Go Towards the Lich

Spent a goodly part of today working on this page:

... and I am glad to have it largely behind me.   I need to address the list of a spells that a lich has, picking out from the spell list the "best" choices, those that are most lich-friendly, but as I haven't properly working out the magic spells themselves above 4th level, I think I'll leave off doing this until another time.  I'm not likely to throw a lich in anyone's path soon.

I have no idea if this is anyone else's idea of a lich or not.  Surely there must be one such creature written about in some truly awful and popular game module with which I have zero familiarity, which every D&D player in the universe bases their lich upon, being so very very fond of that module.  Occasionally, I've tried to dig up such references, to use them, only to find them unspeakably tenth-rate in their quality or attention to detail ... and yet everyone LOVES them to death, because that's the lich they fought in their utterly overpowered game show contestant campaign that they played at the age of 7.

So.  This lich isn't like that lich.

I've dispensed with the word "phylactery," which is a Jewish holy article, and which I do not think is the appropriate article to be used in describing perhaps the most evil creature in the D&D lexicon.  People who want to carp about the abuse of orcs for their ugliness and drow elves for their blackness ought to add this particular abuse to their social justice cause list.  The 5th level spell, magic jar, seems perfectly appropriate.

I play it that the soul never leaves the jar, and that in fact the body doesn't have to be the original lich's body.  But it is all explained on the post.

Key to this is that it remains within the realm of a player character choosing to take their sufficiently high level mage and become a lich of their own free will.  Essentially, there's nothing to stop the mage ... most definitely not alignment, because I don't use it.  If a player character wants to go that route, I have absolutely no problems with it.  Of course, they have to get there first.  Starting at 1st level, as everyone must in my game, means it will take a little time.

A View To Turning Undead

A quick note on the practice of turning undead.

I think that we can all agree the system in the Dungeon Master's Guide (and elsewhere) sucks. I think it does for two basic reasons:


1) It either works or it doesn't work. There's no drama beyond one die roll and if that roll fails, the turning ability is useless.

2) When it works, it works TOO MUCH. It completely drives the undead away, making them ridiculously easy to manage and kill, especially with regards to the lower undead such as zombies and skeletons. By the time the cleric is 4th level, you might just as well not even throw either at the party ... and the same is true for many undead once the cleric is 7th.


I propose the following:

1) The die is rolled exactly like before, only if it isn't successful, the cleric can STILL roll again the following round. Failure this round does not mean failure next round.

2) Turning undead is an action that takes virtually the whole round; it will let the cleric move one hex while doing so.

3) When the cleric is successful, the cleric's turning will literally pick up and move the undead back 10 feet, or two hexes - during which time the undead may drop to a knee or be temporarily non-corporeal (with respect to shadows, wraiths, etc); and for the following round the undead is treated as 'stunned' and cannot move or take action.

4) The number of undead that can be so affect is up to 2 HD per level of the cleric - the cleric determines which undead are so thrust back.

UPDATE:

This is not a forum for persons to interject their own solutions or propose their own, completely unconnected ideas.  I am not looking for different ideas than the one I'm proposing - I am looking for errors in my logic.

Pricing A Ghoul's Heart

A problem has come up, one of my own making. In my on-line campaign, I put a comment in an NPC’s mouth about the obtaining of ‘ghoul’s hearts’ and that it was a practice that paid well. That’s fine and all, but just how exactly does one determine the price paid for a ghoul’s heart?

Most DMs would, naturally, pull a number out of the air or out of their ass and that would be that. Clean, simple, straightforward ... no problem. Fifty g.p. No, wait, five hundred g.p. No, that’s a little high. 100? 150? Okay, let’s say 150, but if it turns out to be way too easy, I’ll knock it down to 100. Or 50 if the party gets too many. Yeah, that works.

Actually, no it doesn’t. You make a deal with the party to pay them such-and-such per ghoul’s heart, and the party gets really really clever and comes up with 75 hearts (by luring the nasties into some trap by means of magic, obviously) and you’re stuck having to either be an asshole or accepting that you’ve just enabled your party to buy a quaint little six story tower.

Wouldn’t it be nice to at least have a justification beyond some number you’re able to poop out? That’s how I see it. That’s what I try to do.

My friend Delfig has been doing some figuring on the price of beef vs. land, so I’m hoping this will be of some help to him and to others who have expressed interest.

How does one figure the price of anything? To understand a basic tenet of my method, start here, or just accept some of what I’m about to tell you. I have a tendency to rush through some of my thinking processes, so I’ll try to slow them down a bit.

To begin with, everything has a “reference.” This is my term for the point value assigned to a place or region’s production of a given thing. For all practical purposes, let us take cows, which have come up in past posts of mine and which Delfig recently addressed. Let us start with a region, say “Upper Bavaria,” which conveniently has 2 points for cows, or 2 ‘references’.

When computing the total references for a specific trading city in Upper Bavaria (Dachau, for example), one begins with the 2 references already mentioned, and then one begins to add references from other places. According to a long established economic formula, a market which is twice as far away has one half the influence on a given market. For example, if you are one day away from Cincinnati, and two days away from Columbus, then Cincinnati has twice as much influence on your local prices than Columbus.

This is true even in the modern age, when virtually everything is one day away from everything else ... where distances are measured in hours and minutes rather than days. The principal remains in place, no less so for the late medieval period, when everything travelled much more slowly.

If we set Upper Bavaria at a distance of ‘1’, so that the references from Upper Bavaria are divided by 1 (2/1 = 2), then we can create a similar modifier for every other place on earth, provided we know the distance. Cows from the lower Danube valley are divided by 20 (the river makes transport quickly), cows from Russia by 40 or 50, cows from the middle east by 70 or 80, cows from India by 120 and so on. Let’s keep in mind that I have more than 500 trade locations to calculate in order to determine exactly what the ‘cow count’ is for Dachau, which I don’t want to list one by one ... and for other reasons which will become clear, I want to resist using the actual figures for Dachau. Let’s say instead that the total number of references for cows in Dachau comes to a very convenient 2.5% of the world’s total. And just for further convenience, let’s say that everything else in Dachau also equals 2.5% of the world’s total ... so that we can move forward on the premise that nothing is extraordinarily rare or expensive, which would muck up the numbers.

After all, cows in northern Siberia would be somewhat rarer than in Dachau. Cows might be more common in Dachau than what I’m about to suggest. But the model is the important thing, not the exact numbers.

All right. 2.5% of the world’s cow references measures 8.825. This number is measured against the price of gold (used as the standard for all other commodities) and we discover that the price of a cow is 207.32 c.p.

But is it? This price only reflects the comparative availability of cattle according to the total number of cattle that exists in the world. That alone is NOT sufficient to determine its actual value. Hold onto your seats, friends, we’re about to take a bumpy ride. Just to warn you, I tend to use c.p. for everything, and oz. as well (since I find the old English system of measurement more in keeping with D&D).

To produce an adult cow takes 2 years of caring and feeding, during which time the cow will eat an average of 560 oz. a day of forage – hay, clover, vetch, whatever you have available. The value of that forage is also set by the total number of references for forage in Dachau (which calculates at 5.525). That produces a price of 0.16 c.p./oz., which must be harvested and cleaned (I call this ‘foodstuff processing’ and for this example equals 4.225 references). The price of unprepared vetch is divided by the total number of references for preparation and then added to the base price. Thus, 0.16/4.225 +0.16 = .20 c.p./oz (rounded to 2 significant digits). This is not as complicated as it seems. The overall effect is that if the number of foodstuff processing references is reduced, the price goes up. Increase the references, and the price goes down. Think of it as a representation of the available labor.

All right, let’s return to cows. Before the cow can reach maturity, it must eat quite a lot. Most of this will be from the various fields, what it can forage on its own. For argument’s sake, I’ve established that only 10% of the animal’s food needs must be provided by the herder, and thus the economic system. This is a total of 56 oz. of vetch per day, for two years ... a total of 40,880 oz., or about 1.25 tons. This is multiplied against the cost of the forage (0.20 c.p./oz.), a total of 8,504.96 c.p. for the cow, to which is added the original cost of 207.32 c.p., for a grand total of 8,712.28 c.p. In my world, at 12 c.p. per silver and 16 s.p. per gold, that’s a round total of 45 g.p. Which is the only number my players see on the equipment list.

Good, let’s continue. Obviously, we’re going to want to slaughter our cow. At an average yield of 8,000 oz. (500 lb.) of meat per cow (this being pre-industrial Europe), the value of each ounce of meat ‘on the hoof’ is 1.09 c.p./oz. That’s the above price per cow divided by 8,000. This represents the price of the cow when it is sold to the stockyard. The stockyard also has a reference number: 8.850. So again we compute: 1.09/8.85 +1.09 = 1.21 c.p./oz. This is the price for which the stockyard sells the cow to the abattoir – or if you prefer, it is the increase in price the stockyard assigns for having to house the cows before it itself slaughters them. Once again, you will please note, if the number of references is less, the stockyard will increase the price per pound; if more, the stockyard will decrease the price.

In case this isn’t quite clear yet, consider an area where there are dozens of places close by which have references to food making or livestock wrangling. Obviously the price would be lower. Compare that to a place where there are few, if any, nearby stockyards. Some number will always be indicated – as 1 recorded reference 50 days away will yield 0.025 local references. Add hundreds of references, even those far away, and you will collect a number approaching at least 1.00. Where it gets dicey is when in the whole world there are only a few references to a particular item – rubies, for example, or caviar. No matter where in the world you go, unless you are right on top of that supply the cost will be considerable. But go to the source, and it can be had for cheap. This is the basis for many English stories in the 19th century about young whelps who go to India and find gemstones by the handful. But I digress.

Once the stockyard sells it to the abattoir, we must again consider the cost of slaughtering the meat. In this case, we return again to the foodstuff processing reference number, 4.225. Thus, 1.21/4.225 +1.21 = 1.50 c.p./oz.: the price at which the abattoir sells the side of beef to the butcher after removing the offal. Slowly, the price goes up.

In case you haven’t understood this yet, all this detail gives me considerable flexibility when suggesting a price for anything not previously considered by ANY system. A character wants a bucket of cow’s blood? No problem, that’s 1.5 c.p. per oz. The character wants to buy an entire side of beef? No problem, it’s more than half the price of the cow, it’s 250 x 1.5 c.p. The genius of this system is that every single item in my world works on the same principle: build the item from scratch, identify the price.

The butcher, too, has his particular reference: in this case, the number is quite low: 0.150 represents 2.5% of the world’s references. That is because most people would butcher their own cows, rather than relying on a private individual – who will in turn charge an arm and a leg. Still, the system works just as before: 1.5/0.15 +1.5 = 11.49 c.p./oz. This is the considerable difference between having space to raise and store meat, and being a player character who must buy his meat pre-cut.

Worse, the number of references for drying or smoking the beef is only 0.250. Applying the above formula, we find that beef jerky will cost the player 57.46 c.p./oz. Ouch.

If, however, our player happens to buy his jerky in a city where it is made (and not in our imaginary city where everything is 2.5% of the world’s total), then the number of references in that place will be at least 1. If we substitute the higher number, we find that smoked beef in that city only costs 22.98 c.p./oz. Big difference. It pays to purchase wisely when one travels. What system in what game allows for that?

This is getting a little long, so let me forego explaining how one arrives at the cost of a leather boot. It is just as fascinating, I promise you.

Let us return to ghouls.

The problem, as I see it, would be establishing a reference number for ghouls, based upon A) their central location of existence; and B) their total supply. I’ve already drawn attention to the simple fact that there are more references to cattle than to butchers. Obviously there should be very few references to ghouls overall – and the farther from the source of said ghouls, the more expensive their hearts should be.

(Once we identify the base reference value, we already know how much the immediate buyer for the heart might expect to expect to get once he turns it over to the local necromancer).

There are a number of methods we might employ. In reference to this post I wrote earlier, the location of ghouls should adhere to the location of graveyards – graveyards in turn adhering to the density of population. However, it doesn’t do to suggest that more people automatically equals more ghouls, since an extensively civilized area would carefully maintain the consecration of ground, thus eliminating the possibility of ghouls.

No, what we must do is consider areas where once there were people, and now there are no longer. A logical conclusion might be to consider every ruin a point of reference for ghouls (and for the whole collection of undead, demons and nasty beasts of all forms). But there are hundreds and hundreds of ruins and lost cities in my world – too many to work with my system. Hell, there are only 23 references to diamonds (also found world-wide).

Ghouls should be rare, as rare as diamonds. Plus, it does no good to assign ad hoc numbers of references to ghouls, or any other monster, as this is exactly the sort of pulling a number out of one’s ass that started this post. No, no, we want to find something we can associate with ghouls ... and where that thing is, there ghouls are.

It turns out that I do have a reference number, specifically for things which are moderately unworldly: that number is for ALCHEMY. The total world references for alchemy are 265, of which a considerable number are in Germany. So that solves the first half of our equation: where the ghouls are. It does not remotely solve how many exist.

You remember early on that I glossed over the initial cost of cows, saying that I compared them with the total gold? That is because I have a base number for the total cows in the world, and a base number for the total gold. What I don’t have is a base number for the total ghouls in the world. If I did, I could use alchemy to identify where they were; then compare the total ghouls against the total gold. Finally, the distance the party was from ‘ghoul central’ (as determined by the alchemy) would determine the price of a ghoul’s heart.

So, how many ghouls exist in the world?

Got me.

This is the point when I usually start to fall back on the Dungeons and Dragons books. My Monster Manual tells me that ghouls are ‘uncommon.’ It further tells me (p.5) that ‘uncommon’ creatures have a 20% chance of being encountered in a region or area where there might be an inhabitant. I conjecture this to mean that there is a 20% chance that ghouls might be encountered in a 20-mile hex first established by a player character upon becoming a 9th level lord.

A 20-mile diameter hex has an area of approximately 346.41 sq.m. If we take the phrase ‘where there might be an inhabitant’ to mean arable land, then we can compute the number of hexes on earth where ghouls might inhabit: 13.31% of the earth’s land surface, or about 6,788,100 sq.m. We need not worry about the oceans, as we need not consider lacedon hearts (whole other price structure entirely). That’s a total of 19,595.57 ‘hexes’ of inhabitable land, of which 3,919 would contain ghouls.

My Monster Manual tells me that the number appearing is 2-24; an average of 13. And so our world population of ghouls is 50,948.

I must confess. At the start of this post, about two hours ago, I did not have a solution for this problem. Now it is just a question of crunching numbers. Which I’m not going to do right now, as I am tired. I’ll do it tomorrow and give the price to my players.

UPDATE:

I’ve done some additional thinking on the problem and have made the following changes to last night’s logic: 1) I have decided to base the cost on the population density, not due to the origin of ghouls, but according to the demand for ghoul hearts. Less people, less demand. 2) Rather than comparing ghouls to alchemy, I’ve decided to compare them to another product: bear’s paws (a Chinese medicinal/foodstuffs product); one body part compared to the demand for another body part. 3) Although the total population of ghouls is 50,948, not all of this number can be said to be part of the economy of the planet; many ghouls are not actually hunted for their body parts. If we apply the standard I wrote about last month of 1% maintenance per month, we can argue that 1% of all ghouls are killed per month (not necessarily by the civilized population). This is loosely 12% per year (assuming the number of created ghouls equals the number of destroyed ghouls – convenient for me). That makes the total economically important ghouls equal to 6,114.

That makes the price of a ghoul’s heart equal to 73 g.p.

Undead Beginnings IV

Finally, I’ll finish this series.

All that’s left of the original undead are the vampire and lich. I realize there are many others, but I don’t care to get into even the Fiend Folio, much less the random, less-thoughtfully generated undead of the 3rd edition. You’re free to make up what you want for those—I’m only setting a sort of template here.

The vampire is a problem. I admit I’ve never actually had one occur in my world, partly because they’re very rare and altogether obvious as a “module” sort of encounter, but also in terms of their muddled biology. I mean, what rules should one apply? Strict rules from the Monster Manual? Anne Rice? Stoker? The Masquerade? Twilight?

Eech to the last one.

Obviously, any use of the vampire is going to require some sort of briefing for the characters while you explain point by point what methods of attack and defense are going to work and which aren’t. It’s interesting to me that while Christianity obviously doesn’t exist in traditional D&D, the vampire is still affected by the “cross.” The cross of what, exactly?

But I’m talking about origins, so all of that is just so much flotsam. Vampires are like others of the undead, in that vampires make more vampires, but what causes the first vampire? The creature is acknowledged to be soulless; but was it born human?

I tend to think not. I prefer the explanation of the changeling, which was a medieval explanation for the appearance of mentally retarded and physically deformed children who had the unpleasant happenstance of being born. The medieval explained these “monsters” as having been left in place of their proper, beautiful children, who were now in the hands of elves and fairies (remember, for elves and fairies, read “spirits”). The replaced children were trolls and such, providing an excuse for them to be exposed (put outside where they would die from the elements), directly murdered or merely abused for every moment they spent on earth. This was not being done to my own child, remember, but to the troll that was left in my child’s place.

Add to this the belief that all the souls that would someday be born as children wait in a great room in Heaven (sorry, Christian myth), and I can present an interesting origin myth. At the moment the child’s soul enters the body (which was said to be at the point of birth), some sort of medical strangeness occurs—the mother dying before the child is brought forth, say. And let’s say, at this precise moment, as the child’s soul hesitates before it can enter into the body, a demon shows up and jumps into the child first. Or the demon shows and the proper soul and the demon contest for control of the body.

Where the demon succeeds, the baby dies along with the mother. Where the souls succeeds, the baby lives.

And lets say, in the case of a very unusual demon, the baby “appears” to live, long enough to escape the dead mother’s body, to disappear in the night—because that is the natural birth of the natural vampire.

Of course, this presumes that vampires age—and I see no reason why they cannot, even at will. It’s only magic.

This makes an interesting adventure for a party. They have a portent that a vampire baby is going to be born; they discover the place and time, and find the mother hours before she will give birth. What will the party do? Attempt to kill the mother? Attempt to keep her alive somehow, only to fail? And when the baby is born alive, do they believe the baby’s soul won, or the vampire’s? Do they dare snatch the baby? Or kill it? What if their magic tells them it is a vampire baby, but no one in the village (all being present at the birth) believes them? What if the vampire baby is the son of the magistrate, or the local lord? Or of the local priest?

Interesting material, there.

This stuff occurs to me all the time. Obviously, my world is not just about combat. But I do really like combat.

So, the lich, divided forever between those who insist is must be pronounced “litch” and those who insist it must be pronounced “like.” Technically, in old English, it must have the second vowel “e” for the “i” to be pronounced long, but rules are meant to be broken. The better alternative is the pronunciation, “licte,” from the German spelling leiche (corpse).

What the hell. When am I going to talk about liches again?

Not a complicated origin here. The spellcaster’s corpse dies, the spellcaster doesn’t want to let go, so the corpse gets animated and the soul continues to inhabit. Classic undead creation. I really don’t have that much to say about it.

I’ve never understood why liches were so feared by players—though they are, as my party recently took a role in encouraging a high level cleric to become a lich and now they are scared down to their shorts. Basically, the actual creature’s power is equivalent to whatever level of spell use they had, mixed in with some undead defenses and the whole brain-in-a-jar principle. It’s this last which is supposed to be so frightening, since if the body is killed, the brain can find another body and start all over again.

Except that, if you’re an 18th level mage, and your brain is in a jar, where are you going to keep it? In the hands of toadies? On another continent? Hell no. You’re going to keep it close by…so you can protect it. Therefore, it’s going to be the FIRST thing the party finds after busting your ass, so wup-de-doo. Unless you want to make an argument that you don’t need a) a dead body to possess once your first body dies; and b) there’s no actual ritual in you assuming control of the new body. Neither of which sounds much like the D&D magic system to me.

Honestly, in some ways I’d rather fight an undead 18th level mage than a live one. The live one is going to be a lot less noticeable (won’t smell as bad) in a crowd, is probably going to have more friends (that undead thing kills even a Facebook tally) and will probably be much less predictable (domicile conditions, status of nearby vegetation and general personality being subject to a wider variety of possibilities). Chances are, I can avoid a lich by simply not entering deep dungeons hundreds of miles from civilization. I could piss off a living 18th level mage by outbidding him at a local auction. Or tripping over him at the races. You wouldn’t know he was 18th level just to look at him, would you?

That about wraps it up. I’ll want to do more of these zoological installments in the next year or so, as I get more and more into the complete overhaul of my Bestiary.

Undead Beginnings III

I don’t think I need to talk long on the subject of mummies. Their origin is quite obvious: various cultures indulge in the preservation of flesh following the death of an individual, and it is due to some abnormal success in this capacity from which springs the mummy. I generally think of the soul as being separate from the preserved body, until such a time as the body is disturbed; then, like an alarm system, the soul returns to the body, bringing with it malevolence and some of the out worldly powers it has attained in the afterlife, in order to take out its vengeance on the invaders to its crypt. While not terribly innovative, it is effective when properly presented in having characters question whether or not the tomb is worth entering.

I grant that the mummy idea from the film goes a long way beyond this, but I’ve never understood why the priests would take the step to create this incredibly powerful and dangerous creature only so that its soul would suffer throughout the centuries. Must be a cultural thing.

Before I go on, I’d like to make a comment about the roleplaying aspect of these origin proposals. For storyteller DMs, the goal is always that somehow the players will be caught up in the mystery…where did this wraith come from, what does it want, what is it trying to tell us, what awful portent does it promise will be fulfilled?

The problem is, unlike the ordinary characters of Lovecraftian novels, most D&D players are not frightened ignorant village folk—they’re familiar with what they’re facing and they’re prepared for it. So there arises a dichotomy between the mystery format and actual D&D roleplaying:

What the DM wants:

Watson: I saw it, Holmes—moving on the master bedroom’s balcony. The apparition was clearly that of the miller’s son, Frank.
Holmes: Yes Watson, I begin to see what’s happening. We must hurry to Goslings-on-the-Marsh and speak at once with Frank’s mother, whose testimony undoubtedly will reveal how we should proceed. It may be that Frank’s brother Peter, who died four years ago, is the key to this circumstance.

What the DM gets:

Sgt. Rock: All right Easy Co—there’s a spectre on the third floor balcony. How many here are armed with +2 swords?
Zack: Just yours and mine, Sarge. Four Eyes is armed with +2 arrows.
Sgt. Rock: Good. We go up the stairs in teams of two. When we break into the room, the cleric sets up a perimeter of protection evil while the thief and the mage bombard the area with holy water and magic missiles. Come on you apes!

Because the books are usually as well understood by the players as by the DM (the “Brian” factor), there is no mystery. The overriding methodology remains: “We know what the problem is and we know how to handle it. Don’t pester us with details.”

That said, I still find the process interesting.

There are three “ghosts” from the Monster Manual: the actual ghost, the spectre and the groaning spirit, or banshee, which some may have noticed is exempt from the clerics turning undead table and is not actually specified as an undead in the original text. The descriptions for all three are fairly lame: they are evil or very evil; the banshee description has the added info that it is an evil female elf.

This has always been a bone of contention for me. In Celtic mythology, both elves and faeries are the souls of the dead—neither are mythical creatures separate from mankind. I don’t mind that there are elves and faeries in D&D…but I do mind that because of a Graeco-Christian bias in western mythology, Celtic forms are not understood at all. When reading the mythology, describing the banshee as an “elf” does not mean an alternative humanoid creature, it means “dead human”…not that I expect a short clarification of the facts to change the prejudices of my gentle reader. Still, you might do a little investigation into pre-Christian mythology, for your own good.

None of the three monsters comes with an origin explanation—spectres only create half-spectres (then what makes a full spectre?) and ghosts are just bad persons. I just don’t think that’s good enough.

From ordinary western culture over the last four centuries it’s generally been believed that ghosts occur as the result of some form of traumatic death: specifically, murder, suicide or heartbreak. I’m happy to use these three forms to explain ghostly origins: the ghost (murder), the spectre (suicide) and the banshee (a heartbroken woman).

One of the benefits allows for a wider range in emotional states for the three creatures. Not all ghosts are “evil”; I grew up on ghost stories about persons who had been murdered who simply asked for their bones to be properly laid to rest—instead the bones laid at the bottom of an ancient woodpile where the murdered body had been buried. A spectre might be considered a subject of pity, allowing for more than the Sgt. Rock episode. The loss of the banshee’s lover makes a pretty good story, and helps explain why a town might be inclined to tolerate the banshee’s existence, rather than seek its doom.

All three then lend themselves to a wider story that violence and destruction. The ghost’s bones found and returned to their place of rest. The soul of the spectre somehow purged of its sin. The ghost of the banshee’s lover somehow reunited with its mournful spirit.

Which is not to say that all three monsters could not have their typical malevolent motivations. Murderers are murdered, also—in prisons or on rural scaffolds. Suicidal souls may do so out of pure hatred for the rest of the world. Women mourning their lovers may have lost those lovers because they were maniacal freaks. I only wish to point out that, by providing a more motivational back-story, the party can be raised out of its automatic assumptions that the thing is EVIL and must be destroyed without exception.

It’s a matter of presentation.

Undead Beginnings II

“In Plato’s story about the origin of knowledge, which contributed to this negative validation, you have to renounce the world of shadows before you can accede to true understanding. The prisoners in Plato’s cave were incapable of gazing directly into the light of knowledge. They had their backs to this bright light and saw only the shadows cast on the cave walls…for the Greeks, the shadow was one of the metaphors for the psyche, the soul. A dead person’s soul was compared to a shadow, and Hades was the land of shadows, the land of death.”

Victor I. Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow

We may take it from the above that the shadow does indeed have a soul. While the Greeks may have believed that every soul was destined to become a shadow in death, we can reflect that these shadows are also trapped in Hades. What might account for a shadow being on the prime material?

It was seen in medieval times that wherever the light of the lord did not reach, therein lay the shadow. I take it from that that those souls that become shadows on the material plane did so because they were never touched spiritually; that they were “negative” in the sense of never having had a positive experience in their lives. A recluse who died and was never buried at all, who was never loved, who was never affected by any force other than his or her own thoughts. They never “looked at the light,” and were untouched by it. Who lived a whole life as less than a whole being, and whose soul therefore in death would have nowhere to which it could ascend.

For those out there looking for original adventures without so many slayings, why not the task to seek out some individual, the brother of the town’s leading citizen, who years ago fled into the nearby forest and is now known to be living there. To save his soul and to reach him by some means of confrontation or illumination, enabling him to join the human race and escape his eventual fate as undead. The climax comes at that moment when the party ultimately finds him, halfway to death already, either from disease or sickness of heart, when his body is already becoming a shadow, and the party must preserve him somehow by spell or sacrifice.

That’s not half bad. Would make a fair plot for a film, actually.

Which brings us to the low energy drainers, wights and wraiths. I must point out to start that so much has been done with both in the last two decades that it becomes difficult to piece out any traditional meaning for either—except to say that when it comes to wights, Tolkein was literally pulling it right out of his ass.

There’s no suggestion in medieval literature that wights were anything but living creatures (Chaucer used the word in that context). Tolkein was probably enamoured with the word (and its association with ordinary folk) in his use of barrow-wight, and I doubt that Gygax and crew did any research at all before including them in the Monster Manual. Just the same, I don’t have any problem with having the monster in play, except that there’s no background to draw on to determine how it might have come into existence. So let’s leave the wight on the shelf for a moment.

Wraiths do have a history, but it has been greatly corrupted recently—the word “wraith” has been a convenient non-definite entity for whatever a sci-fi or occult writer wants it to be. But I’m a traditional sort of guy. My research tells me that wraiths are associated with spirits bent on revenge or as the reflection/manifestation of the soul at the person at the moment of death. That old tale about seeing your brother at the foot of your bed just at the moment a car takes his life—that’s your brother appearing as a wraith.

Sometime the image of the wraith appears before the death of the person, as a portent…which would mean that this manifestation did not have a soul (as the soul would still be in the body of the living person). If that manifestation was then trapped on earth at the point when the body died and the soul waned away, it might produce an undead.

A third meaning of wraith, from a variety of Anglo-Saxon cultures, is that of a guardian or a servant…which only means that a demi-god or such might command existing wraiths, and is not necessarily part of their creation.

Since wights don’t have a background, and wraiths have at least two, I’m inclined to steal one from wraiths and give it to wights. Let me explain, briefly, how my party got itself so very concerned about the matter of burial.

Following a nasty conflict on an ancient battlefield, the druid’s henchman, Artemas, died. But in the dividing of treasure found in the tomb under the field, the necessary healing and the concern for getting out of the area and ultimately the desert alive, no mention was made—at all—of the fact that this henchman’s body was simply laying there. And because I made no comment (there were a lot of dead lying around), the matter was never settled properly and the body was allowed to simply rot after the party made its way.

About eight runnings later, the druid was climbing the stairs to the second floor of the inn, when the wight of Artemas appeared. Having never been buried, it lashed out at its liege and succeeded in snatching two experience levels (dropping the liege to 4th level) before the druid and the party were able to destroy it. Since, the party has been somewhat concerned with exactly what happens to the body.

This is a perfect kind of rejoiner for me. I love unfinished business suddenly becoming a huge concern, right out of nowhere. It creates continuity in the campaign, forces players to pay attention to the future and to little details and—very effectively—focuses the party on trials and tribulations that must be overcome without my needing to invent “adventures” out of the blue.

So, wights are spirits who have been driven to achieve compensation for treason or abandonment. Leaving wraiths as the manifestation/reflection of a soul at the moment of great duress—a good soul, I think. After all, the story is usually associated with losing someone we love. So the soulless reflection, if it is trapped on earth, is the negative; the Evil Kirk, if you like.

I would play it that the wraith, once created, becomes the downfall of the residents of the dead brother (or other family member). My brother has died; and since nothing seems right. The house seems to be mourning him. Mother hasn’t been well, and may not recover (which everyone would assume is her loss, and not the effect of the wraith). And so on. Nothing short of an exorcism will remove the wraith once its presence has manifested.

I will continue with this. Next: the Mummy.

Update: Very interesting link on wraiths and other creatures here.

Undead Beginnings I

Well, let’s skip a rant today and I’ll just record some of my thoughts about Undead.

I’m a fairly traditional DM regarding that—I still use the original turning undead table from the DMs guide, mostly because I’ve not bothered to rewrite/rework it to fit my world or to find a copy of whatever system 3.0 or 4.0 is using. I don’t have a lot of undead in my world, mostly because the energy drain power is so very painful to characters and because, really, the less appearance they make the more flat-out frightening they are when I actually have one occur.

Rather than about turning, I’d like to talk about how an undead gets made. I’m sure that there must be other things about it out there, but I haven’t read them—and I can’t be bothered to buy such information as may exist. I’ve seen very little about the subject. Please take this as an alternate opinion to whatever published material may or may not be out there.

I’ve never played the modern film rule that being struck by zombies makes one a zombie, mostly because it isn’t in the rules and because the zombie-movie phenomenon wasn’t so pervasive when I began playing. Most historical/cultural zombie lore does not actually include this happenstance. Still, I suppose that might be interesting to play it that way, though zombies would have to be worth a hell of a lot more experience and I doubt very much that ANY character would be willing to fight them hand to hand. After all, the chances of one of them fluking out and rolling a 20 is just too freaky possible.

Zombies, as I’ve played them, do not make more zombies. Just as skeletons do not make more skeletons. Both exist because they have been raised, at some point, by the spell intended for the purpose, and are the bodies of human beings without the souls which once inhabited them. Unlike higher undead, where the soul is trapped in the undead prison, I see both the lowest forms of undead as being the animated flesh with some lower entity from hell having taken possession by means of the spell. This entity lacks any real intelligence and acts only on instinct. Thus zombies and skeletons are basically hack-monsters for lower levels to whet their appetites and raise their experience.

Not that they have to be played that way—but by a strict adherence to the Monster Manual text, there isn’t much to either one. Higher forms have been added, skeletal warriors and such, when they’re needed, and having low level undead is useful. My present party, with its sixth level cleric, isn’t even threatened by them anymore; the cleric can deal with scores of them.

Ghouls do create ghouls and ghasts create ghasts…provided the creature they attack is actually killed. The zombie one-hit method isn’t enough. Even so, the paralyzation feature for ghouls always brings out a good emotional response from my players, though being 6-8th level and with bonus saving throws from armor and such they can usually handle 3:1 odds, not so well with ghasts, as the carrion stench is fairly pervasive. We can lump shadows in with these as well, as I’ll accept the reduction of strength to zero will transform a living creature into a shadow.

But I do limit this to intelligent creatures. After all, what’s to stop a shadow from turning hundreds of thousands of flies into “shadow-flies” simply by reducing their strength to zero merely by waving its arm through swarm after swarm? Ordinary flies obviously couldn’t have a comparative strength above one, could they? And if shadow flies land on a character, do they have the power to drain one strength each per round? Enormously terrifying, sure, but not particularly game worthy. So ghouls, ghasts and shadows I must limit to intelligent creatures who previously had a soul.

The question arises, however, what created the first shadow? Or ghoul? Or ghast? I’d rather avoid chicken and egg controversies…and there is no spell with spontaneously produces these low intelligent yet present undead. So I prefer to go with circumstance.

Most undead, according to the principles I play, occur because something went wrong with the burial of said individual, or that the circumstances of their death was so horrific that standard burial procedures were simply not strong enough to put the soul to rest. My parties have learned the folly of failing to bury the dead after any violent affair. While it does not always happen that undead do arise when humanoids are killed, they’ve learned to be better safe than sorry. Which is fine with me; I’ve never liked the habit of D&D players to simply leave bodies out for the vultures because they can’t see any reason to put the work in to bury or cremate them.

If a creature dies defending its home, or as a soldier, or from old age or ordinary disease or from an accident, then I don’t generally think such a creature will rise as undead. In a medieval setting, being killed because raiders show up in the village isn’t especially unlikely, and is—honestly—fairly impersonal. If the dead are peasants, and are left to rot without being properly buried, then probably their souls will happily ascend into its proper afterlife without resistance. After all, the fixed concept here is that the soul remains on the prime material plane after its body is dead because it RESISTS leaving—unfinished business, some unnatural motivation or because of revenge.

For ghouls and ghasts, I like to think the first one will rise because it has been laid to rest in a desecrated graveyard. Properly, graveyards are tended, but occasionally one that was once tended falls into ruin, or the piety of the caretaker is much less than it should be. This fits in with Victorian literature about “a pauper’s grave,” reminiscent of the sort of graveyard which a pious man would avoid on principal. Once a particularly evil soul is laid into desecrated ground, even if the proper words are read, the soul will not rest and will rise again as a ghoul.

If, then, the creature dies and is left on such ground without being buried and with no words read at all, the creature goes one step further and becomes a ghast. This might happen because the graveyard has become overgrown and lost to sight…that a battle happens and its not even recognized that the scene actually is a very old graveyard from hundreds of years ago. Or perhaps a building has been raised on top of a graveyard, and the denizens therein died of some natural cause—denizens who inexplicably have been violent in nature and xenophobic, on account of living above such a location—or because they murdered one another. And now the building is inhabited by ghasts, who have caught passersby and increased their number.

An interesting scenario for a party might be, once this idea is explained, the discovery of several tombstones between the bushes and trees after a battle has occurred. Has the party accounted for all the orcs they killed? Might there be a body in the cemetery/woods somewhere, that crawled away before it died? Which must now be found, before the sun sets? That might be an interesting low-level encounter.

I want to write more about this, but that’s enough for today. I’ll pick up next with the origin of shadows.