Hmm, okay. Here are a couple of approaches I'd consider in creating such a setting.
1) Re-enactment. The undead aren't really aware that they are undead; they're acting out the rituals of daily life that they observed when alive, so the whole society is a mockery of the living society from which it sprang. Actual living people go more or less unnoticed by the undead except when they try to interfere with the re-enactment, which provokes a violent response.
A handful of undead have realized the truth; some seek to be truly resurrected (probably a futile quest), while others embrace undeath and seek to increase their power and influence.
A world like this is probably the result of a single cataclysmic event that wiped out most of humanity, and then resurrected them as undead for some reason. Though it could perhaps arise from a zombie apocalypse as well (see below).
2) Autocracy. The whole undead world is the creation of a single individual, probably a lich or mummy, who is pursuing some insane and grandiose ambition which requires the resources of the whole earth to accomplish. All the lesser undead are enslaved to this one mighty tyrant, which is not to say they don't have agendas of their own (and many might resent their forced servitude).
3) Zombie apocalypse. This is the classic scenario where the principle of "those killed by undead become undead themselves" is taken to its logical conclusion, and the world is now swarming with undead spawn. If you think zombies are overdone, substitute wraiths, ghouls, or whatever.
Most of the undead are mindless predators, but some may be developing an intelligence of their own... probably a hateful, hostile intelligence bent on exterminating the last survivors.
4) Dying world, Dark Sun style. Instead of the apocalyptic scenarios above, the undead-ruled world has arisen naturally--er, organically--uh, well, it emerged without any special prompting, the logical result of undead being more powerful than people. This world is ruled by warring lich-kings, death knights, and mummy lords, who marshal legions of mindless undead against one another and suck the last vestiges of life from the earth to fuel their sorcery. The living huddle in the shadows and try to survive.
(Or, if you want something more high-tech, you could go for an undead cyberpunk dystopia. A corporatist state, shorn of all concern for the environment or human rights, with undead-run megacorporations waging war against each other in both the economic and the literal sense. Technology races ahead, driven by insane lich-scientists who have long ago dispensed with any need for sleep, food, sex, or the other "distractions" of human life. Humans eke out a wretched existence in the urban core, surviving by killing undead minions and using their bodies as fertilizer for vat-grown algae. Soylent Black is made of zombies!)
1) Re-enactment. The undead aren't really aware that they are undead; they're acting out the rituals of daily life that they observed when alive, so the whole society is a mockery of the living society from which it sprang. Actual living people go more or less unnoticed by the undead except when they try to interfere with the re-enactment, which provokes a violent response.
A handful of undead have realized the truth; some seek to be truly resurrected (probably a futile quest), while others embrace undeath and seek to increase their power and influence.
A world like this is probably the result of a single cataclysmic event that wiped out most of humanity, and then resurrected them as undead for some reason. Though it could perhaps arise from a zombie apocalypse as well (see below).
2) Autocracy. The whole undead world is the creation of a single individual, probably a lich or mummy, who is pursuing some insane and grandiose ambition which requires the resources of the whole earth to accomplish. All the lesser undead are enslaved to this one mighty tyrant, which is not to say they don't have agendas of their own (and many might resent their forced servitude).
3) Zombie apocalypse. This is the classic scenario where the principle of "those killed by undead become undead themselves" is taken to its logical conclusion, and the world is now swarming with undead spawn. If you think zombies are overdone, substitute wraiths, ghouls, or whatever.
Most of the undead are mindless predators, but some may be developing an intelligence of their own... probably a hateful, hostile intelligence bent on exterminating the last survivors.
4) Dying world, Dark Sun style. Instead of the apocalyptic scenarios above, the undead-ruled world has arisen naturally--er, organically--uh, well, it emerged without any special prompting, the logical result of undead being more powerful than people. This world is ruled by warring lich-kings, death knights, and mummy lords, who marshal legions of mindless undead against one another and suck the last vestiges of life from the earth to fuel their sorcery. The living huddle in the shadows and try to survive.
(Or, if you want something more high-tech, you could go for an undead cyberpunk dystopia. A corporatist state, shorn of all concern for the environment or human rights, with undead-run megacorporations waging war against each other in both the economic and the literal sense. Technology races ahead, driven by insane lich-scientists who have long ago dispensed with any need for sleep, food, sex, or the other "distractions" of human life. Humans eke out a wretched existence in the urban core, surviving by killing undead minions and using their bodies as fertilizer for vat-grown algae. Soylent Black is made of zombies!)
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