Undead Origins

Inner Sea World Guide

Inner Sea World Guide
Pathfinder 1e
Daughter of Urgathoa: Within the church of the goddess of undeath, few more coveted stations exist than daughter of Urgathoa, yet no high priest can bestow the title, and no living worshiper can take the role. Rather, daughters of Urgathoa are selected by the fickle goddess herself, chosen from her most zealous and accomplished priestesses only at the moment of their deaths.
 
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Mythic Realms

Mythic Realms
Pathfinder 1e
Agmazar the Star Titan: After his destruction at the claws of the kaiju King Mogaro, Agmazar rose as an undead behemoth.
In a cataclysmic battle that wiped out every living creature for miles, King Mogaru slew the invader from the stars and left the body burned and broken, after which he returned to his deep lake lair for a long rest.
King Mogaru, however, didn’t know the alien powers engrafted within the Star Titan—fail-safes created long ago by the Balance, its makers upon the planet Verces, who created it as an ultimate weapon against undead invaders from Eox. If Agmazar were killed, these unholy energies would raise it, not to life that might once again be snuffed out by the undead, but to titanic unlife that would make it an invincible weapon.
Its death activated its failsafe programming.
Arazni: Once the virtuous herald of the god Aroden, the wizard Arazni was raised as a lich by the necromancer Geb.
But even in death Arazni found no comfort. She lay in rest only 67 years before the overzealous Knights of Ozem provoked the witch-king Geb, who raised some of the fallen knights as grave knights and sent them to bring Arazni’s revered remains to him. Not content with her corpse, he infused deathless vitality into her and bound her spirit up in her bones, making her his Harlot Queen.
Kortash Khain: ?
Whispering Tyrant: Slain by a god and risen as a lich.
Tar-Baphon had intended to die by Aroden’s hand all along. His studies had revealed to him that his only true path to immortality lay in undeath. For Tar-Baphon’s last step in becoming a lich beyond compare, he needed to be killed by a god, and Aroden served this purpose. The process sparked by Aroden took time, however, and for 2,307 years Tar-Baphon’s body laid dead in the ground before he returned to grim unlife. The Whispering Tyrant was born.

Ghoul: A humanoid who dies of Kortash Khain's ghoul fever rises as a ghoul at the next midnight; a humanoid with 4 Hit Dice or more rises as a ghast.
Ghoul Ghast: A humanoid who dies of Kortash Khain's ghoul fever rises as a ghoul at the next midnight; a humanoid with 4 Hit Dice or more rises as a ghast.
 
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Osirion Legacy of Pharaohs

Osirion Legacy of Pharaohs
PAthfinder 1e
Pharaonic Guardian: Pharaonic guardians were created when an egotistical Osirian pharaoh used now-lost techniques to ritually draw upon the fear of the countless slaves and servants who built her monuments. When enough of these minions were driven into self-destruction trying to provide for the pharaoh’s decadent demands, she knitted their souls together to create the first pharaonic guardians.
 
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Beginner's Box

Beginner's Box
Pathfinder 1e
Undead: A dead body or spirit animated by an evil power.
Ghost: Ghosts are the undead souls of dead people so filled with rage and hate that they refuse to stay dead.
Ghoul: ?
Mummy: Created to guard the tombs of the honored dead.
Skeletal Champion: ?
Skeleton: Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, brought to unlife through foul magic. While they are mindless automatons, the magic that created them gave them evil cunning and an instinctive hatred of the living.
Zombie: Zombies are the animated corpses of dead creatures.
 
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Mor Aldenn Creature Compendium

Mor Aldenn Creature Compendium
Pathfinder 1e
Black Glass Undead: They only come into existence through radically powerful spells and artifacts. They are never created by accident, but only through a dedicated effort to create a creature of very dark power and overwhelming evil.
“Black Glass Undead” is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal undead creature.
Black Glass Wight: ?

Wight: Any humanoid creature that is slain by a black glass wight becomes a wight itself in only 1d4 rounds.
 
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Shadows Over Vathak

Shadows Over Vathak
Pathfinder 1e
Blood Shadow: A humanoid creature with 10 HD or more, which is killed by a blood shadow becomes a lesser blood shadow under the control of its killer 1d4 rounds after its death.
Kindrian Gaunt: Any humanoid slain by a kindrian gaunt rises as a kindrian gaunt at the next midnight.
In the icy wastes of northern Vathak, there lurks the undead spirits of those who tragically have frozen to death during the harsh winters. When animated these corpses become intelligent undead tied to the lands that claimed their lives.
 
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Southlands Bestiary

Southlands Bestiary
Pathfinder 1e
Accursed Defiler: Accursed defilers are the lingering remnants of an ancient tribe that desecrated a sacred oasis inhabited by spirits of the desert. For their crime, the wrathful spirits wrought upon the tribe a terrible curse, so that they would forever wander the wastes attempting to quench an insatiable thirst.
Angatra: In certain jungle tribes, the breaking of tribal taboos, especially by tribal leaders or elders, invites terrible retribution from the tribe’s ancestral spirits. The
transgressor is cursed, cast out, and executed, and then wrapped head to toe in lamba cloth to soothe the spirit and bind it within its mortal husk. Placed in a sealed tomb far from traditional burial grounds so none may disturb the deceased and so that their unclean spirits will not taint the blessed dead, the taboo-breakers’ bodies are visited every 10 years. At that time, the tribe performs a famadihana ritual, replacing the lamba bindings and soothing the deceased’s suffering. Over generations, the repeated performance of this ritual by the descendants of the damned expiates their guilt, until at long last the once-accursed person is admitted into the gates of the afterlife. However, if its descendants forget the lessons of the taboo and abandon their task, or if the sealed tomb is violated and desecrated in some other way, the penance of the ancestor turn in upon itself and the accursed soul becomes an angatra.
Animated by the malice of wrong ancestors, the creature’s form undergoes a horrible metamorphosis within the cocoon of its decaying bonds. Its fingernails grow into vicious claws, while its skin becomes hard and leathery and its withered form is imbued with unnatural speed and agility.
Edimmu: Desert tribes often exile their criminals to wander the desert alone. A banished criminal who dies of thirst sometimes rises as an edimmu (eh-DIH-moo), a hateful undead who blames all sentient living beings for their fate and craving the life-giving water contained in their bodies
Gray Thirster: The greatest danger to people traversing the deep deserts of the Southlands is thirst, and even the best-prepared travelers can find themselves without water in the middle of the desert. The lucky ones die quickly, while those less fortunate linger in sun-addled torment for days before their tortured bodies give up. These souls often rise from the sands as gray thirsters, driven to inflict the torment they suffered upon other travelers.
Mummy Venomous: These variant mummies are crafted by Selket’s faithful to guard their holy sites and tombs, and to serve as the agents of the goddess’s retribution.
Rotting Wind: A rotting wind is an undead creature made up of the foul air and grave dust sloughed off by innumerable undead creatures within the countless lost tombs and grand necropolises of the Southlands deserts.
Sand Silhouette: Sand silhouettes are spirits of those who died in desperation that have seeped into the sand.
Sarcophagus Slime: Many sages speculate that the first sarcophagus slime was spawned accidentally, in a mummy-creation ritual gone horribly wrong; giving life to the congealed contents of the canopic jars rather than the mummified body. Others maintain it was purposefully created by a powerful necromancer pharaoh bent on formulating the perfect alchemical sentry to guard his accursed crypt.
Skin Bat: Skin bats are undead creatures created from the skin flayed from the victims of sacrificial rites, often in the name of Camazotz, Bat Lord of the Underworld. They are given a measure of unlife by a vile rituals involving immersion in flesh-filled vats.
 
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One of the things I like about Undead in D&D is the variety of circumstances that lead to the different undead. I like to use these as game story elements and a bit of world building/cosmology.

I thought it would be neat to create a list of the varieties from the sources I have for reference purposes.

I plan to update the second post with cumulative information as I go and add individual posts for various sources after that.

If you see I've missed something please point it out, thanks.

This is an intriguing idea, and one I haven't ever given much thought to...or, rather, only with certain types.

Let's see what I kind of always assume/think in my games, without ever really acknowledging or using the reasons (except, rarely, for the very powerful "unique" types of undead):

Skeletons: are basically just magically animated remains/corpses. They are, for the most part, "mindless" and possess no actual individual will, a limited capacity for reasoning, language skills (in all but the rarest circumstances), or any remnant of the original being's soul. Most commonly, the re-animation process is achieved through the use of necrotic/negative energies, be it spell work, ritual, magically "infused" area or terrain, or any other number of ways. Most often these energies harnessed/utilized through the spells of the "school" of necromancy, though conjurations (infusing the remains with a negative energy sentience or some generically malevolent spirit) or powerful transmutations can be similarly effective. A cleric's "Animate Object" spell might work on a pile of bones to form a skeleton just as well as any "Animate Dead."

Zombies: exactly as per skeletons but with the introduction (which we will see carried through) of the element of "Hungering" added. They are after something from the living. For some, and most commonly in the popular culture, this is merely "brains" of the living. For others it may be include their flesh or an unconscious propagation of their kind, as with the common "zombie-making/-spreading disease/apocalypse." Otherwise, they are as mindless and soulless as skeletons and produced -unless you are having/using the zombie-spread disease trope, which I do not. Such is for more powerful beings to come- in the same ways.

Ghouls: So, here, we have the undead that are just above "mindless", to a more 'bestial" kind of awareness and existence. The ghouls includes 1) "the Hunger" of their zombie-kin, but also
2) a wicked cunning and wild animal-like ferociousness we have yet to see from the mindless/reanimated undead
3) an extreme of uncivilized behavior that instills immediate horror/disgust
4) introduces the D&D trope of the undead TOUCH doing something nasty/dangerous
and most importantly, 5) the introduction of "sin" and/or extreme depravity into the [D&D] undead creation "formulae."
Of almost equal importance,
6) the possibility and D&D trope of the Undead creating more of their own/replicating themselves.

To my mind, ghouls have always been, in any edition, the first, real, "Oh$#!t!" undead encountered. Not just because they could kill you -easily- or because they had a paralytic touch, but because they could take your beloved character and -if they didn't just tear you to shreds and eat you- turn you into one of them!

I have seen/read that ghouls are the undead result of those that were cannibals in life and/or died as a consequence of severe gluttony. Part of the curse of their undeath [as each type of undead surely has] is they are never sated, ever-hungering for more. I can work with that. Though, for my games, the true way they multiply to the numbers of their "packs" that are often encountered or bring an entire town/region to its terrorized knees, is the spread of their corrupting disease...not dissimilar to vampirism...called, simply, in my world, "Ghoul Fever." Creatures that are injured but not slain by a ghoul's [bite or claws] touch, must make multiple saves over the next 24 hours or succumb to turning into a ghoul, with a ravenous craving for living flesh and blood. The application of a magical Cure Disease [or equivalent, such as a paladin's touch] or Remove Curse will prevent the transformation, but once 24 hours have been completed, the change is irreversible (barring a Wish or divine intervention or some such).

Shadows: Here we have the Hunger, the bestial/more-than-mindless/instinctual awareness, the Touch, and we introduce the concept of something that is not entirely "real" or tangible/corporeal. As a result of that, we also introduce the need for magical damage/weapons to defeat it. Though simple bright light or -in many incarnations- the day time/sunlight can [might?] keep it at bay. Depends on the edition, I think, but Shadows -coming form the "Plane of Shadow" (or later edition's "Shadowfell") were not always considered undead. Sometimes they are "umbral" or creatures of shadow-stuff. In some games, I have seen it bandied about that shadows are the result of corrupt bad/evil greed, their undeath cursing them to an existence of having nothing...only contributing to their blind hatred and malevolence toward those that DO still have possessions -a.k.a. the living. Some of that is fine, but I"d stop short before making that a sole raison d'etre for all shadows.

I, personally, like them as the low-level/introductory kind of incorporeal undead. They're still from the Shadow plane [whichever one you use], which in most D&D cosmologies, abuts the negative material plane, so you're getting that necrotic energy influence to generate shadows out of the plane's innate beings, or just "atmospheric stuff." So, for me, shadows are the result of souls of low level or not so terribly "evil," but still "bad" people whose spirits don't move on to the higher planes, but are stuck in the umbral afterlife "mire" of this lower-leaning realm....and they are, understandably, pissed about it. Their anger and hatred and despair for things of light and life [beings that are alive] is a blind, almost mindless, hatred for these things and "snuffing out" the light of life anywhere they can is the only "warmth" they receive in their state of perpetual darkness-shrouded chill (a.k.a. their Strength draining touch). True to, I believe, most versions of the creatures, they are multiplied most simply by those slain by a shadow, rising up/becoming a shadow themselves unless a) a Remove Curse is cast upon the body "immediately" (let's say, within 24 hours) or b) the slaying shadow, the new shadow's creator, is destroyed -releasing their spirit/soul to carry on to its rightful place (and hence, the possibility of returning the slain being to life via the usual channels).

Which brings us up to...
Wights! Herein, we have the Hunger, the Touch (the original "real" danger of undead touch: Level draining!!!], the need for "magic" to properly damage/destroy them, the ability to Replicate themselves, and we introduce the WILLED undead! Those capable of -though not always allowed to act upon- their own thoughts and purposes and goals. Often brought about as under a curse. Often associated with greed, possession of -or obsession with- riches and/or earthly power. I have, sometimes, read/heard of them being cursed murderers as well, but this seems, usually to be murder with the intended goal/outcome of achieving riches or worldly power that curses them. We finally have the introduction of an undead who can THINK and reason, who possesses/remembers at least some language, skills, knowledge, ability at arms -now with preternatural strength and speed. This is something...truly dangerous. A villain all their own, not just driven by base desires. And something capable of, literally, killing you with a touch, only to rise -within minutes- as another wight under its thrall. A wight, properly role played by a DM is a terrifying thing to behold. While possessed of a malevolent will of their own, and normally found alone or in small numbers in far removed locales, their capacity for thought and reason and speech makes them a favored underling for the more powerful free-thinking under or powerful wizard/necromancer.

I'll stop here, because now we'll shift into the beginnings of the truly powerful -and horrifying- undead.
 
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