[Dragonstar]Status of Unintelligent Undead

[Tetsubo]

Has any Dragonstar source stated what status unintelligent undead have, zombies and skeletons? Does the Empire consider them just a form of construct? I have this image of Imperial factories manned (zombied?) by legions of animated corpses.

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

I can't imagine it would be considered legal. After all you could just use robots for the job and not have to use the Undead.

 

[Tetsubo]

Robots take quite a bit of effort to build and program. A corpse come fully assembled and has some base programs installed, i.e. it's former life.

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

You just need to find people willing to animate them for you. Plus I just don't think it would be considered legal. Not that it would stop some people from trying to get away with it, but in general I think robots would be used for jobs like that.

 

[Aaron L]

Oh, I could see HUGE possibilities for this, kind of like in Planescape Torment, people selling their their bodies to be animated after thay are dead. Lots of potential for abuse.

 

[Psion]

If you read the section on imperial law, the interperetation of imperial edicts are subject to much interperetation by the house in question. I would imagine that in some houses, it would be considered tantamount to slavery. For example, consider that when a soul mech is made, the soul is asked whether it wishes to remain in the body and honor the debt. Undead get no such choice, typically.

But in other houses, a body may just be considered "property", like in Aaron's take. Freaky idea... an undead sounds like a good visual (olfactory) place to shock the players. Imagine an industrial colony on some rock, where some aristocorp employs undead "slaves" in defiance of the local house.

Adventure seed... perhaps a widow(er) has scraped up enough money to afford the raising of a spouse, only to find the body has disappeared. The players investigate, and find out an aristocorps is secretly stealing corpses for work in their factory.

 

[Leopold]

all depends on the house in question and the planets they govern. I would tantamount to say that imperial eddict would forbid it in all the core worlds but I doubt they would impose their will on new worlds brought in that have undead to do all the tasks of robots. The closer you get to the center of the empire the less likely you would see undead do deeds of robots as robots are allot cleaner, less disrespectful to the dead, and darn right easy to comeby. Dead bodies are not something i would gather would be shuffling around the courtroom of the green dragon halls regardless of how evil they are...

 

[Aaron L]

I dunno. I've always thought that properly polished and engraved skeletons would be rather elegant servants. (Morbidly elegant) Might even be considered an honor to have your remains guard a temple or holy place after your death. And it could save the living from potentially dangerous tasks. Mass animation of skeletons would be cheap for wizards, who may be the major users of them.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, but what can skeletons and similar undead do?
Physical labor, for sure.
But they can`t use several technical devices - they aren`t proficient with technology, are they?
Dragonstar Factories won`t have a use for such a dumb worker.
On a new colony, they could be useful. Buildung up walls, fighting some enemies, that could all be done with undead.

A problem of Undead is, that you need somebody to control them, who has a magical training, and you need this guy always and all the time. When he is "lost", the undead might go mad, and are pretty dangerous...

But Robots can be programmed to never do anything wrong, even if they need some repairs from time to time...

 

[Psion]

I dunno. I've always thought that properly polished and engraved skeletons would be rather elegant servants. (Morbidly elegant)

That sounds like a woderfully morbid idea and just the sooooo in the Dragonstar spirit.

*yoink*