Proper Burials & Undead Origins

Generally speaking, these are RP questions, not mechanics questions.

Did the players follow the instructions, give the person the proper rites? Say the prayers in the correct orders? Apply the ointment? Bury them the correct amount of distance beneath the earth?

If they did, no undead.

In many tales of ghosts and ghouls, the undead are the "disrespected dead" who were not buried deep enough, who were not given the proper rites or were buried in "bad places". Remember that the stories that evolved into the game we play existed at the time to teach other people lessons about how to properly treat the dead, which was often a round-about way to teach people about hygiene. It's one of the reasons the undead are often portrayed as "infectious", since dealing with dead bodies meant (before it was truly understood) dealing with disease, parasites, bugs and all manner of dirty things.

So when you ask your questions about "If the players do X, will Y happen?" keep in mind the lore our game comes from.

Immortal Sun said:

Generally speaking, these are RP questions, not mechanics questions.

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Yes, but if you begin to treat them as mechanics questions, that is to say, if you begin to speculate on the 'physics' of the world that allows it to operate as it is known to do, you can make some really interesting discoveries about how small differences in the mythos creates really big differences in the culture of the world.

For example...

"In many tales of ghosts and ghouls, the undead are the "disrespected dead" who were not buried deep enough, who were not given the proper rites or were buried in "bad places". Remember that the stories that evolved into the game we play existed at the time to teach other people lessons about how to properly treat the dead, which was often a round-about way to teach people about hygiene. It's one of the reasons the undead are often portrayed as "infectious", since dealing with dead bodies meant (before it was truly understood) dealing with disease, parasites, bugs and all manner of dirty things.

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All of this is true, but since in the game undead aren't merely a metaphor for disease and infection, but an actual infection itself, the reality of undead in the world (as opposed to the unreality in our own world) creates some really interesting shifts in behavior. Operating from the same logic given above, it was common in many real world cultures for people who had broken social and moral taboos to be deliberately buried in ways that disrespected them, as part of societies final punishment and warning against evil doers. But, in doing this, those same real world cultures were actually disproving the reality of the undead they believed in, since it requires but a little thought to note that in the hypothetical world we are describing where dead bodies do rise when disrespected to become dangerous threats, the greatest care in body disposal would actually be reserved for the bodies of those that had broken the strongest taboos. They would get interned in a bad place that was also a special hallowed place and never an actual "bad place", and rites would be used on them which were actually sacred rites, carefully and exactingly preformed, specifically because the community would know that bad people are most likely to come back as avenging dead. In a way, these societies would dishonor the persons by the very care and honor they treated the bodies with, and of course, it would be the role of Undertakers to ensure that in their foolishness, ignorant people didn't try to extend their punishment and disrespect of the body of a criminal to the disregard of their remains.

Celebrim said:

Yes, but if you begin to treat them as mechanics questions, that is to say, if you begin to speculate on the 'physics' of the world that allows it to operate as it is known to do, you can make some really interesting discoveries about how small differences in the mythos creates really big differences in the culture of the world.

For example...



All of this is true, but since in the game undead aren't merely a metaphor for disease and infection, but an actual infection itself, the reality of undead in the world (as opposed to the unreality in our own world) creates some really interesting shifts in behavior. Operating from the same logic given above, it was common in many real world cultures for people who had broken social and moral taboos to be deliberately buried in ways that disrespected them, as part of societies final punishment and warning against evil doers. But, in doing this, those same real world cultures were actually disproving the reality of the undead they believed in, since it requires but a little thought to note that in the hypothetical world we are describing where dead bodies do rise when disrespected to become dangerous threats, the greatest care in body disposal would actually be reserved for the bodies of those that had broken the strongest taboos. They would get interned in a bad place that was also a special hallowed place and never an actual "bad place", and rites would be used on them which were actually sacred rites, carefully and exactingly preformed, specifically because the community would know that bad people are most likely to come back as avenging dead. In a way, these societies would dishonor the persons by the very care and honor they treated the bodies with, and of course, it would be the role of Undertakers to ensure that in their foolishness, ignorant people didn't try to extend their punishment and disrespect of the body of a criminal to the disregard of their remains.

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Which of course gives us the common trope of the Buried Evil, sealed deep within its tomb and guarded by all manner of Wards so that it wont escape its punishment - until some unwitting explorer/archeologist/raider breaks the seal and disturbs its slumber

It would be nice to have a table of modifiers to determine if someone turns undead, like did they die young? Were they murdered? Were they killed with magic? Was it a Death spell? All of those add to the chance. But if they died in their sleep, received a proper burial, were mourned sincerely by loved ones, received Hell money, or died heroically, then the chance goes down.

Samloyal23 said:

It would be nice to have a table of modifiers to determine if someone turns undead, like did they die young? Were they murdered? Were they killed with magic? Was it a Death spell? All of those add to the chance. But if they died in their sleep, received a proper burial, were mourned sincerely by loved ones, received Hell money, or died heroically, then the chance goes down.

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That wouldn't be too hard.

Undead Test: Roll 3d6. On an 18+, they turn undead.

Modifiers
-1 Proper Burial
-1 Good Aligned
-1 Died Without Suffering
-1 Died Obtaining their Goals
-1 Originally, corpse or ground was Hallowed (see note below)
+1 Evil Aligned, level 6 or less
+2 Evil aligned, level 7 or greater
+1 Corpse completely neglected
+2 Died violently
+1 Died with prolonged suffering
+1 Died vainly with an important task left undone
+2 Other undead already present or ground is desecrated
+1 Per level of necromantic taint (up to 6)

A proper burial must involve an individual rite specific to this corpse, and must include at least one mourner legitimately sorry for the person's death. If the mourner is not a close associate of the dead with at least a friendly relationship, a DC 16 charisma check is required as an empathy test with a +4 bonus applying if the mourner is good aligned and a -4 penalty applying if the dead was completely unknown to the mourner or if the person had ill-will toward the dead. For this reason, generally more than one professional mourner is hired to attend a burial rite in the event their is concern insufficient empathy will be present, although in some cultures professional mourners are hired to demonstrate the wealth or importance of the dead as well. Likewise, professional mourners are often hired even when family members are present, out of concern that they might secretly harbor ill-will toward the dead. The empathy check is not mandatory and the mourner must want at some level to feel empathy toward the dead. If the person is actually glad that they are dead because of some injustice the dead performed toward them, or if they feel they stand to gain considerably more than the lose through the person's death, no empathy check should be made or at minimum the ill-will penalty should be applied. On the other hand, close associates with genuine good will toward the dead should automatically pass such a check and always count as valid mourners.

A proper burial which includes performance of a 'Lay to Rest' rite, or which is in 'Hallowed' ground eliminates need for roll. However, if corpse or ground is desecrated later, a roll is then needed at that time but a -1 modifier is applied.

A mass burial is never proper, but it does not necessarily count as total neglect either provided some degree of respect is paid to the dead, such as care in internment, the raising of markers on the site, and other signs of respect toward the dead.

Undead type check: Roll 3d6, applying the same modifiers from above
3-15 : Rage Zombie
16-17: Ghoul
18-20: Ghost (Consult ghost table)
21 : Wight
22 : Wraith
23 : Specter
24 : Revenant

Notes On Table Use

Rage Zombie: As zombie but with +4 bonus to Str and Dex, and losses the extraordinary ability 'Single Action Only'. Rage zombies are unintelligent, but have a single minded purpose appropriate to the circumstances of their death. If corpse was cremated or otherwise not largely intact, consult Ghost table. If corpse was reduced to bones by time of animation (either because of Sky burial rite or time transpired before reanimation), becomes mere Skeleton instead.
Ghoul: If corpse was cremated or otherwise not largely intact, consult ghost table. If corpse was properly buried or good aligned, use Cadavar instead. If corpse properly buried or good aligned, but exposed to elements while or after burial, use Coffer Corpse instead. If corpse was reduced to bones by time of animation (either because of Sky burial rite or time transpired before reanimation), becomes mere Skeleton instead.
Wight: If cremated, not largely intact, or reduced to bones by time of roll, becomes Wraith instead.
Wraith: If corpse was embalmed, becomes Mummy instead.

Alternatively, any undead with similar CR may be substituted if in the DM's opinion it is particularly suited to the circumstances.

Undead generally arise or first appear 2d6 days after death, and the check should be performed at that time according to the circumstances which then pertain. However, if the corpse of the deceased is continually cared for during the period following death and some means used to prevent rot from setting in, the check may be postponed until 2d6 days after burial.

Ghost Table

Roll 3d6, applying modifiers as above
3-9: Ghost appears on material plane only on anniversary of death, for a period of about 1 hour.
11-13: Ghost appears on material plane only on nights with the same moon as day of death, for a period of about 1 hour.
14-15: Ghost appears on material plane nightly for a period of about 1 hour.
16-17: Ghost appears on material plane during all hours of darkness.
18+: Ghost always present on material plane.

If deceased was not evil aligned and died vainly with an important task left undone, there is an 90% chance they will become a haunt instead. If the deceased was eligible to become a haunt, but did not or if the deceased was innocent (such as most children) or good-aligned, there is a 90% chance they will become a poltergeist rather than a ghost. If the deceased was evil aligned and of less than 6th level, but the total modifier was +5 or higher, there is an 50% chance they will become an apparition rather than a ghost.

Regardless of the results of the undead table, if the death was violent there is a 50% chance that a Phantasm results from the death. Consult the Ghost table for frequency of appearance.

Note that ghosts may always appear on the material plane during certain propitious circumstances. For example, ghosts which may otherwise confine themselves to the border ethereal and remain beyond the veil, may still always appear during the hours between midnight and daybreak on the night of the Autumnal Equinox, or between the first and second hour after midnight on the night of the Winter solstice, or if present during the profane rites of certain deities of death and suffering on particular unholy occasions. This exact circumstances may very according to the campaign and culture, but will generally be well known to the culture and living residents will take note of such occasions and protect themselves as appropriate whether by rite or simply forgoing being abroad at that time.

Ok, I think the theory crafting in the above is pretty decent. I need to run some math to figure out what the actual results for a typical town of say 3000 persons would be annually, based on expected numbers of deaths and the percent that would be violent or involve suffering, alignment demographics, and so forth. My sense is that the number of undead in a town performing due diligence would be low, and the sorts of undead most commonly appearing wouldn't overwhelm the community, but I'll gather some assumptions and see how it works out.

One aspect of the current process that might be particularly disturbing is that for most communities, childhood mortality rates being what they are, a lot of the undead would be 'creepy children'. If that bothers people, they probably will want to add a negative modifier to the above in cases of death of innocents. However, an alternative approach would be to cremate all dead children, which is appropriate for two reasons, the first being that most child mortality would be decease related, and the second that the vast majority of children would after cremation become comparatively harmless undead such as haunts and poltergeists. On the other hand, while rage zombie children are particularly creepy, they aren't in fact that dangerous (being size small and not of exceptional strength), probably only have unintentionally dangerous special purposes (return home, play with me, etc.) and a typical undertaker in my game could probably dispatch one with a shovel to the head and solve the problem - cynical though such an assessment might be.

Which is as much to say, I love this sort of theory crafting because mechanics as physics like this directly creates culture.

UPDATE: So, after some more theory crafting using the above rules, assuming a society were most people are Neutral and evil and good people are about equally common, a body has about a 1.3% chance of returning as undead under normal conditions. So the town of 3000 people with about 45 deaths per year will have to deal with about two new undead every three years even if it quite careful to see to it that everyone receives a proper burial.

(UPDATE #2: Further theory crafting suggests my mortality rate is probably too low by about half, with a child mortality rate being much too low and the overall mortality rate simply too close to modern numbers. In any event, even doubling the rate of new undead appearing wouldn't present a big problem. I'll revise my notes as I get more comfortable with the results.)

This is somewhat surprisingly high, but if you think about it, most deaths are not particularly nice and involve some amount of regret, trauma, and suffering. This is particularly true in a typical D&D fantasy setting with its catastrophes and gritty semi-medieval world with inadequate sanitation, medicinal care, and roaming monsters. The number is high enough that most people will have to deal directly or indirectly with the undead sometime in their lifetime. Even if they don't encounter one themselves, they'll know someone who has or who came back from the dead. On the other hand, the number is low enough that it won't tax the resources of the town to deal with the problem.

As a percentage of the undead, you'd expect that the largest single percentage comes from homocides and suicides. In my assumptions these account for about 1 in 15 deaths. Note that this is a very high homicide rate, but I set the homicide rate that high because I'm including deaths from monsters and other "savage beasts", and high as it is, it is not implausible either from world history or from surveying parts of the world today. However, they end up only accounting for about 1 in 8 of the undead despite the relatively high likelihood of such events leading to unlife.

The majority of the undead nearly 6 in 10 are as I predicted, children, since the majority of deaths in the premodern world are children, and the death of children almost always involves some amount of regret for a life unfinished and painful suffering (usually prolonged illness in setting). The other significant source of undead are deaths from plague and illness, account for about 1 in 6 of the undead, with the remainder coming from any number of causes but more often and not being the death of someone of evil alignment and thus ill will toward the world.

As for the sorts of undead, it depends on the exact burial practices of the society in question, but I'm going to assume a somewhat familiar practice of interning bodies by some sort of burial and sometimes cremation. Further, I'm going to assume that the bodies of children are routinely cremated to control the spread of childhood contagions, reduce the horror of childhood zombies and ghouls of your dead child showing up to play with their still living siblings, and because its relatively cost effective in terms of the amount of fuel consumed.

Working out some preliminary numbers, that means that a typical town of 3000 people over the course of 100 years has to deal with about:
43 Rage Zombies
4 Ghouls
7 Haunts
1 Poltergeist
3 Ghosts

Everything worse is a black swan event, and only would occur in extraordinary circumstances. Barring war, famine, pestilence, or the arrival of a necromancer, the odds of a specter occurring is about 1 in 1367 towns per century. This is a good thing, because a Specter is for a typical town an existential threat that would probably require outside aid in the form of heroes.

Zombies are terrifying and creepy, but well within the resources of a typical town to deal with. They'd cause talk, but anyone associated with keeping a cemetery that let one get loose is probably incompetent, and any number of resources in the town could fight one off, from the undertakers, to the city watch, to the clergy and their associated laity. Reasonable physical barriers would probably thwart one most of the time.

Ghouls are much more intelligent, and worse they spread. Not only are they likely to evade physical barriers, but by being active for a considerable time before they are noticed they drastically would increase the rate of undead appearing. While they are not particularly aggressive, this just makes them worse in a sense, because they end up spreading ghoul fever about which just makes more ghouls. They are also much more lethal if encountered alone in a dark place than a zombie, and as such there is a good chance they murder an unwary undertaker before anyone figures out what is going on. The presence of a ghoul is a town emergency, but fortunately they are at least as easy to kill as zombies and if cornered they should be speedily dispatched.

Haunts are beyond the ability of a town of this size to easily deal with, but on the good side they are by far the least aggressive undead and usually don't have a malicious purpose. It's likely that a cleric will be able to figure out what is going on and arrange to make them at peace, and even if they do end up possessing someone they probably won't do a lot of harm. Indeed, it's not outside the realm of possibility that a haunt will be trying to accomplish something good or at least sympathetic. Still, having a haunt around is going to temporarily cause a spike in the number of other undead appearing and will scare the beejeezus out of people even if it has the best of intentions.

Poltergeists are similar to haunts in that they are almost impossible for a town to deal with on their own and fortunately aren't terribly aggressive. They tend to be more mischievous than malicious, and even the more murderous sort tend to want to make a show of it rather than just ruthlessly slaughtering every soul they come across. They are rare enough though that towns will probably be able to bring in outside help in the form of a higher level cleric or the more mercenary sort of hero to help out with the problem.

Ghosts are even more beyond the ability of a typical town to deal with, but the 'frequency of appearance' ghost table should keep the problem under control. Ghosts tend to be much more murderous than haunts and poltergeists, and even the ones that don't mean to be are more than capable of accidently killing people. But since such hauntings would only occur a couple times a year, and people in the town would soon learn to avoid the times and places they occur, the overall impact on the town would not be great. Still, a typical town that would, if it stuck around for centuries, accumulate a lot of ghosts unless something was done. But, if a competent exorcist was only available a few times a century, the number of problems would tend to decay overtime.

Everything else is an existential crisis, and would bring in outside and regional help. You also have 'black swan' problems like vampires migrating into the town, and undead outbreaks in the wake of truly horrifying events - a pestilence that killed 450 people in a single year would probably cause a significant undead crisis in the following days that could under the circumstances overrun the town in a cascade of necromantic horror unless some heroes stepped up to face it. The trope of a cursed town haunted by the dead is a very real possibility with these mechanics.

By far the most common undead problem the townsfolk would face is actually simple Phantasms, which are in terms of Pathfinder no more than Haunts - less an undead creature than a trap of necromantic origin. (Pathfinder uses the term differently than D&D, where in D&D a haunt refers to an incorporeal undead capable of possessing its victims that wishes to perform some task before it leaves to the outer planes. I mention Pathfinder, because their 'Haunt' rules are one of the best things they've done and far more flexible than the older Fiend Folio equivalent of the Phantasm. Nonetheless, I prefer the older term Phantasm, because I'm used to Haunts referring to the D&D monster.) Normally, most Phantasms are dangerous only in that they cause (magical) fear and panic, though a small percentage might work as low CR traps. In 100 years, a town like this would accumulate some 225 Phantasms, each of which would require an exorcist to remove. Fortunately though, since under these rules most would work like ghosts and only appear once a year in the dead of night to replay the horror of a moment, even several hundred Phantasms could exist relatively comfortably in a town along with a living population and only rarely cause jump scares to the unfortunate that were awake or abroad at the wrong moment, or which trespassed where they shouldn't. Still, this would give the sense to even ordinary towns that they were surrounded by the dead. Every town would be filled with ghost stories, and the psychicly sensitive or those that trespassed beyond the veil into the ethereal would have to deal with what they found there. If the problem got too out of hand, the town could hire an exorcist for a year once a century or so to fight back the problem.

I'm not sure of which thread on these boards, but about 4 or 5 years ago, a scholar from Romania participated in discussion on this same topic, and stated that the word "vampire" is derived from a Croat word (I think) "umpyr" which means "unburnt", meaning that corpses are supposed to be burnt, rather than simply buried according local religious believes to prevent them from rising from the grave as undead. So at least according to some eastern European beliefs how corpses are treated at burial is key to what makes someone a vampire.

gamerprinter said:

I'm not sure of which thread on these boards, but about 4 or 5 years ago, a scholar from Romania participated in discussion on this same topic, and stated that the word "vampire" is derived from a Croat word (I think) "umpyr" which means "unburnt", meaning that corpses are supposed to be burnt, rather than simply buried according local religious believes to prevent them from rising from the grave as undead. So at least according to some eastern European beliefs how corpses are treated at burial is key to what makes someone a vampire.

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Your etymology sounds suspect.

I've not wanted to really deal with vampires because the historical vampire is so very different of a creature from the Brom Stoker inspired sexual horror that has come to dominate our imagination. The historical Romanian terror was a disease spirit, and not the creature of rape and lust we've invented as more emblematic of our times. Also, the exact details varied across the Slavic world. In Romania for example, the vampire was so associated with moths that it was believed that if a moth flew across the body of a dying person, or worse landed on the body, that the body would arise as a vampire. For this reason, they were careful to screen the sick beds of the dying to keep moths away.

Since vampires were associated with pestilence, if a plague broke out in village, the elders would meet to try to figure out if it was being caused by a vampire. If a likely candidate was discovered, they'd go and dig up the body of the suspect and inspect it for signs of vampirism, such as lack of decay, fresh blood in the mouth, or hair and nails that had continued to grow after death. If signs that the body had become a vampire was discovered, they'd take steps like putting a stake through the heart, cut off the head and place it under the feet, and putting holy wafers in the mouth to ensure that the spirit of the vampire would be trapped. They'd then rebury the body. If the plague continued, they would sometimes take the step of digging up the body yet again and burning it as a last and sure manner of eliminating the threat, but as burning bodies with wood is extremely expensive this was a very rarely undertaken step.

I think there are parallels here between the washing of bodies in Africa and the spread of Ebola, and how this sort of superstition in Europe would likely have led to spreading rather than suppressing a plague in a village.

Exactly why the superstition about moths arose I have no idea, but I do no that Brom Stoker mistranslated a ton of words when researching Dracula, for example he thought Dracula meant 'evil' and the Romanian word for 'moth' meant 'bat'.

It's not my etymology, it's an Eastern European scholar who posted here, years ago, who also stated there are 100's of thousands (perhaps more) of Russian created documents that have never been tranlated from Russian (or other languages) to anything else - I know nothing personally about Serbo-Croat/Romanian anything (don't call it my etymology).

I searched the boards for the original posts by the person I'm speaking but couldn't find it, but it's there someplace. I have to imagine that there are volumes and volumes of Eastern European/Russian history and folklore scientific and ethnic documentation that the west has never seen - never been translated.

gamerprinter said:

It's not my etymology, it's an Eastern European scholar who posted here, years ago, who also stated there are 100's of thousands (perhaps more) of Russian created documents that have never been tranlated from Russian (or other languages) to anything else - I know nothing personally about Serbo-Croat/Romanian anything (don't call it my etymology).

I searched the boards for the original posts by the person I'm speaking but couldn't find it, but it's there someplace. I have to imagine that there are volumes and volumes of Eastern European/Russian history and folklore scientific and ethnic documentation that the west has never seen - never been translated.

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All that is probably true and I don't claim to be a scholar of languages, but "unburnt" doesn't sound like "vampire" in any of the languages you just mentioned, and my understanding has always been 'vampire' comes from the Old Slavonic term 'opiri' meaning 'witch' since it was believed that a witch that died would become a vampire. But, I'd be interested in reading any scholarship that indicates otherwise.