Undead
Undead are beings whose bodies continue to function after death, sustained by magical forces rather than the natural cycle of life. While most people equate “coming back from the dead” with monstrosity or horror, many undead retain thought, emotion, and personality, making them near-living remnants of who they once were. Among these, Wights are the most commonly recognized: sentient, thinking individuals who have returned from death in a form that is recognizably themselves, though inevitably and inexorably altered. Society’s perception of the undead is deeply divided. In some regions, they are tolerated as workers or soldiers; in many, they are feared and reviled, seen as abominations that must be controlled or destroyed. Even among those societies who accept undead as wholly functional citizens, prejudice persists. It is believed by near enough all that true resurrection - the complete restoration of life without alteration - is fundamentally impossible. Consequently, death is seen with finality: once it is crossed, only peace or the struggle of undeath await.
Symptoms
Undead bodies are fundamentally different from the living, and their condition is rarely subtle. Even the most stable Wights experience persistent physical reminders of death as their body and senses degrade. Pain does not vanish, but it is erratic - sometimes muted, sometimes sharp in ways that the living would find alarming, often delayed from its source by hours or days. Chronic discomfort is common, and undead frequently require prosthetics or alchemical preservatives to maintain basic function. Small injuries or decay left unattended can quickly and irreparably compromise their body; far from relief, lost tissue only worsens their symptoms, a state of affairs that can all too easily spiral out of control.
The senses themselves are altered in unpredictable ways. They may be faint or distorted; warmth from sunlight or living companion is dulled or absent. Sleep is impossible, leaving many undead reliant on other means, most often chemical, to maintain focus and stability. Emotions can also feel amplified or flattened, coming in uneven waves, while intoxicants and drugs rarely affect the undead in expected ways. This combination of physical and emotional irregularity makes undead uniquely aware of their own fragility, and their ongoing dependence on arcane measures they barely understand; most of all their Anchors, the magical implements that bind them to their bodies in lieu of true life.
Socially, the undead navigate a world that is both fascinated and fearful of them. Even in areas where they are tolerated, living citizens often treat undead with suspicion, discomfort, or outright hostility. Public spaces may be off-limits, employment opportunities limited, casual interactions tinged with prejudice; for the undead, this stigma is a constant undercurrent, a reminder that they are and will remain an undesired break in the natural cycle. Yet despite these challenges, many undead carve out functional lives, relying on community and careful maintenance of their bodies to be stable and functional.
Varieties
Undeath is not a single condition but a spectrum of states, ranging from nearly human to wholly artificial. Wights represent the baseline of sentient undeath: individuals whose bodies remain largely intact and whose minds retain most of their former identity. They experience decay gradually, often relying on prosthetics, alchemical treatments, or careful preservation to maintain mobility and function. Limbs may be separated and reattached if necessary, though speed and precision are vital, and sensory feedback is often irregular. Chronic discomfort, erratic responses to stimuli, and muted or distorted senses are common, marking Wights as fundamentally different from the living even when they appear human.
Wights
Wights are the default, most familiar form of sentience after death. They are people returned in a body that still contains enough original soft tissue to host a soul and a functioning Vitae circulation - roughly a minimum of fifteen per cent intact organic tissue, and no more than a third replaced. Wights retain memory, personality, and much of their original mental life, but their bodies are fragile and idiosyncratic - nerve feedback is unreliable, pain and sensation arriving in strange ways. Practical maintenance in the form of medical inspections, prosthetic limbs, and alchemical preservatives forms part of everyday life for a Wight, and many learn to read their bodies carefully to catch the first signs of degradation. Wights can sometimes even detach and reattach limbs if reconnected within a few hours, a grim reminder of their tenuous physical continuity.
Socially and culturally, Wights are the face of civilised undeath for most people. They are the form that everyday understandings are built upon: the tolerated worker who needs a licence to take certain jobs, the neighbor who is treated with a mix of pity and suspicion. Wights need no cymrinite, able to sustain their Anchors off ambient potentia alone - which means that undead life can look very ordinary in places that have adapted to it, and the average Wight can persist far from industrialised centres.
Iron Wights
Iron Wights are Wights that rely on mechanical integration: more than a third of their body has been replaced by machinery. Where prostheses for the living are cosmetic or functional replacements, implants for the Undead are structural - they become part of the body as much as once-living flesh, enabling replacements impossible for any living being. Stabilization depends on cymrinite shards used to recharge their magical Anchors; these shards discharge a powerful burst that binds Vitae to metal, but each shard is effectively single-use - the stabilisation process, peculiarly, discharges the cymrinite into inert quartz. Because the binding process is violent and the stakes of shard failure are high, Iron Wights typically undergo regular oversight at clinics or municipal wards. Poorer Iron Wights may have to pay a grim price for their wellbeing, signing onto research programmes and trading privacy and certainty for survival.
Their mechanical marriage brings advantages and trade-offs. Iron Wights often enjoy uncanny precision, enhanced strength, and most importantly relief from the physical symptoms of undeath. But the dependence on rare materials and surgical expertise ties Iron Wights into economic and political systems: access to cymrinite and qualified technicians can mean the difference between a stable existence and rapid decay, restricting their movements heavily.
Junk Wights
Junk Wights are the improvised, dangerous cousins of the Iron Wight. More than two thirds of their flesh is gone and replaced by scavenged metal, steamtech, or crude alchemical apparatus. Instead of the single use cymrinite-discharge method taken by Iron Wights, Junk Wights must rely on implanted feed systems: cymrinite (or lesser substitutes harvested through grimmer means) must be ground up, suspended in liquid, and continuously supplied through pumps or tethered reservoirs. That continuous feed keeps the Anchor alive, but also creates an intrinsic instability: a broken feed, a theft, or a faulty implant can collapse them in minutes. Emotionally and behaviorally, Junk Wights are known for volatility, as the physical instability of their Anchors produces everything from mood swings to catatonia - making them unpredictable companions or dangerous tools.
Where Junk Wights survive, they are usually found at the edges of society - docks, salvage yards, warzones, or the underbelly of cities where resources are scavenged and regulations are skirted. Their bodies are often a patchwork: belts of tubing, glass reservoirs, soldered plates, improvised seals and jutting tubing. Useful in a pinch, Junk Wights are not seen as respectable citizens anywhere; in more desperate communities they may be prized for toughness, or feared as ticking hazards.
Obryn
The Obryn represent a recent, high-end technological route through undeath: a Vitae regulator - a crafted device replacing the biological heart - is implanted to govern and meter the soul’s flow of Vitae. Developed in cutting-edge clinics in Ironhurst itself, the regulator moderates the movement of energies through the body, compensates for tissue loss and replacement, and smooths sensory feedback in ways Anchors alone cannot. Obryn drain cymrinite very slowly (current field figures put common consumption at roughly one shard every three months), making them far less logistically demanding than Junk or Iron Wights, but require a significant supply of expensive and, in the Kingdom of Galudon, still rarely-accessible aetherium. The regulator’s sophistication means that many of the most distressing sensory and emotional aberrations of undeath can be mitigated, producing an existence that, in some respects, approaches that of the living in stability and comfort.
Cost and politics shape life as an Obryn more than biology does. The device is prohibitively expensive and requires specialized surgeons and ongoing monitoring, so Obryn are without exception the preserve of the wealthy. This has created sharp cultural fault lines in the new treatment - Obryn clinics, their patrons, and their staff become focal points for debate and, at times, resentment. Obryn’s relative stability also makes them politically valuable; for those seeking to fund research into the dangerous and forbidden secrets of life and death, Obryn serve as visible proof that vitae-medicine can be refined, for now.
Chyron
Chyron are constructed undead: deliberate creations assembled from Somaturgy and necromantic binding, such that a soul and its Vitae are fused into a wholly artificial homuncular body. Unlike Wights who return to a familiar self, Chyron are the product of design - a handful of sensory organs and a brain placed into a warded and sealed container, fitted with limited locomotion in the form of simple mechanical legs, with an Anchor made to serve as a link. Somaturgists then grow husk bodies, soulless and empty, for Chyron to occupy in their labours. The result is unnerving, not least in its efficacy: Chyron are built most often for endurance and hard labor, and their bodies are often redundantly designed to survive battlefield damage or catastrophic industrial accidents. Their anchors are surprisingly stable, operating in flesh built to purpose, and so they require no cymrinite; however, they will slowly destabilise, forcing them to rely on somaturgists to restore their bindings.
The horror of Chyron is not just physical but moral. These beings were pioneered in the crypts of Skarna, and have had their designs stolen by a scant few enterprising necromancers over the centuries - a soul plucked from the world beyond by random dredging, bound into a body it did not choose, reshaped for the convenience or profit of others. Chyron raise difficult questions about identity, autonomy, and the line between person and machine; by far they are the most controversial and simultaneously least known form of undeath. Where automata serve in mundane society, Chyron are in many senses the dark mirror - similar in capability but carrying a living and unwilling consciousness within. Runaway Chyron can be found in the dregs of more magic-tolerant societies - anywhere they can source the somaturgic expertise they need to survive, and create new bodies when one inevitably decays or befalls a darker fate.
Chyron are grown based on an existing Race, and possess at least passing similarity to it - though they may possess extensive mutations similar to Kaymer's Pox, if more precisely-formed. The peculiar nature of Chyron precludes their infection with any known Curses; however, they do possess an unusual knack for survivability of their own. If their body is Incapacitated, they may detach their jar from it and attempt to Flee, gaining an automatic Advantage on the attempt.
Husks
Husks are the empty, dangerous shells left when Vitae circulation exists without a guiding soul. Husks are not sentient in any meaningful sense; driven by the residual hunger of Vitae itself, they act on instinct to seek out living Vitae - either in the living or in souled undead - in crude attempts at becoming whole. Their behavior is single-minded and often violent: they will claw, bite, and tear in the hope of reestablishing a circulation that can be anchored to something living. Because Husks lack identity and purpose beyond that urge, they are commonly encountered as aftermaths of magical disasters or battlefield necromancy.
They are not suitable for integration into communities and are typically classified as hazards. Dealing with Husks is a grim public safety task, and one many communities across Aesox bear distinct, if fading, familiarity with. Their existence also acts as an ever-present reminder of the stakes of resurrection research - a failed Anchor does not gently release a soul, but can produce a hungry, aimless body that threatens everyone nearby.
Husks are not playable.
Liches & Mortanum
Liches and their Mortanum servants belong to legend and specialized study rather than common undead life. Most people treat lichdom as myth - the stuff of cautionary tales and academic footnotes - whilst Mortanum are named in the same breath as ancient bargains and terrible rites. Though undead of a kind, they are covered in depth on the respective page, and unlike other undead, Liches are a Curse first and foremost.
Cause
The condition of undeath is rooted in two interlocking factors: the existence of Vitae - the soul’s life-current - and the mechanisms that tie that Vitae to a deceased body, which are known as Anchors. Together they allow an individual to continue on after their life comes to a close. This section lays out what Vitae is, how it behaves, what Anchors do, and why some returns from death end in stability while others collapse into ruin. The contents of this section require at least Arcane Knowledge 2 to understand; additionally, it should be remembered that Anchors and Vitae manipulation are deeply taboo fields of study, and most arcane libraries will outright refuse to hold texts on the topics. While plenty of arcane scholars will gather an understanding of Vitae itself and how it operates, only those who delve deep into the forbidden fields of magic known as Noetica - such as Thanotic Sorcery, Dreadbinding, and Somaturgy - will ordinarily learn more than the most superficial understanding of how to tamper with the forces of life.
Vitae
Vitae is the soul’s essence made manifest as a kind of living magic. It is well understood by scholars that it is formed from the souls, and ordinarily severs cleanly from the body at death. In the living, it channels through blood as a conduit: veins and open channels alike carry and shape the Vitae flow, which is why injury and surgical alteration change how Vitae behaves. Metaphysically, Vitae is understood to be a particular form of Potentia, but it is markedly rigid. Where most potentia can be drawn and utilised with ease by near any magical techniques, Vitae forcefully resists being reshaped. It clings to a soul’s imprint and to whatever form that may take. Common dispelling rites and broad anti-magic techniques will still disrupt mundane spells around a being, but they cannot sever Vitae itself; special knowledge and magics are required to interfere with such energies.
Anchors
Anchors are the mystical implements - whether crude or exquisite - that bind a soul’s Vitae in the Undead. An apprentice necromancer might hammer iron spikes and sigils into a ribcage or lash a corpse to a funerary seal; these physical ties are obvious, ugly, and prone to failure. The most skilled necromancers - and, supposedly, the elusive Resurrectionists - use seamless Anchors: woven knots of Vitae that allow body and soul to function as a coherent system once more, without requiring the unstable physical bindings of lesser talents. All Anchors require a supply of potentia to sustain themselves, and how they intake this varies from one type of undead to another.
Potentia dependence
No Anchor is entirely self-sustaining; all require a steady input of potentia to continue their operation. The quality of the Anchor and how much replacement tissue has been added determines how large that input must be. Anchors holding together bodies with artificial parts demand greater Vitae reinforcement; the stranger or more discontinuous the vessel, the more potentia it must draw. When the supply falters, the Anchor’s feedback loop weakens: motor control stutters, senses degrade, wounds fail to mend, and the Vitae may constrict into increasingly narrow channels until total collapse follows.
Starvation
When Vitae flow diminishes, the results are inescapable. The Undead collectively call these effects “starvation”, for while they require no mortal sustenance, without their arcane fuel they will inevitably falter. A strong-willed individual might manage to brace a slow decay into sensory lag and waning cognition; a weakened or wounded one can produce abrupt failure as the animated frame spasms or, if left long enough, the soul unmoors and wanders, leaving an empty husk behind. Necromantic shortcuts and hurried “revivals” without followup are common causes of instability: rites that graft Vitae without reconstructing a coherent circulation will leave their hunger for potentia ever-growing. These unstable forms will, without aid, degrade into the mindless Husks that plague battlefields and disaster sites.
Society & Culture
Undeath occupies a precarious position in the social consciousness, tied between utility and fear. In some regions, sentient undead are tolerated or even integrated into communities, often filling roles in labor military service where their persistence and resilience are advantageous. Even where legal and economic frameworks exist to protect them, subtle prejudice persists: casual avoidance and barriers to intimate or civic participation mark the undead as “other.” In less accepting societies, they are feared or even hunted, their continued existence a challenge to social norms and religious doctrine. The existence of forbidden resurrection halls, necromantic research centers often operating under some thin veil of tolerance from the local governments in exchange for the fruits of their dark studies, further complicates matters. Almost every major city on Pannotia has at least one such site; some have several, operating with various degrees of legal oversight. The outcomes of their studies, recently-deceased whose bodies disappear in transit or from morgues only to be raised to undeath (or, in rare and widely-disbelieved cases, to new life) are usually dumped onto the street, remembering nothing of their brush with the beyond.
Religious and philosophical interpretations of undeath vary widely. Many faiths regard it as a violation of natural order - a perversion of the soul or a defiance of divine will. Others adopt a more pragmatic approach, acknowledging the undead as consequences of magical innovation or human ambition, while maintaining strict moral or ritual boundaries for their interaction. Ethics and access also shape the lived experience of the undead. Advanced technologies such as the Obryn remain the province of the wealthy elite, reinforcing social hierarchies and raising questions about the commodification of life itself. Similarly, public awareness of clandestine necromancy and private insurance policies fosters suspicion and rumor, feeding myths of conspiracies or unnatural power.
Trivia
- Necromancy requires the soul of the deceased to be dredged from the Middle Realm, the mysterious place to which they descend upon death. While it is rumoured that the elusive resurrectionists have means to delve into it themselves, more ordinary necromancers do nothing quite so incredible - they dangle magical lures into its depths, hoping to snag a soul to raise.
- Many Wights and Iron Wights in Ironhurst have taken up wearing masks in the likeness of their once-living visage. While this began as a way to hide disfigurement and decay, it has become something of a fashion trend in recent years amidst certain upper-class circles, even for the living.
- Technically, any necromancer can raise a Wight from the recently deceased. Doing so is, however, exceedingly illegal in essentially all civilised nations, Galudon included. Do so with caution, and remember you still need to make a ticket for the resurrection even if you choose to have a player Necromancer conduct it!
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