Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dogbrain" data-source="post: 1623134" data-attributes="member: 14980">I also prefer a less evil Death.  I would portray Death as remorseless and inexorable, but Death cares nothing for suffering.  It neither is moved to pity nor does it enjoy the agonies it inflicts.  Getting its due is all that matters.  The original bargain was not for the entire world to die.  Death did not act in vengeance, Death acted in balance.  All who were slain would have eventually died, anyway, so it's not a matter of gain, as far as Death is concerned.However, in the process, Death may have employed self-willed undead, who set up their own empires.  This wouldn't matter to Death, but the self-aware undead would certainly claim otherwise.  They would claim that they were the ongoing and constant agents of "Lord Death", thus, in punishment for their ancient crimes, mortals must bow to them.  Death cares nothing for this, for or against.  All that mattered was that the works of Havendish would perish while Havendish was denied the peace that Death could grant.  These works have nearly perished, but now the PCs show up and start mucking about.  This would probably not even come to Death's notice for a while.  Eventually, Death would take a look at the unusual mayhem that PCs always leave in their wake.  Are they trying to re-establish Havendish's realm?  If so, then Death will rebalance the accounts.  Have they other goals?Death could even become an ally, far down the road.  After all, Death seems to be jealous of its prerogatives, and a bunch of uppity undead who are arrogating its name and claiming its continuing sponsorship could accidentally be setting themselves up for their own settling of accounts.Also, over this much time, I could see several religions worshipping Death arising.  Many would be sponsored by undead rulers and would be fairly typical fantasy "death cults", but here are some other possibilities:Mortals seek to placate Death by worship, asking it to remove its yoke.  Since it is not acting to maintain the current state of affairs (it's also not acting to alter the current state of affairs--Death just doesn't care), Death generally ignores them.  They would have very little power if they are all just ordinary mortals.Mortals seek to bargain with Death.  These groups tend to be very small orders of mass murderers.  Again, Death ignores them.  Death doesn't care if one person is killed or a million are killed.  Everybody eventually dies.Mortals reinterpret Death as an inexorable deity of pure Order.  The catastrophe happened because a bargain was broken.  If Death ever notices these people it might be amused by them.At first, the PCs would find themselves in opposition against local undead rulers.  Generally, self-willed undead have enough of the greed and drives of life to find lots of living slaves to be useful.  Zombies are fine for grunt work, but it's much more cost effective to use them to terrorize living masses to do ones grunt labor.  Living creatures tend to also be better at following orders to the spirit than to the letter.  However, there could also be pure realms of undeath, where the masters simply have no use for the living.</blockquote>

Verification