Dealing with the undead

[Steve]

With fantasy worlds that see undead of various power levels rising from the grave, how might that affect burial customs?

 

It seems like you wouldn’t want any bodies left hanging around to come back as skeletons or zombies, so burning corpses or dissolving them in acid or suchlike would likely become standard practice to avoid having such things happen.

 

Could more powerful undead like ghosts or wraiths then end up becoming more common, taking in more of the dark energies that empower undead?

 

What other effects could the presence of undead cause in societies? Ecologies?

[Alcamtar]

Regarding burial customs, people did this IRL. Not dissolving bodies in acid, but dealing with the dark energies either with religion or magic or various superstitions. Burning was apparently used at times though. Witches were often treated like vampires, with great measures taken to either trap the evil or prevent one from returning from the dead. I seem to recall anti-lycanthrope burials too, but didn't find anything in a casual web search. Some very common practices:

• Burial face-down, to prevent the spirit from rising to heaven
• Burial under rocks to keep the body physically trapped. Also nailing a corpse to the floor of a coffin.
• Rocks in the mouth to prevent the spirit from escaping
• Unmarked graves are very common for witches and criminals but I'm unsure of the significance
• Cutting off the head
• Staking a body with wood or iron
• Misfortune subsequent to death was seen as a curse from a ghost or witch, so the body might be exhumed, exorcised or mutilated, have rituals performed, and then re-buried. Exhumation was also used to inspect a body for hair and nail growth, or to see if it had moved, etc.

There's a ton of material out there if you are interested in historical practices, here's a few to get started.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/ways-villagers-buried-vampires-to-stop-rising-from-dead-2023-8?op=1#bodies-were-buried-face-down-3

 

https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/witches-vampires-and-werewolves-10-ghoulish-archaeological-discoveries-004402

 

https://bigthink.com/the-past/5-ancient-rituals-prevent-zombies/

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/workers-horrified-as-450-headless-vampire-skeletons-found-while-digging-up-road/ar-AA1cnG0F

 

https://www.historytoday.com/hidden-history-deviant-burials

 

Several practices are mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial such as inverted burial, burial at a cross-roads, and exhumation.

[Lord Liaden]

Hero Games' Turakian Age setting has some interesting funerary customs specifically aimed at keeping undead to a minimum.

 

"In southern Mhorecia, particularly Besruhan and Velkara, the custom is to bind the body tightly in a fetal position with special cords. The bound body, along with grave goods appropriate to its station and profession, is placed in a large pottery burial urn, which the dead person's family buries in the ground (or possibly a tomb of some sort). The southern Mhorecians believe these measures minimize or eliminate the risk of a person coming back to unlife or being subjected to Necromancy." (The Turakian Age p. 168)

 

"In 3943 SE, a terrible plague struck Shar. People died by the thousands, and so swiftly did the disease strike that not even the spells of the priests could stem the tide. At times, the streets of the cities were clogged with corpses, and the army was so weakened that Goblin-tribes ran amok throughout the land.

 

The Masked Lords rightly feared that so many unburied bodies would only cause the plague to worsen or linger, or lead to an infestation of the undead. Unwilling to risk the existence of the realm, with the help of the witch Badonrai they called to a pack of Ghouls, and formed with them an eerie Compact: the ghouls would carry away and consume the bodies of the plague-dead, and in return the folk of Shar would not harry or slay them, but treat them as they would any other people with whom they traded. The Ghouls agreed, and through their own mysterious pathways they sent word to their brethren. Many Ghouls came to Shar, and the people were saved from both plague and undead.

 

From that day to this, the folk of Shar have accounted the Ghouls as friends, and Ghouls live in the shadows throughout Shar, coming out at night to remove the dead, or perhaps to trade with stout-hearted merchants. To harm a Ghoul is no different, at law, than to harm a Man, and a Ghoul who harms the living is punished by his fellow Ghouls as if he had harmed one of them. Thanks to the Ghouls, both undead and Necromancy are rare in Shar." (The Turakian Age p. 107)

[Lord Liaden]

Going back to the Turakian Age for a moment, the setting has a unique type of undead, known as the Unburned. The Drakine (dragon-men) of that world burn the bodies of their dead to ash, then scatter the ashes to the wind. The Drakine believe this releases the deceased's soul to pass on to the afterlife. If that measure isn't taken, the corpse may arise as a kind of powerful zombie, with a hunger for flesh, but sometimes also a hunger to kill those who failed to burn its body properly.

 

This is an example of a mirror for measures to prevent a corpse from arising in undeath; the corpse arising because the proper measures to permit the soul to pass on were not followed. In this case the undead are not the product of necromancy, but the consequence of negligent or deliberate desecration.

 

 

[death tribble]

There was a medieval tradition of burying criminals and suicides at crossroads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_(folklore)

 

The Christian tradition was that if a person had been baptised and confessed their sins before death then they would go to Heaven. So it was that the unbaptised and heretics and those that led evil lives would become ghosts etc

[Asperion]

18 hours ago, Alcamtar said:

Regarding burial customs, people did this IRL. Not dissolving bodies in acid, but dealing with the dark energies either with religion or magic or various superstitions. Burning was apparently used at times though. Witches were often treated like vampires, with great measures taken to either trap the evil or prevent one from returning from the dead. I seem to recall anti-lycanthrope burials too, but didn't find anything in a casual web search. Some very common practices:

• Burial face-down, to prevent the spirit from rising to heaven
• Burial under rocks to keep the body physically trapped. Also nailing a corpse to the floor of a coffin.
• Rocks in the mouth to prevent the spirit from escaping
• Unmarked graves are very common for witches and criminals but I'm unsure of the significance
• Cutting off the head
• Staking a body with wood or iron
• Misfortune subsequent to death was seen as a curse from a ghost or witch, so the body might be exhumed, exorcised or mutilated, have rituals performed, and then re-buried. Exhumation was also used to inspect a body for hair and nail growth, or to see if it had moved, etc.

There's a ton of material out there if you are interested in historical practices, here's a few to get started.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/ways-villagers-buried-vampires-to-stop-rising-from-dead-2023-8?op=1#bodies-were-buried-face-down-3

 

https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/witches-vampires-and-werewolves-10-ghoulish-archaeological-discoveries-004402

 

https://bigthink.com/the-past/5-ancient-rituals-prevent-zombies/

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/workers-horrified-as-450-headless-vampire-skeletons-found-while-digging-up-road/ar-AA1cnG0F

 

https://www.historytoday.com/hidden-history-deviant-burials

 

Several practices are mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial such as inverted burial, burial at a cross-roads, and exhumation.

 

Most of these were done by various religious groups,  especially the Roman Catholic Church, at different times.  Unmarked graves supposedly were to make the soul get lost in the afterlife and be trapped in Pergitory forever,  never to get to Heaven,  but then at that time they believed that the only way into Heaven was through cleansing bought in the last moments of life,  so only the wealthy could afford to get there. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

With fantasy worlds that see undead of various power levels rising from the grave, how might that affect burial customs?

 

The most effective way to prevent that is burning or some similar idea (acid, etc) but most cultures find that distasteful or disrespectful.  In that case, you'd have priests or other similar sorts consecrating the body so that it cannot rise again.

 

Quote

but then at that time they believed that the only way into Heaven was through cleansing bought in the last moments of life,  so only the wealthy could afford to get there.

 

That's not exactly accurate, the last rites could be performed even on a recently dead person, to give them the grace to overcome their unconfessed sins, those they had no time to seek forgiveness for, etc.  Those cost nothing and were freely given by a priest if they were around as part of their job.  You COULD buy indulgences, particularly at the end of the 16th century, that were said to utterly purge a person from all sins they had committed, but that was rank heresy and didn't last long.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, considering that Pope Julius II granted indulgences in exchange for contributions to build St. Peter's Basilica, I'd call categorizing the practice as "rank heresy" a little misleading.

[DShomshak]

The undead are a major factor in the game Exalted, though I don't recall the term being used much if at all.

 

In this setting, humans have two souls: the rational higher soul, and the animalistic lower soul. The more-than-godlike Primordials who created the world ordained that higher souls would reincarnate, while lower souls would grow with the body, then die and rot with it. In cases of traumatic death, however, the lower soul may rise as a rampaging hungry ghost. This can be stopped by proper rites, especially salting the body. Hungry ghosts are also unable to cross a line of salt, so salt is an important commodity.

 

When the Exalted defeated the Primordials, however, they broke the world. The Primordials whom they slew were not subject to their own law of reincarnation, but were also too powerful to cease existing. The paradox created an Underworld where both higher and lower souls can lodge indefinitely. At the center of this shadoed reflection of Creation is an immense pit that goes down to Oblivion -- another new thing. Hovering just short of the event horizon of Oblivion are the immense temple-tombs of the Neverborn, the god-ghosts of the slain Neverborn, asleep but dreaming of Oblivion, and sending whispers of mad revelation through the Labyrinth of caves that form a sort of Under-Underworld. These are undead of cosmological p[roportion. You deal with them by staying away and out of the Labyrinth.

 

At the height of their power and arrogance, some few Exalted broke into the tombs of five Neverborn and came away with the secrets of necromancy. This had dire consequences -- including that those five Neverborn are a bit more wakeful than the rest.

 

Higher souls can develop various magic powers. Very old ghosts can become very powerful. Some of them have the power to enter Creation. Some mortals even invite this -- or are convinced to do so -- resulting in ancestor cults. Such "undead" can be helpful to their living descendants. Or they can be horribly exploitative.

 

If you don't want your ancestors showing up and making demands, there are magical arts of exorcism that even unExalted mortals can use.

 

Necromancy can raise corpses as zombies or skeletons. Nastier necromancy, combined with surgery, can create undead horrors of greater power. One of the more basic is the spine choin: Take a bunch of zombies, cut off the legs, and stitch them together with head inside abdomen like a series of plugs and sockets. Spine chains move quickly on dozens of arms. Mundane weapons can hack them apart, as with the zombie starter material, but it can take a lot of soldiers to do so. Necrosurgeons have created far more powerful and grotesque mosters, including necrotic analogues of mecha and gundams.

 

After the Neverborn, the most powerful "undead" are the Deathlords. These 13 mighty ghosts are the result of a terrible betrayal. When the Sideral and Terrestrial Exalted murdered all the Solar Exalted, 13 ghosts sought revenge. The Neverborn whispered to them, and they listened. The Neverborn gave them power beyond all other ghosts. They have declared themselves now in Creation, conquering kingdoms where the living now serve the dead. Mortals, and even gods, cannot deal with the Deathlords. That challenge belongs to the Exalted... if they can develop their own power sufficiently before the Deathlords complete their revenge, and that of the Neverborn, by destroying the world.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 I'd call categorizing the practice as "rank heresy" a little misleading.

 

Roman Catholic dogma later denounced it as heretical.  I think its all nonsense, but I just wanted to get the official position and history out there.  There have been some really awful popes through the years (there were seven at once who claimed the job for a while in the 14th century, for example).

[Lord Liaden]

Which is why I specified, "a little misleading."

[Tryskhell]

In a lot of my settings, a common custom is to bury the dead vertically, head down, so that if they ever rise as an undead they dig down and deeper instead of finding their way back to the surface. This leads to the -IMO- pretty cool idea of digging at a graveyard and finding that all the graves have turned into bottomless tunnels to the underdark or some other underground world.

[Alcamtar]

On 9/1/2023 at 5:12 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

The most effective way to prevent that is burning or some similar idea (acid, etc)

Some cultures were worried about releasing evil or evil spirits, and took measures to not only preserve the body but prevent the spirit from leaving the body, using it as a sort of prison. I think the Romans were in this category. I think those would definitely not be in favor of burning!

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its true, destroying the body will not prevent ghosts and their ilk, although typically they are said to have some anchor or part that is keeping them around, even if partial.  But that is part of why the consecration method makes more sense in a fantasy setting than physical destruction.

[Khymeria]

In my fantasy world, there is one culture that is pretty much centered around death, but in a way of respecting the process and inevitably. They have a massive cemetery, revere a death deity (not evil), and do have to look out for cults of the undead or necromancers. They believe that burning will stop corporeal undead but the incorporeal undead are still possible with strong souls or personalities. With those individuals, the remains are wrapped in consecrated bandages that don't allow the corpse to be animated or the spirit to leave the corpse, essentially trapping you soul in your lifeless body for all eternity. This practice is typically reserved for wicked individuals that pose a threat even in the afterlife. 

[Old Man]

One of my favorite burial customs was Zoroastrian sky burial, in which the dead are tossed into a pit on a hilltop and the vultures come.

 

Or Tibetan cliff burial, where the dead are put in a wooden box and left in a niche cut into a cliff. 

 

There's also Hindi river burial, where the body is wrapped in cloth and disposed of in a river, sometimes after partial cremation.  However for purposes of avoiding undeadening this method would be pretty useless.  (In real life it has the effect of teaching large river fish to eat human flesh, which is not better.)

 

A new modern-day approach is composting; the body is sealed in a large tub with a lot of wood chips and alfalfa and the microbes are allowed to do their thing for a month.  (It's much better for the environment than cremation and not nearly as wasteful as traditional interment.)

 

But the undead are mostly a wasted resource, since they require no sustenance or sleep.  They're effectively perpetual motion machines, depending on their ability to take direction.  If you can get them to pull a rope or turn a crank, you're golden.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Khymeria said:

In my fantasy world, there is one culture that is pretty much centered around death, but in a way of respecting the process and inevitably. They have a massive cemetery, revere a death deity (not evil), and do have to look out for cults of the undead or necromancers. They believe that burning will stop corporeal undead but the incorporeal undead are still possible with strong souls or personalities. With those individuals, the remains are wrapped in consecrated bandages that don't allow the corpse to be animated or the spirit to leave the corpse, essentially trapping you soul in your lifeless body for all eternity. This practice is typically reserved for wicked individuals that pose a threat even in the afterlife. 

 

Sounds reminiscent of Pharaohnic Egypt. The bandage trap you describe seems tailor-made to run an analogue to Brendan Fraser's movie, "The Mummy."

[Khymeria]

23 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Sounds reminiscent of Pharaohnic Egypt. The bandage trap you describe seems tailor-made to run an analogue to Brendan Fraser's movie, "The Mummy."

Funny you should mention that. I was thinking of relying on PC natural greed, curiosity, and player gullibility to get them to inadvertently release the big bad and escape the wacky tomb. 

[Duke Bushido]

It would make for a pretty crowded world to be adopted by an entire culture, but I had a player once whose cleric-type character was so concerned  about the undead that he spent a significant majority of his share of payment, treasure, etc, on having the dead ressurected before they could rise.

 

Sounds goofy, but it was actually pretty interesting as a quirk that was totally in character and ultimately, only disruptive when the party needed to fund a big purchase (lists, I have just spent my last silver on a sack of jerky and having those four guardsmen revived; I am a little short now.  Perhaps you could float me until....?)

 

 

Edited September 6, 2023 by Duke Bushido

[Lord Liaden]

Fascinating. Preempt the rise of undead by bringing them back to life. Actually quite a laudable sentiment, although I've always been bothered by the ethical and theological implications of the practice of bringing someone back to life, particularly in some type of monetary exchange. But that's a subject for another discussion.

 

Although you do put me in mind of a Champions "grey" character, a distinctive take on a supernatural vigilante.

 

Doctor Teneber (Champions Villains Vol. 3: Solo Villains) was Charles Tenover, a transplant surgeon who lost his family to a drunk driver, and turned to the study of necromancy to try to restore them to life. He has so far failed at that goal, but consoles himself by using his formidable magic as a sort of vigilante, to try to bring what he sees as order to the vagaries of life and death. If God does not decree that good people live and bad people die, then Dr. Teneber will.

Teneber finds the unquiet ghosts of people who died before their time, and living people who bring only harm to those around them. He kills the latter to drive the spirit out of their bodies (which also counts as a sacrifice to the death gods he propitiates), then places a ghost of the former into the body and uses his medical skills to revive it, resulting in a kind of reincarnation. He considers these choices of who lives or dies fundamentally the same as what he did as a surgeon, i.e. a type of "preëmptive triage" to preserve the greatest number and quality of lives. Other mystics, he believes, are not tough-minded enough to cope with the evils that threaten the world, so he must make the hard choices for them.

Doctor Teneber generally keeps a low profile, but has helped good-aligned mystics in the past against various supernatural menaces. Few of them approve of his tactics or trust him, but his help has won him some tolerance, so for the time being they just keep an eye on him while focusing on greater threats. Teneber's write-up also notes that his local police are also watching him, so they must have some suspicions about his activities, but likely have no proof of anything criminal. Charles Tenover supports himself by running a botanica -- a voodoo/santeria supply shop -- and providing mundane health care to his neighbors (despite having lost his medical license).

Note that Teneber sacrifices to gods of death as a straightforward exchange for power -- a very common convention of the Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions he studied. He doesn't worship those gods, and he follows his own agenda, not theirs.

[LoneWolf]

In some cultures, destroying the body may prevent the soul from finding peace.  Egypt is an example of this and until fairly recently many Christian faiths also disapproved of cremation.  Burning the bodies of the dead may actually create more undead than burying the body does.

 

Most mindless undead are created by necromancers raising them as troops.  The only time this becomes a problem is when the necromancer is trying to concur the land. Other undead are tied to the site of the burial or death.  These types of undead usually don’t bother people unless they are disturbed.  Undead that interact with society are fairly rare, vampires being probably the most obvious.  Vampires probably don’t create a lot of minions because they don’t want to competition.  Too many minions make it harder to feed.  

 

One reason that something may become undead that I have not seen mentioned in this thread is it being a curse.   They may be cursed because of their actions in life were so evil that their soul could not find rest.  Or maybe they offended some powerful creature, and that creature cursed them to become undead.  
 

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, LoneWolf said:

One reason that something may become undead that I have not seen mentioned in this thread is it being a curse.   They may be cursed because of their actions in life were so evil that their soul could not find rest.  Or maybe they offended some powerful creature, and that creature cursed them to become undead.  
 

 

In the 4E Champs book Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies, our own Dean Shomshak provided a selection of vampires with different backgrounds and motivations. One of them, Veliko Bukar, was one of the most brutal guards at the Jasenovac death camp in Croatia during WW II. He was killed at the end of the war, but his murderous evil led to his spontaneous revival as a vampire.

 

A current official villain, called The Curse (most recently written up in Champions Villains Volume Three) was in origin an archaeologist who entered an unopened Egyptian tomb and activated an ancient terrible curse, transforming him into a mummy-like creature to act as the tomb's guardian. But the curse had become corrupted over millennia, allowing his normal mind and personality to assert at least partial control.