9
Oct
‘Do not go near a wizards’ tomb’, it is said, ‘for they sleep unquietly and may stir in their slumber’. Throughout the Known World, the burial sites of wizards are avoided for fear of the mage having survived beyond the grave.
But it is not just mages who become undead. Priests, wizards and certain Spirits can command the bodies of the dead to rise.
These undead are not in any way alive – the spirit of the dead man is long gone and has joined with the Great Spirits. His body, however, may be animated and controlled. These shambling dead have no initiative of their own, and no concern for their own safety. It is understandable that the average person fears and loathes these creatures, but to mages and clerics they are often nothing more than tools. Some temples employ the bodies of deceased worshippers as temple guards – quite an honour to the family amongst these worshippers.
A far more loathsome type of undead is created when a deamon enters the recently deceased. Some dark rituals summon a deamon to inhabit a sacrifice, but there are also deamons who actively seek out the dying. In these cases, the spirit of the dying is trapped inside the body by the deamon. The spirit will not have any rest until the deamon (and usually the body of the posessed) is destroyed.
Finally, there are the so-called ‘free willed’ undead. Here, the body is dead, but the spirit remains. In stead of joining the Great Spirits, the spirit of the deceased is so intent on staying alive, that it gains the power to animate its body, or to appear in spirit form. This is where ghosts presumably come from. The spirit of an especially vile and evil person may linger in the form of a Vampire. Luckily, these creatures are rare, for they posess the power to stop other spirits from leaving their bodies after death. This way, vampires create Thralls – minor vampires that are totally under the control of their Master.
It is rumoured that the Forgepriests of Albya can create unliving beings out of copper and bronze. Though not alive, these creatures are not dead either – they posess no spirit but are animate. They have no connection with the Great Spirits whatsoever, and are in a very real sense unnatural. The Albyans consider these beings sacred, but other countries treat them much as they would the shambling undead – with fear and revulsion.
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