Again with the Undead? OY!

[Aaron L]

I remember reading about the positive-energy fueled mummies in the VanRitchen's Guide to the Ancient Undead (2ed Ravenloft). When and where are there references to mummies being “positive” earlier than this?

As it was pointed out earlier, Gary Gygax debunks VanRitchen and his theory about "positive mummies" in the Slayer's Guide to Undead from Mongoose.

1E Monster Manual said mummies were undead fueled by the Positive Material Plane instead of the Negative.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yep- 1EdMM has Positive energy Mummies.

 

[Thorindale]

Well, imagine that. All these years of gaming and I missed that......

 

[diaglo]

Where do you get this idea? Do you have a reference, even in older editions?

Elves were Neutral in OD&D(1974)

so were Skeletons

 

[diaglo]

The first appearance I know of of the Good Archlich was in 2Ed in an adventure, if I remember properly, not in Ebberon.

yeah 2edADnD had a mention of good lich

and the FR novels did have them. one of the Seven Sisters and the elven lady who was buddies with ElMunchkin... i think they call elven lich... baelnorn or somesuch

 

[Psion]

However, I (along with some other posters) pointed out there were examples, both in legend and in the game, where either 1) the undead were NOT connected to the NMP, or 2) were not evil (both Mummies and Ghosts may have non-evil alignments). Note: Some in category 1 have changed in the latter editions of this game. The mention of the Deathless as being good was countered by saying they were not Undead but Deathless- a position I found to be disingenuous at best. If it walks like an undead duck, and quacks like an undead duck, its an undead duck.

I found another one today. In Monsters of Faerun, there are 2 lich types listed that are Good- Archliches and certain Elven liches.

Pick up Necromantic Lore from FFG. You might hunt up a hardcopy, but I think that they still have the pdf for $5 on DTRPG. It has multiple "non evil" undead types, including some classic archetypes - the "spirit mentor", the "soldier of an army sworn to protect for eternity", etc.

Book of exalted deeds had an "anti undead" type to take care of this sort of thing, but I really think that is not necessary.

 

[Morrow]

I've got a PC IMC who is a cleric of a neutral god whose philosophy is basically that undead are people, too. They need guidance and spiritual sustenance just as much as living creatures do. So far the cleric has been a pretty frusterated individual, encountering only undead that are either unintelligent (zombies and skeletons) or evil and uninterested in talking about spirituality. However, undead in this campaign are not all evil, simply because it will be a more interesting journey that way. This cleric may persue the path to lichdom and the road would be long, difficult, and have many opportunities for corruption, but it won't automatically lead to evil. The player has an interesting character idea. I'm willing to tweak the cosmology a little to let her play it out.

Morrow

 

[Estlor]

If you're looking for a pseudo-scientific reason for most undead being inhertently evil in the D&D world, it has to rest with the energy that powers them. Undead (as opposed to Deathless) draw power from negative energy, the very essence of death and decay (which is sort of ironic that it keeps them from decaying, but that's neither here nor there). Negative energy as a component of the Multiverse might not be inherently evil, but there are some predispositions that ride along with it because of its natural opposition to the energy of life.

I firmly believe that the undead who are not spawned as mindless creatures (or creatures that no longer recall their living past) are not necessarily "evil" the moment they awake to unlife. The problem is there are many things that come along with unlife that can overpower a previously good person in a hurry.

A lich who has decayed to the point of being more than a living skeleton lacks certain things a living creature takes for granted - they can't taste or feel, warm and cold means nothing to them, etc. Think about enjoying a nice drink on a warm day. You're a lich, you can't do that. But you can remember how it felt. You want to feel it again, but you can't. You get jealous of those who can. You want to hurt them.

Take a vampire. In myth and folklore, once a vampire fed, they were pretty much human for a time. They'd get color in their skin, they could stand sunlight, etc. Aside from the fact that they'll die if they don't feed, that's a pretty good incentive to drink the blood of the living. It's tempting. They start making compromises.

And that's the thing. Negative energy is a corrupting force. You lose the concern for life and its well-being, two hallmarks of "good" in the D&D sense. Yes, an undead can fight against these temptations and keep a shred of their goodness, but over time it becomes much more difficult to resist. That glimmer of humanity is lost and might even become a contemptable thing.

 

[Voadam]

Another way to rationalize the evil is to say when turned undead it is now an evil spirit animating the corpse. This works well for non template undead. So joe paladin dies and an evil cleric turns the corpse into a wight. The wight has wight stats, not joe's stats because what the cleric actually did was summon a spirit who moves the body through the spirit's power, not the body's. The old body's stats are irrelevant as is the alignment of the previous soul inhabiting it. When the wight kills with its drain it allows another spirit to take over the new corpse.

 

[The Sigil]

Linky to a very long post addressing how I conceived of addressing the problem of undead (and evil/negative energy) from a cosmological point of view (a couple of years old now):

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=808188#post808188

Note it does not include accounting for newer stuff (such as "good liches") but I have to agree with Teflon Billy... Laaa-aamme.

Honestly, the longer an edition is allowed to go, and the more stuff gets "tacked on" by supplement after supplement, the less (not more) internally consistent it becomes.