If you have 5 players make 10 different characters. Apart from the mechanics you can even give each one a background hook. When you kick things off you read the description of each one and one sentence or two about their background as well as a line about their race and their class. Then let them decide which characters they like the sound of. It's faster than character creation and better than just being saddled with a character that may not inspire you very much.
I had quite a cool encounter near the start of one of my campaigns which involved undead. The PCs were actually escaping through the mountains (what they were escaping bears no relevance). The path they took went through a narrow pass of the mountains. They had steep cliffs to their right and a sheer drop to their left. And the path went through a desecrated cemetery. In the cemetery there was an evil looking black leafless tree with severed heads hanging from it. As they crossed through the cemetery their will was bombarded by the evil of the place. Also the eyes of the heads popped open and they started screaming at them in an indecipherable language: "Supleh! Gnirbcab ruo sluks!" (Or something like that; we played in Spanish so that's a translation into English). Obviously it's just backwards. But they didn't get it, even though they asked me to repeat what I was saying and they wrote it down (as best they could). (They were new to RPGs too so it could work for your group as well) When they got through the graveyard and out the other side headless skeletons rose up from the ground in front of them and the heads continued to scream at them from within in backwards gibberish begging them to bring them their heads and break the curse. The PCs faced with dangerously armed skeletons did not hesitate to lay into them. The skeletons continued to banter as they were hit and they retaliated (not that they were going to just let them past without their heads anyway). One of the players finally latched onto the game when one of the skeletons rolled a 1 and hit one of its allies in the back. The body turned and one of the heads inside the graveyard scream "Norbac!!" which is a colourful word (backwards of course) in Spanish.
They frantically began to translate the rest of the text the heads had been yelling a them and realised what was being asked. So they began backing up towards the graveyard, defending themselves without retaliating against the headless skeletons while several pcs returned within the graveyard to face the spiteful evil and retrieve the heads. Only later did they realise they could have all retreated into the graveyard as the bodies could not follow them.
Once returned the skeletons ceased attacking, took them and fastened them back on. they were then able to enter the graveyard and return to their place of rest. But that was only a speed bump in my campaign.
If you wanted to try that then you could make the skeletons the source of the undead invasion itself! So the Pcs "rescue them", breaking the curse ... which restores the evil skeletons to their full power. They of course are thankful and reward the PCs ... They return to their graves and all seems well, so the PCs leave. Once the Pcs have gone then the rise again and set to their evil work once more! Which may be to awaken the body of their evil lich master! Muahahaha! SO the PCs are the catalyst to all the destruction that follows!!
Beautiful!
