The DMG has a lot of the “what” for information and lacks a huge amount of “why” and the “why” informs more about the world than the “what”.
It feels like WotC has some aversion to spelling out specifics because it might limit our creativity in some way. In fact I would say it does the opposite because it requires people to do more legwork to make more sense of the world and its creatures.
Small side note. I think it’s funny how the chill touch cantrip would deal no damage but also not heal undead because of “Sustained by Necrotic Energy”.
“It feels like WotC has some aversion to spelling out specifics because it might limit our creativity in some way. In fact I would say it does the opposite because it requires people to do more legwork to make more sense of the world and its creatures.”
There’s probably a conservation of effort. If people were going to be creative but you give them background details, either they’ll rewrite them for their own world, or put the creativity elsewhere. If people aren’t creative when you give them lots of details to work with, they probably weren’t going to come up with it if you didn’t except at the expense of something else.
Yeah, I thought it over again and I probably would have worded it differently. That I felt like the detail was going to the wrong places and that is completely subjective of course. Also as you said conservation of effort.
I do think WotC could simply add the details, be specific, so to give us guidelines on how to fill up that stuff! The more we have, the better it is: they are paying people to write. So, I say, let ’em do it!
I think the possible ways to present information have changed so much between the last 3 editions that information distribution what was once nearly impossible should be easily reference able now.
I would love if WotC put out a wiki where for each setting they present the kind of info that you need when you’re looking for it but at no other point. General numbers of dragons/notable monsters per area, stuff like how gods work per setting, or the level of magic present in the society along with how schools of magic are structured. (is there a literal ‘school’ for each domain, or do larger universities teach a mix of domains that wizards specialize in? Or are there no real schools left and is magic more or less self taught? I can make up my own answers but I would like a setting that ‘exists’ outside of its campaign books to have a place where these tidbits can be found if and when they’ve been decided on for that setting. Not so much as constraints on authors for when they write new books, but to get a better grasp for what the status quo is and how badly certain events break it.
Im curious, where do Fae stand on the whole soul thing? Some sources talk about them as almost having no control over their actions, and just sort of acting out their nature, and it obviously seems wrong to say theyre not clever and calculating. Do they just have a hyperactive animus, given how often theyre associated with emotion? Or maybe, since in your cosmology anima come from the opposing forces in the material plane, none of this really applies, and you go at it entirely differently. Anyways, curious as to your thoughts!
On Necromancy being capital-E Evil:
I despise when a game system defines Necromancy as being inherently Evil for no actual cosmological reason. Which is why I really like when a reason *is* given for it to be Evil, like you did. My own versions of it are similar to your own, although less written-out (and influenced by Exalted, Order of the Stick, and Mother of Learning).
Cool article, it was pleasure to read it and steal some bits from it for my games 🙂
I noticed standard-issue skeletons weren’t listed on your most common types, do you consider them a type of zombie?
Damn why wasn’t this included in the core books. Crap like this is what I want, not mapping from gods to domains. I can figure that crap out, but building a reason for why things are is harder.
I’m curious. Does anyone ever skip the Long, Rambling Introduction?
I welcome them. (Though I usually listen to the posts during my commute via the Pocket app.)
Good article. Worth mentioning that lore like this would also help inform your crafting system, as well as presenting numerous adventure hooks.
There’s no mention of skeletons. Is that because you think they are redundant with zombies, or because you treat them more as constructs?
The way he spells it out, I suspect Skeletons are the final Stage for basically every type of Corporeal Undead. The Stage where everything soft about the Body (Flesh, Guts, Organs) has rotted away and only the hard bones remains, animated by the shade that created the undead in the first place.
I also noticed the oversite in skeletons.
I thought perhaps it was intentional (as Randy asks) so that skeleton guards of a crypt could still be done by those wanting to protect the bodies.
Treating skeletons as anything other than undead seems odd, however, so I’ll assume they are zombies with less flesh.
This sort of thing for aberrations, humanoids (within that fey, goblinoids, giants, and trolls), monstrosities, constructs, etc. is sadly lacking. Some deeper difference explained between a manticore and a beholder, that a beholder shares with a mind flayer but not a vampire, could go a long way to making a cohesive ecology, and so a easier to remember system.
Dang. I love how fleshed out this is. It makes me embarrassed about my world’s relatively larval cosmology.
Angry! give us an article about building campaign bibles! This is the kind of the stuff we need for our worlds! And since you are neither writing the Dungeon Master’s Guide nor are you give us the Angry RPG anytime soon, you should at least give us a campaign bible, please?
Wow. I really enjoyed that lore dump. Now I have a dozen questions about other entities that’ll I’ll have to wait and hear about in the future.
You mentioned that D&D 4e did a much better job with this kind of world building. I’ve only been GMing a couple years, D&D 5e is the only thing I know. Is the D&D lore stable enough that I’d benefit from buying a copy of 4e and diving into the fiction of it? Should I get the PHB, DMG, or both?
I remember the DMG having most of the lore, including a deep dive section on what are now known as the “Dawn War” pantheon. Dragon Magazine had a lot of pretty solid lore for 4E as well, but you have to know what you’re looking for in order to search the archives for it.
I’m looking forward to what you’ll create in your career.
Imagine a MM actually written for DMs, not a general audience.
It would be organized not by monster names, but by types. Each section has a description like Angry wrote here, with a constant format. Add basic statblock clusters. It would look sorta like the section on dragons now, but much better. It would be less a catalog, more a guide to presenting each monster to a party. A cool addition might be things like what the site the monsters are listening explores; how the DM should employ the monsters in combat for best effect. Angry did small expositions on this in building a combat encounter with hobgoblins.
Humanoids would be their own book because of their over-representation in the game.
Why WotC doesn’t spell out the underlying reasons for anything is probably an attempt to keep the creators from overwhelming their content. Clearly this has failed (ex. DrivethuRPG, DM Guild) and should be abandoned in favor of the apprach described, but it will never happen ’cause they are infallible (except for 4th ed).
This is great stuff. And it revealed nothing about Angry’s primary resolution mechanic.
Yeah, one thing I miss from 3rd edition (I understand the need for simplicity in 5e and for not stifling too much creativity, but still) is the descriptions of what the creatures look like, the types and sizes of groups they’re found in, their basic tactics, and the environment where they’re found.
Man, this would be great. Nowadays every time I want to use a monster I need to (if I remember and have the time) organize these informations by myself. “How would this monster fight? Would it be in a group? Leading or following? How does it feel like?” If this info was spelled out I could focus on other things. And to be honest, most of these are already “hidden” in the description and stat block, the trouble is the need to parse it.
Check out the blog “the monsters know what they are doing.” It’s nowhere near as useful as anything Angry writes, so I hope he won’t wipe this in a snit. And buy Angry’s book first.
You said that undead need to be destroyed, not just killed. For something like a zombie, do you assume that if it drops to 0 hp, it has been beaten up enough to be sufficiently destroyed? Or do the players have to do something extra to make it stay dead?
I would imagine it is not. Maybe after it keeps showing some signs that it will rise again, like twitching, or parts, that have been cut from it try to reach the torso and reattach.
A way of “destroying” it, would probably be some spell that does radiant damage, or just burn the body, or pray for it to rest in peace and be rid of the dark powers, that animate it.
Use your imagination based on what undead are (according to the article in this case).
Honestly, I thing it has more to do with the fact that it is actually impossible to kill something that isn’t alive in the first place. The undead in his lore are effectively constructs made from corpses. The creation simply involves something from another Plane.
How does the angryverse account for or reconcile alternative burial rites, like cremation, skyburial, scattering ashes, viking funerals?
Are such practices frowned upon? Evil? Or can they also help the souls on their journey?
Fantastic lore. I’ve always wondered how the Shadowfell plays in with the journey of a soul, as well as judgement and the state of what a soul actually is, and this just rings true for me. Here’s hoping we get more of your Angryverse Bible!
“I know this fact pisses a lot of people off and it kind of scares me that it does – in the Angryverse, necromancy is evil.”
Preach. Necromancer PCs make me cringe and despair in equal measure. You have my sword! And my bow! And my axe! And my stinking, shambling corpses!
I really like your explanation for undead, but the one thing that stuck out to me was your explanation for anima. I feel that by how you describe it guardian spirits (such as a guardian angel) would be brought about by one of three ways. The first way would be a soul that reached the gates of judgement and now cleaned of all negative emotions decides he or she still has a job or duty to uphold and asks a god to be sent back to the material realm. And then of course the second would be a god just plops one of their divine servants into the material world. The third though perhaps is that the guardian entity is not connected to the original soul in any way, but like an “echo anima” created separately from the original anima due to their influence on the world.
Fantastic lore! Though I personally prefer “undead are dangerous but not inherently Evil” in my own games, this is the best explanation of always-Evil undead I’ve every seen. The background information about souls and the difference between mortals and beasts also has fascinating implications. Every setting should have some kind of metaphysical framework like this!
Question: are most beasts neutral (because they’re incapable of moral reasoning and therefore neutral by default), or are they all Always [Something] because they’re born with a particular unshakable point of view?
This is great! I appreciate so much about your website, but most especially the level of intention that you put into things, even down to the lore.
I did have one related question: Given the inherently evil nature of necromancy, and specifically interference with the passage of the soul, how does this intersect with necromancy spells like Revivify, Raise Dead, and Resurrection (or anything similar that the PCs themselves may employ)?
Is there something in the process of these spells that prevents corruption by shades (making it “less” evil)? Or is this just a hard choice that the PCs get to make?
Incredible usefull article, Angry. Thanks for exposing this info, it helps to see where my world building is lacking.
I’d like to know how exactly writing this changed your rules for undead design, but I believe the underlying process will be sort of explained when you teach us how to write a campaign bible?
Also, what is your take on necromancy that does not animate the dead? Like Gentle Repose or Ray of Sickness? I believe this relies upon not only the understanding of The Plane of Long Shadows, but also of The Nature of Magic?
Anyway, I better start writing my own bible. This way when you explain how to do it the not wrong way I can correct my mistakes instead of starting from scratch.
So I suspect this would also lead to some interesting (to me) cosmology elements as well – no divinities dedicated to the undead, clerics of all alignments turn/destroy instead of rebuke, and no permutations in divine necromantic magic. How might this interact with the more benign necromancy like Speak with Dead? Refluff the spell so it doesn’t animate the corpse and instead summons a disembodied voice to answer the questions?
How do people recommend something like this be used to inform the players, particularly those with reason to understand the topic in-universe? Gradual disbursement of information as it becomes relevant in game (which is probably where’d I’d go but it could have pitfalls of subverted expectations), or some sort of primer during early sessions?
For Speak with Dead I’d probably replace its usage with a “Calm Spirit” spell. The kind of people whose corpses you’d be speaking to probably died in a traumatic enough fashion to warrant creating a spirit by Angry’s rules. I’d still keep Speak with Dead in the game, but make it a deliberately evil spell used by necromancer and liches and such, people whose thirst for arcane secrets means they’d be willing to pull someone’s soul from its rest in search of knowledge.
As for the second part, I’d be explicit about saying your cosmology works differently and have the details dispensed through NPC interactions (say, a short quest to hunt down a necromancer to explain just how evil necromancy is in this world and why) or else have players take knowledge checks to recall more obscure details like the whole reclamation process detailed above. Also, don’t express things as absolute truths, make sure you frame them as myths, etc. so you have some wiggle room up until it’s necessary to sey those details in stone.
This seems to be the kind of thing you would need a primer. After all, it is expected that a character living in such world knows the way things work (as long as their capabilities go at least. Maybe the regular peasant would be ignorant of such matters, but the cleric surely would not).
Also, about the Speak with Dead spell, the description text itself says “This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit”, what is coherent with Angry’s definition of soul and animus. So, I understand that no refluff is needed. At most, there would be a deadline based on the time the animus takes to return to the natural world (example, if the creature has been dead for more than 1 year the spell fails).
Also, I believe you misunderstood what makes evil necromancy evil. It is not that all spells that animates the corpse is evil. Instead, all spells that tamper with the animus while the soul is connected to it are evil.
For a non-evil animus thing, look at the Knowledge of the Ages from the Knowledge Domain. “You tap into a divine well of knowledge”, what would very likely be described as “retrieving the relevant knowledge from all the dispersed animus within the world” (what also means that you can’t become proficient in a tool or skill that no one has ever been proficient before).
Of course, this is only my understanding based on Angry’s brief explanation of HIS world, and I might be wrong. The best way to be certain would be to partake in one of Angry’s games as one of his guinea pi – I mean, players.
Do you have a way for benevolent souls of the dead to interact with the living?
Awesome stuff! I was actually just thinking about this the other day while trying to design a necromancer based on primal magic. In other words, it would be a Druid type who “raises” the dead by imbuing them with fungus or semi-sentient bacteria that “reanimates” the corpse of dead creatures (I put the words in quotation marks because, according to the guidelines here, this wouldn’t involve imbuing the corpse with a soul or animus – just disturbing the corpses of deceased creatures, which is deplorable in its own right).
I’m curious about the lore surrounding mummies in the Angryverse. You have them listed as corporeal undead, obviously, but what could be some reasons a society analogous to ancient Egypt would intentionally cause the corpses of revered individuals (ex. pharaohs) to reanimate?
Not that I know the Angryverse, but the very idea of the Mummy as monster in pop culture has its roots in the horror movie The Mummy, i.e. the Boris Karloff 1932 film. In that film – as opposed to the (great fun) 1999 version – the titular Mummy monster was mummified differently from orthodox mummification rituals, i.e. he was mummified alive with his viscera intact. And both versions of the film suggest that a reanimating Mummy was caused by a deeply evil and rarely-used curse placed on the person who became the Mummy (in the 1999 version Imhotep is eaten alive by scarab beetles as part of the ritual.)
So a hypothesis: a reanimated Mummy is in almost all cases a screwup by ancient Egyptian cultures. They performed a ritual where what they -thought- they’d get was a lich with its soul trapped in a decaying body, the soul slowly decaying and not permitted to cross the Plane of Long Shadows to its rest — as said, it was intended as the most severe of punishments, death and then being denied the ability to move on to its rest. Instead all they get is a corporeal undead where the soul escapes to the Plane of Long Shadows and a corrupted shade comes in. The makers of mummies believed they were getting eternal tomb guardians and as extra sauce punishment of the worst kind for the wrongdoer made into a mummy, but all they get a jumble of black emotions and some memories instead.
(Imhotep out of the movies, by contrast, is not corporeal undead. He’s a fullblown lich, created by a ritual done right, he is not the corporeal, shambling undead that most D&D mummies are.)
And further replying to myself – there’s a simpler explanation for most mummies. Namely, if they’re criminals and mummified alive, the strong emotion around that event makes it good odds for a shade to seep into the body, even if the soul departs. It’s not that the Egyptian culture wills mummies to reanimate, it’s just a not-uncommon consequence of how they punish the worst of the worst in their culture.
(I know you more or less explicitly said otherwise but) I think this article should belong to a new category (like “world building the Angry-way” or “the Angry guide to the Universe” or something) as the first of many more
This sits at the intersection of monster building and natural philosophy, which is a weird one but it makes sense here. Thank you.
I’m keeping this.
I have questions!
“The gods then began to order the world to allow the anima to flourish, but the anima could not tolerate the rigid, unchanging order the gods imposed.”
Does that mean that your gods are inherently lawful, and that chaos comes solely from primordials? Or do you prefer not to apply alignment labels to such higher beings?
If souls shed their negative emotions and memories in the Plane of Long Shadows, is there no need for a place of final punishment for evildoers? If not, where do demons and devils come from?
I noticed you listed wraiths but not specters under spectral undead. Do you not use specters in your game, or are they called by a different name? (And what’s a haunt?)
Finally, I’m interested to hear more about your chromatic dragons. Are they non-sentient? If so, do they lack true intelligence (as opposed to animal cunning)? Since they have no souls, can they not be truly evil? Can metallic dragons be evil?
I like the cohesiveness of your build, but I feel like this would leave a weird place for certain tropes. And I think those tropes are the bigger reason behind “acceptable necromancy” in a lot of worldviews.
For example, Child Ghosts. The ghost of a child who stays in an area and helps others so they do not suffer the same fate they did. It is a powerful trope, and this view of undead isn’t compatible with it. I mean, it feels weird to say that the little girl who pulls people out of the river is an evil abomination because her suffering left an imprint on the world. Even the idea that the remnant of suffering is evil and an abomination in some sense leads to some really tricky territory for me. I don’t know how you square that.
For another example, the Spirit Guardian Barbarian. Are they evil? The spirits of their ancestors protect and guide them, but those would be ghosts, the souls staying connected to the mortal realm instead of passing into the Divine. Is it an abomination to deny yourself spiritual fulfillment to protect your great-great grandson? I can see a harsh law that says yes, but I don’t think players are comfortable with that interpretation, because protecting your family is a good thing, and ancestors watching over you is a culturally relevant angle to look from.
So, I am curious of your views on these sort of things, but more than that, I think this is the sort of angle people come from when they are looking at “not all necromancers are evil”. Because, if the ghost child is not evil, then binding her and allowing her to help more people, with her permission, is not evil. If your ancestors protecting you is not evil, then binding their will to their bones, allowing them to protect the family in more immediate ways, would not be evil. It leads to seeing the ways it could be good, and then leads to villains who are villains because they force and enslave they dead, instead of working alongside them.
“The spirits of their ancestors protect and guide them, but those would be ghosts…”
Not necessarily. Anima pass through the Plane of Long Shadows, but they don’t stop there. They’re going SOMEWHERE.
Your spirit totem barbarian could be communing with the spirits that have passed into that next step of the afterlife. Which could lead to interesting opportunities… the barbarian needs to help an ancestor’s spirit find rest. Or, by opening themselves to their ancestor spirits, maybe a barbarian accidentally serves as a conduit for a spirit that shouldn’t come back to this place.
I agree they are going somewhere, but the reading of it makes me think they aren’t supposed to be able to get back. The Plane of Long Shadows is essentially acting as a filter between their destination and the mortal world, but the spirits are acting in the mortal world. It goes beyond simply communing, since they appear and hinder the enemies they are directed against.
Maybe they do find a way to bypass the Plane of Long Shadows, but that sort of direct conduit between the “destination” and the Mortal World would be almost worse. Because the entire goal of the Plane of Long Shadows is to filter out the undesirable elements of the mortal world from the “destination”, directly linking them ruins that purpose.
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